Skip to main content

Eat More Chocolate: The Secret of the Bribri

CHOCOLATE! real, raw, organic, as close to nature as you can get chocolate!

Fully ripe cacao pods are picked from the chocolate trees (called theobroma cacao) that grow wild everywhere in these islands. They are split open and the seeds are washed. If you like, you can suck the white, licorice tasting cotton candy covering from the seeds yourself. It tastes fantastic!
After the seeds are washed, they are laid on flat beds in the sun to dry. 
At this point the dried cacao seeds are great to nibble one. We like to cover them in chocolate and eat them that way. They are not sweet, but slightly bitter, almost like a coffee bean.

The locals here then pound the seeds into smaller pieces called nibs. The nibs, like the whole seeds, are great to just munch on. They also make a fantastic tea! Just steep in hot water and add a little honey to taste. You can mix it with peppermint for a chocolaty mint tea or, if you come visit me, I will pick ginger flowers from the rain forest for you and make you ginger cacao tea, my favorite! They great thing about the nibs is that they are so easy to carry with you to snack on through out the day for a quick pick me up that wont let you down and offers all that great antioxidant goodness that you KNOW is as natural as you can get!
After the seeds are crushed into nibs, they are put through a grinder. The grinding process naturally heats the cacao enough to make it pliable. So when the cacao comes out the other side it is a warm paste that can easily be formed into the patties that we buy and bring home to make our favorite, raw cacao, all natural goodies. 

Cool fact: There is a group of Indigenous people in the Talamanca Mountains of Costa Rica that live live an amazingly long time. We spent an afternoon with a family there and the grandmother, who was in her 70's taught us about rain forest medicine. She says her people drink cacao every day, 5 or 6 cups of it. It is their secret to long life. 

It was so cool to stand in her chocolate smelling barn and talk to her (in perfect English) about how to make the chocolate drink they swear by. 

They don't use milk to make the chocolate and they don't sweeten it. They use an old fashioned cheese grater to grate the chocolate and then boil it and drink it, simple as that! 

I drank it that way. Its bitter. So I did break down and add a little honey and sea salt. The result? A savory, slightly sweet drink that is so smooth and rich I could drink it all day!

 Soon we will have this totally natural, totally hand made raw cacao now in our SUSTAINING FAMILIES SHOP. And when we do, every raw chocolate patty you buy will a family here in Panama. Help us help them.

Eat More Chocolate, 
Laura





Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Why I Am Here: The Beauty in the Poor Places

I don't write about myself very often, but this time I just want to share a little bit. I want to tell you why I am here. I have been in Central America for five years now. I came on vacation and never went home. Something happened to me that is hard to explain. I walked streets I wasn't sure were safe. I went places I wasn't sure I would come back from. I got really far out of my comfort zone. And in the most unlikely places, I found life. Now I understand why Jesus ate with the prostitutes and drunkards. Why he went to the lost and the broken. They are actually cool people! You cannot imagine how amazing it was to hear their stories, to feel their pain and share their joy, to meet their families and get to know their names. I wish I could explain to you the beauty I see. I wish I could take the feeling that swells inside me and put it in your heart. I am without words, and so I try to convey in pictures the depth I see in their eyes the joy in the e...
4 comments
Read more

The Secrets of Happiness and How to Happify Your Life with Happy Food

Maria with a guanabana ripe off the tree. Panama  Tell me please: What are SECRETS OF HAPPINESS? According to the Happy Planet Index , Costa Rica is the #1 Happiest Place on Earth!  I love this quote from the study:  People  living in Costa Rica have higher well being than the residents of many rich nations including the  USA and the UK, and live longer than people in the USA. Panama has repeatedly been the NUMBER ONE SPOT to retire overseas according to  International Living.  Check out this quote:  Internatio nal Living’s   Annual Global Retirement Index is hitting the presses. And in the top spot: Panama. I should say: Panama  again . Because this tiny powerhouse has topped this index more times than any other country. And this year, International Living is going over the top promoting Mexico as the up and coming best place to retire saying: The U.S.’s southern neighbor consistently makes...
2 comments
Read more

Surprising Discoveries About Why Poor People Are Happy

My time spent living with the poor and the indigenous people of Mexico and Central America has turned up some interesting correlations. You understand that your life is full of stress in the Western world and I am sure you have been exposed to the idea that people who live simpler lives with less things seem to be happier. But do you know WHY? Is it just a mental thing? Is it because they don't know what they are missing? I believe it is much more than that. I lived in an impoverished community in Panama. Many of the home were square wooden boxes that were partially open to the outside. There was no plumbing, no running water or electricity. There were no beds nor any furniture. Families slept on the ground and cooked over an open fire outside. They had no refrigeration (and neither did I for nine months). They collected rain water in buckets which they used for drinking, cooking and bathing. They often went without shoes. They ate very little meat and instead a lot of th...
Post a Comment
Read more