Will you be my Fair Trade Valentine today?  Win prizes!

Participate in Global Exchange’s “National Valentine’s Day of Action”!

How? Please forward this email to ALL your contacts TODAY!

By doing so, you’ll be spreading the love to low-income farmers around the world who make cocoa for the chocolate you love, and helping to end poverty and abusive child labor in cocoa-farming communities.

AND you may win a prize drawing for $40 in fabulous Global Exchange Fair Trade gifts, including CHOCOLATE!

What is the National Valentine’s Day of Action? Global Exchange has developed a fabulous, free Fair Trade cocoa curriculum, including 9 ready-to-use lesson plans. Educators nationwide (including teachers, youth group leaders, Sunday/religious school teachers, etc, etc) are acting in solidarity to present our innovative, teaching standards-friendly cocoa curriculum, to educate students about Fair Trade on or before Valentine’s Day.

Why email ALL your contacts? Because your other friends, family and colleagues also know educators who may be interested.

Educators receiving this email: Will you join teachers nationwide and help reach our goal of educating at least 3,500 students this Valentine’s Day? Educators who teach the curriculum will be entered into a prize drawing for $75 in Fair Trade gifts from Global Exchange’s Fair Trade online store.

REGISTER TODAY!  The first five new participants in the National Valentine’s Day of Action to download the curriculum AND email us to register will receive Fair Trade cocoa beans to use with their lessons.

To participate as an educator, enable us to track whether we have reached our goal of 3,500 students, and get entered into the prize drawing, please take ALL THREE of these steps:

1. Download the curriculum at www.globalexchange.org/cocoa
2. No later than February 13, email fairtrade@globalexchange.org with “National Valentine’s Day of Action Participant” in the subject line and the following information in the body of the email:

Your name:

Your school:

City and state where your school is located:

Your mailing address:

Your phone number:

Number of children in your classroom:

Date you plan to teach the curriculum: E-mail or postmark your curriculum evaluation by February 21^st.

How to win if you refer an educator: When downloading the curriculum, educators enter the name of the individual who referred them to the curriculum.

While we encourage participation around the globe, please note that only individuals with US addresses are eligible for the prize drawing.

Want to increase your chances of winning?? Do these three things:

1. 1 minute: Forward this e-mail to everyone you know, especially educators! Hurry, they start planning their curriculum now!
2. 10 minutes: Make an announcement at your local PTA or teacher staff meeting.
3. 20 minutes: Go to www.globalexchange.org/cocoa/vdaycurricula.html and download the National Valentine’s Day flyer and pass it out at your local schools, put them in teacher’s mailboxes, etc.

However you choose to do it, just remember that YOU’RE making a DIFFERENCE. And that cocoa farming parents and their children will appreciate every effort you make to help better their lives.

PS:  Have you made your Fair Trade New Year’s Resolution yet?  It’s not too late!  Visit www.globalexchange.org/cocoa and follow the links to the New Year’s Resolution page.

It is not just for the sublime experience that I buy the best. There are other reasons. Most chocolate bars can’t even be called chocolate. Just read the label on a chocolate bar sometime. You’ll notice they’re actually called “candy” or “wafer bar”. Some of them have a thin chocolatey layer at best – called a “confectionary” coating. They also substitute vegetable or palm oils for the cocoa butter and put other junk in it too.

Chocolate connoisseurs know what to look for and use their senses to rate the products. A well-educated nose can sniff out perfumed or sugary scents – a dead giveaway that artificial flavours and preservatives have been added. High quality chocolate has a fresh, deep aroma.

There are health reasons too. Dark chocolate (with 70% cocoa mass) is a rich source of antioxidants. It also has the least amount of sugar. And it’s good for your heart too! Plus we get a mental boost because chocolate triggers the release of endorphins.

Single origin chocolate is a whole new trend in the high-end industry. The beans are still blended, although there’s a higher percentage of the flavour beans, but the blend is from a specific region like Java, Cuba, Grenada, Tanzania and Madagascar. Like wine or coffee, the chocolate absorbs the taste of the region’s soil. I did a taste test with Greg Hook while I was at the Chocolate Arts factory. It was amazing how different each one of the chocolates tasted. And because chocolate of origin bars come from smaller islands they can be more easily inspected, so there is a lower incidence of child slavery.

