Tangential Tuesday - Conscious Cocoa

It's not nice to enjoy yourself at the expense of others, at least that's what my Sunday School teacher always said. So if you knew that your morning cup of coffee was making certain green-logo'ed coffee companies rich while their coffee bean farmers, toiling in the fields, didn't have enough earnings to feed their families... how would you feel? I'm sure the morning java would turn from an innocent and routine pleasure into a morning cup of guilt.

That's what happens when we begin to learn where our food really comes from. It's a double-edged sword, knowing so much about how our choices affect people all over the world. I can no longer grocery shop in complete peace, as my every purchase is now plagued with a thousand questions - could I possibly buy this with less packaging, from bulk? Where was this apple grown? New Zealand? How much CO2 did that ship emit making it's way through the Pacific? Is that chocolate grown at the expense of rainforest land? Sigh. The more I know, the more my shopping companions begin to notice my hesitation in the dairy aisle, along with my raised eyebrows in the cereal aisle, and then my forlorn looks over the bananas and kumquats. I never thought that the delectable things I put in my mouth would somehow qualify as instruments of oppression. Sheesh.

But then, I go to the farmer's market. (Almost) no plastic. Everything bright and raw and sitting before the people who grow the spinach and feed the chickens bugs and grass. This food grows within 25-40 miles of where I stand, and is sustainably fished from boats that refuse to deplete fish populations and throw wide nets that annihilate anything in its way. This place feels right, and I know others can feel it too. Everybody loves the farmer's market in the summer. There are no ethical qualms about packaging, no bananas from Ecuador where workers are paid barely enough to live.

At these markets, of course you won't find olive oil, tea... and usually you won't find coffee or cocoa either, except now. This time, at the market I saw a small card table set up near the entrance, a tiny table with a few bags of whole bean coffee, and next to them

several silver packages of cocoa powder. The bags said Fair Trade and Organic, and there was a short, tanned, rough-skinned man standing there. He had on a similarly worn straw hat and light-colored, linen clothes. He was from Costa Rica, and with excellent English he was explaining to someone how Alianza and Sol Colibri was bringing farmers out of poverty.

He was so passionate about his coffee and cocoa, he was stumbling over his words, trying to get them out fast enough so that his customers wouldn't lose attention. He was excited, trying to explain how this Fair Trade Organic Co-op was already selling its cocoa to local Theo Chocolate, but trying to get its products into more local stores. He smiled, and his warm, genuine energy flowed through his gesticulating hands, as he exalted his cause, and told how much more money these farmers could fetch for their products once they left the country. He sold me an entire pound of this cocoa for five dollars. I have never seen cocoa of this quality go for less than sixteen per pound at any other market. Incredible. And I know that these five dollars will go directly to these farmers, and it is more than they could ever make by selling it to some other international entity that doesn't support Fair Trade practices.

Fair Trade guarantees that a farmer gets a fair price for his or her product, enough to make it profitable to continue the business. Seems simple, right? It's amazing that expensive, coveted products that are sold for big dollars here in the US (such as coffee and cocoa) are the same products that run farmers into extreme poverty in Latin America. Cooperatives in Costa Rica, such as Alianza which is Sol Colibri's umbrella organization, benefit from banding together their small farmers into an entity which can do business with larger organizations that support Fair Trade Organic practices.

As I made my homemade chocolate mocha ice cream today, it felt great to use this cocoa. No guilt here, folks (except for the guilt that ice cream normally gives me... but I was making it for Mark, I swear!) This cocoa was amazing, and made an awesome dessert (I stole a few bites, of course.) I thought about the gentleman who sold it to me, with all of his smiling and gusto, his excitement about doing something for his people. Here was a man who knew he had something beautiful, and he wanted to share it with me. Next time I'll try the coffee, which I'm sure will be equally good.

If you're at your Seattle market this week, look for the guy in the floppy straw hat. Buy his cocoa, buy his story, and please pass it on.

