Chocolate

May 29, 2011

Yesterday while working on some of our community bank materials before the meeting we had a recipe exchange! For me this is pretty exciting, though they say that I am cheating by looking in a book. Well, baking is more of a science anyway so I like to have precise measurements. So far all of the baking has been a hit, the oatmeal cookies, banana bread and the pineapple upside down cake and many prior experiments. Everyone has been very intrigued by the egg salad sandwich as well.

So after our community bank meeting I announced that I will be coming early the next week and we are going to have a cooking demonstration. I am eventually hoping to tie in some charlas on nutrition and small businesses, but for now paso a paso….

I am also excited to start a vegetable garden with my neighbors. I saved and dried out some seeds from zucchini, tomatoe and cucumber. My evening experiment will be yogurt. To make yogurt you just need boiled milk and a tablespoon of yogurt without preservatives. I have Tony natural yogurt and I am going to give it a go with that, I am suspecting there are some preservatives though that may impede the process…but I will have to wait until the morning to find out.

****************************************************************************

June 8, 2011

So the yogurt experiment failed, I will be on the lookout for a yogurt without preservatives.

I headed out to Quito to make my way to Tena in the Amazon for the 3rd annual chocolate fair. I made a quick last minute decision to go to the fair, which meant I had tons of vegetables that I could not finish before leaving. So the obvious thing to do would be make a vegetable soup. So when I headed to Quito I ended up carrying along 4 Tupperware of veggie soup and burrito ingredients (no wonder us gringos are known for always having too many bags when we travel). I was not expecting to serve my soup to anyone but once I got to Pablo’s we heated it up and had it for dinner. To me it was pretty hilarious/embarrassing to serve my vegetarian slightly spicy meal (people have a low spice tolerance here). Anyway I think it went over well, everyone finished their soup, opposed to the last time I tried to feed people vegetable soup and I saw them sneakily pouring it back into the pot.

Who loves chocolate? ME ME ME

Though I was initially hesitant to travel all the way to Tena and be out of my site for a week, my mother pointed out the fact that she had never been to a chocolate fair. So I headed to the oriente for the 3rd Annual Tena Chocolate Fair I thought, yeah this really is a once in a life time experience, how many people get the chance to attend chocolate fairs in the Amazon?

I tested out a few chocolates but my favorite was a quinoa filled chocolate covered truffle, obscenely amazing. I am in search for a recipe for this delectable treat.

We arrived in Tena late and woke up early Friday for a full day of chocolate. It was great, there were cacao cooperatives from all over the country, the coast and the Amazon. There were also quite a few government agriculture organizations and NGOs. Many organizations were represented by booths selling their chocolate, I kind of went crazy since the cost of the bars ranged from $1-3, what a steal especially for organically fair traded dark chocolate. My friends and family might get spoiled when I go home this month ;) It was wonderful to see examples of producer cooperatives that are actually making their own product and even selling it in foreign markets. One of the most successful organization which has actually achieved the feat of exporting and selling their product is Kallari. They are a group of about 400 families in the amazon growing cacao and producing chocolate bars. After doing a little research I found that Divine Chocolate is another organization in which the producers are major stakeholders in the company. Ghanian farmers own 45% of the company. It is refreshing to see that farmers and community members have been able to create their own value added product to sell to an international market. Most producers lose most of the product’s value to intermediaries and foreign chocolate companies who then process the cacao into specialty chocolate mainly in Europe and the US. My goal is to help my organization capture at least a small part of the final market value of their product. That would be possible by selling the cacao to a chocolate processer here in Ecuador who offers a just price and eliminates the number of middle men in the process, selling directly to an exporter abroad which will again eliminate more middle men and offer a higher price. The ultimate goal would be that the cooperative produce their own final product. There are many products which could be made from cacao, obviously chocolate, specialty chocolate, chocolate covered dry fruits, nibs (which is grinded cacao beans mixed with a little dried coconut or other fruit), cacao liquor, beauty products from the cacao butter, and many more. The difficulty in reaching the ultimate value added product is the investment cost which would be needed. First the organization needs a Sanitation Registry which would be a few thousand dollars, then they would need machinery which separates the cacao powder and butter and enables the chocolate making process, marketing and networking would have to take place to create and sell a new product, and probably organic and fair trade certification would be a must in the international market (which also cost $$).These are just a few of the necessities needed to begin producing a final product.

After thinking through all the costs and work associated with producing a product and researching successful national and international cacao cooperatives it seems that the most reasonable method to create an exportable value added product would be for the whole province of Esmeraldas, Ecuador to combine forces and produce a cacao product unique to their region. Right now there is an Esmeraldas Mesa de Cacao which is an organization of most of the cacao cooperatives in Esmeraldas. If they could unite together in the processing and product exportation it may be a more feasible commercialization plan.

Sometimes people tend to be a little prideful about their cacao and want to create a unique product from their organization, but I think if they want to have the possibility to excel in a global market it is necessary that they unite their forces. If producers from the province of Esmeraldas unified in the processing and exportation of their cacao, they would save on initial fixed input costs and take advantage of economies of scale since they would have a higher supply of cacao if many cooperatives were processing cacao at the same plant.

These are just some personal thoughts, they may sound good in theory but try talking to a group of producers about this, it is hard enough to achieve agreement and cooperation within one group. Well I guess one has the right to dream right?

This is a different type of cacao, they say when you dry it and roast it the beans have a nuttier flavor.

