“Bean to Bar” at Belize Chocolate Company

Farms and MarketsNovember 16, 2018March 27, 2019 Leigh Scott

“Bean to Bar” at Belize Chocolate Company

November 16, 2018

We’ve always had a saying in my home: “There’s no such thing as too much chocolate.” While it’s not *quite* true, it comes very close. And that’s the reason I scheduled a visit to Belize Chocolate Company during a recent trip to the tiny town of San Pedro on lovely Ambergris Caye.

Peace, Love and Chocolate

Belize Chocolate Company is a family-owned, artisan chocolate shop with a beachside patio and vibrant red picnic tables. If you go inside the shop (and you should), you’ll be richly rewarded with refreshing air conditioning and yummy chocolate samples. While there, you can order a tasty chocolate treat from the menu, buy a tee shirt emblazoned with “Peace, Love and Chocolate,” and browse the wide selection of chocolate products and souvenirs. Or, you can do what we did: Take the chocolate-making class that’s held on weekday mornings.

Take the Chocolate-Making Class

The company’s chocolate production facilities are actually located elsewhere, so don’t expect to take a tour and see huge machines churning out chocolate. But, if you ask me, this chocolate-making class is way better. And here’s why. First, the class size is small (no more than 10), so there is ample opportunity to ask questions and even test your chocolate-grinding skills. Second, the class is taught by a friendly and knowledgeable instructor: Chris Beaumont, who is co-owner of the chocolate shop with his wife, Jo Sayer. Third, you’ll have the opportunity to sample the chocolate at all stages of the process. And forth, you get to sit in a cozy corner of the deck and admire the beautiful turquoise sea. What’s not to like?!

Chris and Jo opened the chocolate shop in 2012, after coming to Belize to set up a windsurfing and sailing school. Inspired by a chocolate festival in southern Belize in 2007, they began experimenting with cacao beans in the kitchen of their home on the beach. Eventually they developed a uniquely Belizean product which uses locally-sourced, organic, fair-trade and direct-trade cacao beans and Belizean cane sugar as the only ingredients. Their chocolate shop offers a delicious selection of individual truffles using as many Belizean ingredients as possible — such as Belizean citrus blossom honey, coconut, pineapple, bananas, cashews, rum and even Belikin sorrel stout. My suggestion: Buy your Belizean souvenirs here if you want to take home a real taste of the tropics — rather than a tchotchke from China!

From Bean to Bar

You may already know that chocolate comes from the beans of the Theobrama Cacao tree. But have you ever seen the bean pods? The beans are contained inside large, oblong-shaped pods with a tough exterior. Cacao trees bear fruit from January to June, and the Belizean beans come from small, family farms whose average size is an acre and a half.

Inside the pod, surrounded by a sweet pulp, there are 50 to 60 beans. (I was surprised to hear that the Mayan people may have originally harvested the cacao pods for the sweet pulp rather than for the beans, only later learning about the amazing taste and benefits of the beans.) But at this stage the beans taste nothing like chocolate, and transforming the beans into a delectable bar requires careful selection and processing.

After the beans are removed from the pods, they are fermented and then dried in the sun. Next the beans are roasted, which begins to develop the complex chocolate flavor that we all know and love. Then the beans are ready for cracking and winnowing, which involves separating the bean from its shell. What’s left are the cacao nibs — which are essentially the original chocolate chip.

The nibs are ground to produce chocolate liquor. Traditionally, a stone metate is used to grind the nibs. A metate is a flat or slightly hollowed oblong stone on which the nibs are ground using a smaller stone — similar to a mortar and pestle. After Chris demonstrated the proper technique, my classmates and I took turns learning the proper wrist motion that’s used to grind the nibs.

Chris added sugar to the nibs so we could taste the resulting dark chocolate. Dark chocolate (the only kind I eat) is made with a ratio of 70 percent nibs and 30 percent sugar, while milk chocolate is 45 percent nibs plus equal amounts of powdered milk and sugar to make up the remaining 55 percent. White chocolate is made from cocoa butter (derived by pressing the chocolate liquor), sugar, and milk. Chris offered us samples of all three kinds so we could compare.

Several other steps are needed to produce the finished bars, and you can learn about all of it here.

You Can Buy the Beans and Bars Online

If you won’t be making a trip to Belize anytime soon (although you certainly should), check out the company’s website and place an order for chocolate bars, chocolate body products, and/or “all other things chocolate” — including chocolate balsamic vinegar.

I brought home several packages of nibs and a small bottle of the vinegar, and I will be experimenting with them — so keep an eye on my Instagram feed for the resulting treats!

Penzeys Spices — Cooking Up Kindness

Farms and MarketsNovember 1, 2018March 27, 2019 Leigh Scott

Penzeys Spices — Cooking Up Kindness

November 1, 2018

Penzeys Spices sells some truly awesome seasonings, and you should grab hold of some and stir them into your next culinary creation. You can find Penzeys online or — if you are lucky — there’s a brick-and-mortar store in your area. I’m one of the fortunate cooks who can drive to a Penzeys store in about 15 minutes. Just walking into the store, where you are greeted with an array of amazing aromas, is a treat in itself. But from my perspective there is another reason to support Penzeys: The company works hard to heal the world by inspiring love, kindness, empathy, and strength.