Sol Colibri Chocolate Mocha Ice Cream

1 cup organic milk

2 cups organic cream

1/2 cup Sol Colibri cocoa powder

1/4 cup Pero coffee substitute, soluble coffee powder, or brewed coffee

3/4 cup Evaporated cane juice (may sub regular sugar, or agave nectar)

2 teaspoons vanilla extract

In a medium saucepan over medium-low heat, mix all ingredients and whisk until sugar is dissolved and mixture is completely homogenous and smooth. Chill the mixture completely, and then make ice cream according to ice cream maker's instructions.

Out of Place

Local. Organic. Seasonal.

These are the father, son and holy ghost of the 'save the world through food' movement, now omnipresent, in the Pacific Northwest.  We get a little haughty about it, a little holier-than-thou at times, in the midst of our trying to do good for our bodies and the planet.  Gasp!  Are those mass-market organic canned tomatoes in your pantry?  Those blueberries are little blue chemical bombs!  Ack!  Were you planning on making me a pesticide smoothie with those??   

I've been following these principles for a few years now, trying like mad to keep my dollars at the farmer's markets and out of Safeway, eating out at restaurants that label every carrot and bean sprout with the local farm that sowed them with care, loving words, soft music, and loads of flowery-smelling manure.  I even, at times, knew the name of the cow from whence my stinky cheese came (Red Darla exhibits some real sophistication for a cow.  Moo.) 

I've been trying to keep the unavoidable melodrama and panic to a minimum (although Mark would probably disagree, as I've been known to hurl slices of major-brand supermarket wheat bread across the kitchen at his HFCS-loving head).  

Alas, I try.  I try to do good while eating well, enjoying food, and keeping my perspective.  It doesn't help that my dining room table is strewn with conscious-eating magazines, organic market fliers, and recipes torn from every local, organic and seasonable publication you can imagine.  It's an occupational hazard, the obsession to vote well with every dollar I spend on food.  Us nutritionists, neurotic as we are, don't always sleep so well some nights.  

But I have learned, after years of extremist experimentation, that raw foods/vegetarian-only/vegan-without-grains/macrobiotic/pesca-ovo-vega-mega-tarianism (all local, organic, and sustainable of course) is not the only answer.  As the buddha says (or as I paraphrase from reading Siddhartha so many years ago) the middle path is the way to go.  The key is finding what your own middle path is, as each person's extremes may be entirely different.  

I'm getting into my own groove these days, finding comfort in my middle path.  It's March here in Seattle, and we're at the point where the new sprouts and buds are crying out from underneath the transient morning snow. The winter vegetables are just about depleted, with no Spring ones yet to take their place.  My fridge has been dutifully filled with carrots and parsnips and big bunches of kale.  The fruit basket is always filled with apples, pears and bananas since they're organic and fair-trade.  The lettuces I cheat on, as my salads hail from down south on the coast, but organic, are all but comfort food to me now.  If I buy meats, I buy them organic and even from the farmers who think organic is just ridiculous - why would anyone do anything but?  A long time ago, farming organic was the only way to do it.

I love my local food, and what abundance we have here in the midst of our rainy, mild Winter.  The clouds have made for grey skies most days.  The sun peeks out, then turns shy and hides behind those clouds once again. We'll have hail, rain, snow and then sunshine all in a single day.  My dinners have turned to brown or pink beans, stewed with vegetables and grains, sometimes squash.  Deep earthy colors, dark tones that fit in with the darkened sky.

But at the market, on a quick trip to our favorite market that always seems to be bursting with color, fruits and flowers - I had to have this.

On a cold rainy day, my body yearned for sunshine, for sweetness, for the memory of sitting outside, breakfasting in Cabo San Lucas and taking a bite of this all covered in lime and sea salt.  The beach breeze blowing through my hair -  the cafe con leche, sipped overlooking the sandy beach.  Spring was getting me all rowdy.  Delicious, sweet, juicy papaya... probably full of toxins and imported from Mexico.  But hey!  This is my middle path... and it's covered in little black seeds and spent wedges of lime.

I sliced this big green papaya right down the middle, spooned out the caviar-like black seeds, and chunked the buttery-melt-in-your-mouth flesh into a mound in my big white china bowl.  Respite from the chill, a bit of color to remind me it still exists in nature among the earthen greens and browns of Winter.