I learned a lot about chocolate from an ancient National Geographic article (Food of the Gods, by Gordon Young, November 1984) that Greg gave me as homework. While the chocolate industry has been modernized over the years, the first few steps of chocolate bean processing are still done the same way as the Aztecs used to do it. The shade-loving cacao tree grows in tropical countries where the pods are harvested from the trunks year round. The gelatinous seeds are extracted and laid out on banana leaves to ferment in the sun.

“Chocolate is very acidic,” Greg told me. “That’s why when it’s left out to ferment there is no bacterial growth.” The truffles he was feeding me on my visit use a highly acidic type of dark chocolate.

Once dried, the beans are bagged and shipped off to foreign manufacturers for roasting and further processing. At the plants, chocolate is cleaned, roasted and shelled, the nibs are shattered by heavy-duty machines and ground into a paste called chocolate liquor. Don’t get excited, the liquor has no alcohol in it, but is the base for all chocolate and cocoa. The hardened liquor becomes baking chocolate. But if the chocolate liquor is pressurized, an amber coloured cocoa butter oozes out, leaving behind a cake-ish lump. The “chocolate press cake” is then ground and becomes cocoa powder. To make candy, more fatty cocoa butter is blended with the chocolate liquor. If cocoa butter alone is used, with no liquor added, that is white chocolate. Dutch chocolate goes through an alkalizing process to achieve different colourings and flavourings. Milk chocolate of course has milk added to it.

I have a penchant for milk chocolate. Greg used to be addicted to it too, he admitted. “It’s the sugar in it,” he said. But now he finds that if he eats three pieces of dark chocolate a day  – containing at least 75% cocoa solids, he is satisfied. He also doesn’t get cavities nor does he gain weight. Still, he does go on the occasional binge. The record for staff at the store is 20 chocolates in a day! I will not divulge my record.

So buy the good stuff, it’s better quality, better for us and there is less of a chance it will be tainted with child slavery. You can buy fair trade or organic chocolate (organic chocolate has stringent monitoring systems that check labour practices too) at many health food stores and specialty shops. If you can’t find fair trade or organic products, buy the more expensive, high quality chocolate with high cocoa content. But first, ask your chocolate retailer about the chocolate they buy. Just because it’s expensive doesn’t guarantee that a child didn’t slave over your sweet treat.

Here are a few trusted brands to indulge in over Christmas. Have a merry time!

Cocoa Camino

Dagoba

Dean’s Beans

Divine Chocolate

Green and Black’s (now owned by Cadbury)

Ithaca Fine Chocolates

Newman’s Own

Rapunzel

Excerpt from Something’s Rotten in Compost City, A Plot to Take Over the Food You Eat by Spring Gillard.

“Linnaeus theobroma. It means ‘food of the gods’. Chocolate was used in ancient Aztec ceremonies,” Greg said to me. My apprenticeship had begun.

He handed me a hair net and ushered me over to a large table where he began to slice long slabs of white chocolate.

“To master chocolate, you have to have a high level of awareness because the medium changes all the time,” he said. “For three quarters of the year you can work a certain way, then in the heat of summer you have to work differently.”

Greg had learned to be cool even during melt downs. Last summer one of his artistic seasonal sculptures had melted in their store window. At the moment, he was working on an Easter display; the first one had been knocked over by a chocolate dazed customer. But in a few hours there would be another giant hollow Easter egg in the window, filled with chocolate bunnies, chicks and scrumptious eggs, all surrounded by a white picket fence.

“The chocolate is my teacher,” said Greg. “And to be a good student, you have to get into the flow and discover what the chocolate will allow you to do. It just keeps evolving.”

Working with chocolate was not only an art for this chocolatier, it was a spiritual experience.

“Eat this,” my chocolate guru waved a truffle under my nose. “It’s our newest creation, a milk chocolate caramel truffle. It’s unusual because most truffles use dark chocolate for the shell.”