June 6th

This weekend we cooked a yummy eggplant lasagna. Eggplant is such a wonderful vegetable but very underutilized here. We offered some leftovers to Pablo’s brother who said, “This is really good…but it has kind of an odd flavor,” to which the reply was, “yes it is an eggplant lasagna.” I think the lasagna went over pretty well.

A new vegetarian restraint opened in Quito. We went to check it out and it was amazing! Lunch for $3 including a juice or soy milk, 4 side dishes a dessert and even arroz integral!

****************************************************************************

June 7th

I am beginning a food diary to write down what I eat every day and how I feel after that. I have a suspicion that I have some sort of food allergy (though maybe its just a regular old parasite or tropical bug disease…not trying to scare you mom haha). So I have decided to try to eliminate wheat from my diet for a few days and see how I feel. I am only on day two with no wheat, so good so far, I haven’t been sick. I initially thought it would be really difficult not to eat wheat, but I realized breads are not eaten that frequently here and since most food is cooked fresh there are few hidden ingredients in meals. That is refreshing to hear in the case that I do have an allergy. Carbohydrates here on the coast consist mainly of rice, plantains, yucca and corn. Wheat is rare, and since there is no panaderia here in town, it is not a food staple. We’ll see how long I can stick to the experiment in a culture where declining food offered from someone is an insult.

(Nope, I ended up just having some amoebas, thanks goodness no food allergies)

*********************************************************************************

June 9, 2011

Today my neighbor invited me over for two meals. Right when I was about to sit down to a hearty lentil vegetable soup she called me over for dinner, well so much for trying to lose a few pounds before I head back home… We had rice and a beef soup for lunch and fried fish and rice with plantains for dinner (gotta love the double carb). During dinner some how one of the teeny bones poked into my gum and it took me a while to finally pull it out, those fish bones are dangerous! So tonight while I was quietly relaxing with my GRE study materials, I heard a plump and skurry across my ceiling. I thought it might just be the geckos fighting as usual, but nope, it was a rat running through the rafters. Last time I was faced with this situation things didn’t end so well. My 11 year old neighbor asked me if I put out the poison for the rats, and I replied, “yea but I don’t think they ate it.” Well, I think somehow my rat trap (fishbone with poison) ended up in the wrong hands. My little 7 year old neighbor came over and yelled, “You killed one of the puppies and a kitten!” Well that travesty has passed and I think my neighbor has finally forgiven me. Now the neighbor´s dog has yet another litter of puppies and a rat has reappeared. Though I have learned from my mistake, I will not sit back and let the rats conquer my abode, though bats are a different story. So tonight I put out an irresistible trap…chicken bones with peanut butter topping, what rat could resist that? I know Maryland mice love peanut butter and I hope that’s a transnational favorite.

Tomorrow will be another day of map making and calabazo creations!

June 14, 2011

Here chocolate is the traditional morning beverage, and it once was the staple. Today instant coffee has taken over the market, but there are still some who prefer their morning chocolate to coffee. It is not what you may be imagining, not a chocolate powder like hot chocolate, but it is the whole ground cacao bean which makes this drink. It is much more similar to coffee and has good deal of caffine too. It is usually made with cinnamon (which grows there also), cloves and anise. The ground cacao is boiled in water until dissolved and then milk and sugar can be added to taste.

Limon y sal! The secret ingredients to incorporating vegetables into the coastal Ecuadorian diet. I guess that may have been obvious, but tonight the magical power of salt and lemon came into play. It all began when my neighbor invited me over to learn how to make plantain empanadas. I had mentioned how I would love to learn to make them, and today we did. First you must find Domicilo plantains, they are a bit smaller than the others. They are boiled for a while and finally they are mashed into a dough so that they can be formed into empanadas. We rolled out the plantain and then filled them with a meat mixture or cheese. Next you secure the sides of the empanadas and cut off the extra plantain to form a half moon shape. Finally, they are fried in a pan of hot hot oil.

After laboring on our empanadas it was time to eat. I brought over a salad I had made earlier in the evening to top the empanadas. Usually empanadas are topped with an onion, cabbage and lemon salad. My salad of course had a few more vegetables and I was doubting that anyone would enjoy it. The salad contained tomatoes, red cabbage, onion, and radishes. Finally the key ingredients, a lot of lime and salt were added. To my surprise everyone loved it, they ate the whole bowl! I have honestly never seen people from my town eat so many vegetables and enjoy them. This gives me hope that with a little creativity a healthy diet might catch on.

July 11, 2011

Still reintegrating after a wonderful but ephemeral vacation to the states. What better way to assimilate than a new gastronomic experience with the neighbors. After a slightly hermetic day of reading in my house, I was invited over for dinner. Though the last few weeks semi-amoeba free where liberating, I admit if I want people to accept me into their world, I must eat their food (therefore, probably getting more food borne amoebas). I imagine living with the prospect of amoebas is just something I’ll have to deal with for the next 9 months.

Tonight we had grilled chicken feet with plantains and some other organs thrown in. This is a pretty common dish here in Ecuador, though I have somehow escaped its fate thus far. They weren’t too bad, just skin, fat and gristle. I wouldn’t rank them highly, health-wise, but it is a very efficient use of animal protein which us prodigal North Americans don’t tend to condone. Which begs the question, what do we do with all the chicken feet, necks, livers and the like? Who’d have thought that a chicken bone would make for a great teething ring? Well, it seems to get the job done. I guess we can learn a lot from my neighbors in the way of consumption reduction and the environmental benefits of parsimony and reductionism. I’m not saying you should forgo the teething ring for a chicken bone…but I am sure there are other non essential goods we consume without stopping to think twice if they are necessities or indulgences.