Would You Cook with This?

Sadie had saved up her allowance for three weeks and wanted to go to Family Dollar to get a My Little Pony (their selection is way better than Wal-Mart's).  I needed to go grocery shopping and happened to have my list on me, so I thought, why not buy some stuff I need here?  So I bought what I could, and I actually found, in some cases, better prices there than at Wal-Mart, which was pleasant. 

I needed a pound of baker's chocolate to make some chocolate toffee cookies, and to my surprise, they actually had baker's chocolate there! 

So I brought it home and unwrapped the individual ounces so I could get to melting them down for my cookies, and.....

...this is what they looked like.  Really, really weird.  I checked the expiration date - they weren't set to expire until, like, 2015.  Each box holds 8 ounces, so I opened the other box to see if it was just an anomaly.  Nope.  Weird, bubonic plague-like chocolate in each wrapper.

I was nervous to cook with these.  But then I thought, "This isn't fresh produce.  It's chocolate.  And I'm melting it.  Dare I try??"

Again, my fear of food poisoning was really causing me stress.  And I didn't feel like packing up the kids and taking it back to the store.  Plus, would they take back unwrapped chocolate??  Who knows; I think not. 

So I just gritted my teeth and made the cookies.

And they turned out fine.

Maybe Family Dollar gets a special deal from the Baker's Chocolate company - they get a discount for buying the ugly batches??