I was a milk chocolate fanatic. I have not yet gone over to the dark side even though I know it’s the chocolate with over 70% cocoa solids that is best for your heart and soul and teeth. I bit into the bonbon and gulped half of it down. Divine.

“Stop! That is not how you eat a truffle!” Greg exclaimed. I had failed the truffle test.

“You must put the whole truffle into your mouth at once to truly experience it – in its fullest and most holistic sense,” he said. “Close your eyes, then feel the crunch of the outer shell, the bitterness of the cocoa powder coating, the refined roasted chocolate flavor. Drown in the softness of the center, with its delicate caramel flavoring.”

“Yes Flow Master,” I said with humility. “Could I try another…please?”

“All in good time. Walk with me,” he said. “You must pay attention to the line, or the sugar in the chocolate can over-crystallize. Feel the flow.”

We walked slowly, meditatively along the row of gleaming stainless steel machinery; warm chocolate swirled in the mixers. One apprentice ladled the dark liquid into molds. I felt just like Charlie in the Chocolate Factory. I lifted my nose high in the air and sniffed the wonderful sweet smell of melting chocolate.

“If you don’t pay attention to chocolate, sooner or later it will make you cry.” I snapped to attention. The Flow Master pulled out a tray of chocolate shells.

“These are rejects,” he said. I leaned in closely to inspect the imperfections and saw none.

“Chocolates must have a natural, consistent color. Those made with inferior ingredients or a lack of precision will contain streaks or bubbles.” As with most artists, God was in the details for Greg too.

Most of the world’s chocolate is made from cheap beans called foresteros. They are mixed with finer flavour beans like the criollo or trinitario. It’s like the difference between the inferior robusta coffee beans and the more refined arabica beans.

But never mind that, it was time for my next truffle feeding.

“This is the Rustica,” Greg said.

I popped the whole thing in my mouth, closed my eyes and bit down. There was an explosion of flavour, a hit of chocolate, both bitter and sweet, then the gooeyness of the honey and cinnamon center. I was a slave to chocolate. And I wasn’t alone.

Aly Diabate doesn’t even know what chocolate is. He was forced into slavery at age 11 to harvest cocoa beans on the Ivory Coast. He lived on a diet of corn paste and bananas, and was exposed to harmful pesticides and sharp machetes. According to a 2002 U.S. report, there were about 300,000 child slaves working on cocoa farms in the region. Most of the cocoa beans that go into Nestle, Mars and Hershey candy bars – and probably most of the Easter and Christmas candy you buy for your kids – comes from the Ivory Coast. Greg was right; chocolate could make you cry.

When the child slavery issue came to light in 2001, the U.S. Congress told American chocolate companies to clean up their act by July of 2005 or they would legislate a certification program to ensure that the chocolate industry was environmentally friendly and safe for children. Some of the congressional protocol requirements have been met. Cadbury took the lead, securing Fair Trade certification for its United Kingdom products. Advocates hope that Hershey will follow suit in the U.S. But clearly the industry has not gone far enough. In a September 2009 press release, Global Exchange announced that INTERPOL had just rescued 54 child slaves from cocoa farms on the Ivory Coast.

Greg is careful about the chocolate he uses. One of the main manufacturers he buys from, Valrhona, makes some of the most expensive chocolate in the world and is known for its pure ethics. He also uses local and organic ingredients whenever possible.

The Flow Master held out my final truffle. A dark chocolate miracle encrusted with vanilla sugar. Truly food for the gods.

“The Madagascar,” Greg said, placing the ganache on my tongue with priestly precision.

Crunch went the sugary shell, and then the rich, tangy Manjari dark chocolate merged with the delicate vanilla bean center. I was in the flow.

“Oh my God,” I said. “This isn’t chocolate, it is a spiritual experience.”

“Exactly,” said Greg. “If you’re going to drown, drown in the Ganges.”

Amen! I leaned back to savour the lingering chocolate on my palate and bumped into the cutting table. The new Easter display crashed to the floor.

Chocolate made both Greg and I cry that day.

Excerpt from Something’s Rotten in Compost City, A Plot to Take Over the Food You Eat by Spring Gillard. This essay was first broadcast on CBC’s North by Northwest, Easter Sunday, 2005.