Pinning Our Hopes on Kindness

I first learned about Penzeys Spices from a Facebook post. It was early in 2017, and the fine folks who run Penzeys had decided to offer their Kind Heart pins to their customers who attended the historic Women’s March. According to a post on the company’s Facebook page, here’s how it happened: “A customer who was going to D.C. on a bus asked to purchase some of our Embrace Hope stickers to pass out to her fellow riders. We gave her some, and one of our Kind Heart pins for everyone on the bus. With 43,000 pins in inventory we thought, ‘Why not make this something we do for all our customers riding a bus to the D.C. Women’s March; how many pins could we go through?’ That answer turned out to be all of them.” So then Penzeys made more pins! And, all told, they sent out 174,139 Kind Heart pins. For free. Wow.

Penzeys Has Bold Leadership

Bill Penzey, who’s the owner of the company, believes that cooks can spread kindness by making tasty meals that encourage folks to sit around the kitchen table, interacting with each other and building community. I like this idea, and my car wears a sticker that says: “Love People, Cook Them Tasty Food.” And Penzeys believes that the effect goes much further. As stated in one of their postings, “We see the time we spend in the kitchen as incredibly valuable. And while it may be easy to see that what we do there really does connect us to the lives of those we share meals with, we believe that, when done with an open heart, our cooking connects us to the lives of the greater community around us as well.”

But the company’s statements are not always so warm and fuzzy. I’ve kept an eye on the company’s Facebook postings, and it seems that Bill Penzey takes a bold stand each time there’s an attack on a marginalized group — or on our democracy. And all of these courageous posts feature a clever connection between the issue and the spices. For example, Penzeys counteracted the discriminatory rhetoric that’s been directed at Mexicans by offering a free bottle of Mexican Vanilla Extract with a $10 purchase in store or online. And the posting came complete with a recipe for Butterfly Cutout Cookies, which are colorful treats that remind me of the vibrant art that’s characteristic of Mexico.

Bill Penzey’s posts are clearly progressive and left leaning, so not everyone appreciates them as much as I do. Yet Bill reports that the loss of a small percentage of customers has been more than offset by purchases that people are making to reward the company’s courageous stance and community spirit. As Bill says in a post, “In our experience we’ve found that when you honestly support and speak out for the values of your customers, your customers support you.” Not only that, Bill published a sales chart showing how customers had enthusiastically responded to a couple of the company’s tell-it-like-it-is postings — with peaks to represent the resulting boost in sales.

I’m not surprised that people are rewarding Penzeys for striving to be a good corporate citizen and for promoting the kindness that seems hard to find these days. I believe that good deeds and bravery are often rewarded.

Now, About Those Spices

As I mentioned previously, the seasonings at Penzeys are truly awesome. Their spices are fresh, and they are way more potent than the grocery store brands. Along with bottles and packages of single spices, Penzeys offers a wide variety of interesting mixtures containing flavorful combinations that add depth and complexity to your dishes. What’s more, the store has open, apothecary-style containers of the spices so that you can smell the product and know what you’re buying. When did you ever have that opportunity at a grocery store spice rack?

And Be Sure to Check Out the Stories!

Bill Penzey really does believe in the power of cooks to change the world. As he stated in one of his posts, “I believe Cooking is our best hope to show what human values really are, and how our human values know no borders or divides of race, religion, orientation, or gender. We have a long road ahead of us, and this is where most times you would read ‘and it won’t be easy.’ But seriously, hanging out, sharing conversations and tasty food with all sorts of people from all sorts of backgrounds? This is going to be fun. Plus, who doesn’t like tasty food?” So, in tribute to these cooks, the Penzeys website contains stories and recipes from cooks who are “on the front lines of one of these issues.” You’ll meet people like Lynn Maday, who joined other native Americans in fighting an open pit mine at the headwaters of Lake Superior. Read her story and try her recipe for fry bread! Or learn about Jim Luger, a Vietnam veteran who discovered that grilling food over a fire provided a much-needed respite for the war-weary soldiers in his company. There are many more fascinating stories just like these. Take a look — and be inspired!

The Paw Paw: Delicious and Nutritious!

Farms and MarketsOctober 26, 2018March 27, 2019 Leigh Scott

The Paw Paw: Delicious and Nutritious!

October 26, 2018

Fall is a special time of year, when people love to pick apples, visit pumpkin patches, and savor some ripe paw paws. Say what?!! I’ll bet you’re familiar with apples and pumpkins, but you might wonder what a paw paw is. You’re not alone. I wouldn’t have known about them, either, except that a friend of mine named Michael Judd grows them in nearby Frederick, MD.

Creating an Edible Landscape for Your Home

Michael promotes the unusual idea of using our yards to grow more than just grass. Sure, that lush, green lawn in front of your house might make your home look grand — but that patch of grass is an ecological desert. It doesn’t feed the wildlife in your yard and certainly doesn’t feed any people. Imagine, instead, that your yard contained a cornucopia of food for bees, butterflies, birds — and for you, too. Seems way more sustainable, if you ask me.

Michael understands that our yards can be “food forests,” containing a carefully-woven tapestry of fruit trees, berry bushes, flowers, and herbs. All of the plants in this kind of multi-level food forest live in harmony with each other. It’s a symbiotic relationship that is totally unlike a lonely fruit tree that’s been planted in a wide expanse of grass. Through Michael’s consulting business, called Ecologia Design, he teaches homeowners how to surround that lonely fruit tree with companion plantings that will support the tree by providing mulch, fixing nitrogen, and attracting pollinators. This strategy creates what Michael calls a “patch,” and you can expand your food forest from there. Learn all about creating your own food forest by reading Michael’s book, Edible Landscaping with a Permaculture Twist.

So if you’d like to find out still more about these fascinating food forests, and you don’t mind traveling to a remote location, you can visit the nonprofit farm that Michael founded in Nicaragua. Founded in 2001, the farm is called Project Bona Fide, and it’s located on the slopes of Volcan Maderas on Ometepe Island. I traveled there in 2011 to see the farm where my daughter Holly had volunteered for a couple of months. It was a spectacularly beautiful location, with vibrant flowers, stunning sunsets, and the nightly serenade of howler monkeys. But… it’s a bit far away, and another option would be to visit Michael’s demonstration garden, called Long Creek Nursery, located in Maryland. And that is exactly where I went to learn about paw paws a few weeks ago.

All About the Paw Paw

My husband and I joined about 14 other people for a mid-September tour of Michael’s nursery. After serving us a sample of the delectable fruit, Michael told us all about the paw paw. I was surprised to learn that paw paws grow wild in the woods of the eastern U.S. (I’m going to have to pay more attention to the trees when I go out hiking!) The paw paw is North America’s largest indigenous fruit, and in good conditions (plenty of sun and the right amount of moisture) the fruit can be as large as a mango. A cultivated paw paw fruit can even weigh as much as two pounds, although the fruit that grows in the wild is usually much smaller. The paw paw is actually a tropical fruit tree that migrated northward as the glaciers receded following the last ice age. It’s a highly adaptive plant, and it produces a green-skinned, kidney-shaped fruit that contains a rich, yellow flesh embedded with several large, dark brown seeds. The fruit is deliciously sweet and tastes a bit like a mixture of banana, mango, and pineapple.

Michael showed us a grove of paw paws that he’s planted and nurtured. He says that paw paws are relatively easy to grow directly from seed, although you will need to be patient. The paw paw seed sends down a taproot which will grow to 9 inches before the plant even sends up a shoot. A better option might be to buy an established plant from Michael’s nursery! But if you’d like to produce paw paws in your yard, you will need to plant two trees so that they can cross pollinate. A mature tree will be nicely shaped like a pyramid and can produce 35 to 50 pounds of fruit each year. The paw paw can be grown from seed and will begin to produce fruit when it reaches about 6 ft in height.

Nutritious as Well as Delicious

Paw paws are not often carried in grocery stores, so you have to look hard to find them. But it’s worth the effort. You can eat the flesh directly from the fruit using a spoon, or you can add it to recipes. I made some tasty mini tarts with a few of the paw paws that we bought from Michael. But note that the fruit will be easier to handle if you freeze it first. Then you can cut it with a knife and scoop out the flesh and the seeds.

Happily, the paw paw fruit is packed with nutrients, so it’s a great choice when you’re in the mood for something sweet. According to Michael, the paw paw has a nearly perfect amino acid profile. It’s also a great source of valuable vitamins (like vitamin C) and essential minerals (including potassium, iron, and magnesium).

Plan to Attend the Paw Paw Fest

Each year when the paw paws are ripe in Maryland, Michael and his family welcome visitors to their Long Creek Homestead for the Paw Paw Fest. As Michael says, it’s a celebration of “all things paw paw.” You can enjoy food (including paw paws, of course), music, and garden tours. Click here to check out photos and a video of this year’s festival. And then make plans to attend next September. I can guarantee that it will be a sweet treat!

Willowsford Farm Market – Asparagus to Zinnias

Farms and MarketsAugust 29, 2017March 27, 2019 Leigh Scott

Willowsford Farm Market – Asparagus to Zinnias

August 29, 2017

I love farmers’ markets. Farmers’ markets can be counted on to provide a wide variety of just-picked fresh produce for our kitchens. And the vendors usually offer ready-to-eat foods, miscellaneous other goodies, and a connection to the farm that I can just feel. I believe that visiting the farmers’ market is an experience to be savored.

The only hitch with most farmers’ markets is that they aren’t open every day. So what do you do if you need veggies and the market isn’t open, or the one that’s open is too a long drive from your home?

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