Ever wonder where your coffee comes from?

Crop to Cup Coffee Company allows you to see the farmers and know their story. Crop to Cup represents the farmer by providing technology and marketing services that will connect them to interested customers in the United States. The goal is to improve the quality and integrity of coffee served everywhere.

This is a good way to have full transparency in coffee farming and to make sure that the product is fairly traded. The great part of Crop to Cup is the availability for direct product feedback through reviews and ratings as well as message boards.

There are several coffee houses and markets in the New York and Chicago area where Crop to Cup coffee is sold or you can purchase your own online.

 

 

The People’s Grocery was started in 2002 to coordinate a local food system and provide a source of healthy foods to the people in West Oakland, California. There are about 30,000 residents in West Oakland with no grocery store, but there are 53 liquor stores. Many of these residents have diet related illnesses and do not have a source for healthy foods. Brahm Ahmadi, co-founder and executive director, calls it “food justice - the principle that all people, regardless of economic and social constraints should have access to the best foods available in our society.” 

The goal is to keep the wealth within the community. The People’s Grocery grow organic food in urban community gardens to educate and reconnect people with their food source. They also provide healthy cooking classes and a produce box distribution program, so the residents can get fresh foods in their homes.

To find out more about this project, visit The People’s Grocery. 

This is the featured story on the Global Oneness Project, which is a “web-based video initiative exploring how the simple notion of oneness can be lived in our increasingly complex world.”

They work by these principles:

- We are responsible to each other, the earth, and future generations

- There are enough resources for us all, if we share

- Free exchanges of information allow for greater, collective creative potential

- Love, care and compassion have the power to transform the fabric of society

 I recently finished the book, The Chocolate Connoisseur by Chloé Doutre-Roussel. When Chloé was writing the book, she was the chocolate buyer for Fortnum & Mason, a very high-end department store in London. Known for her keen sense of smell, she is now an independent consultant who gives advice to clients on cacao cultivation, refinement techniques and the chocolate making process. There are several steps to get the cacao bean to taste like a fine piece of chocolate and Chloé is chocolate’s sweetheart at the moment.

I have always had a love for chocolate, so when I saw this book on the shelf, I was immediately interested. I had done some independent research on the chocolate making process and the different cacao bean regions, just so I could be an informed customer. Even as a young girl, I liked the semi-sweet baking chips over the milk chocolate bars any day. As my chocolate palette continues to broaden, so has my education on the subject. The Chocolate Connoisseur really gave me a broad overview of chocolate by distinguishing between the types of cacao bean varieties and their location, the laws regarding labeling for cacao content and how to really taste the deep flavors in chocolate bars. 

Some say that this book is self-serving or self-absorbed for Chloé, but I find her honest opinion very refreshing. She encourages you to listen to her advice, simply because she does have a lot experience to learn from, but she also makes sure that you are tasting with your own palette … making chocolate decisions based on your own set of guidelines or moods.

Since reading the book, I have set up several chocolate tastings for myself. Chloé says that tasting chocolate in the morning, before you have had anything else to eat and your palette is clean, is the best time. I have to agree with her. My recent morning tastings have brought out flavors and smells that you wouldn’t ordinarily sense after a meal. I guess I am now looking at chocolate as a fine wine or coffee instead of just dessert. 

I highly recommend this book if you are interested in chocolate. Although Chloé doesn’t cover the injustice that has taken place in the name of chocolate, I believe that this book is only one piece of education. You can never rely on one book to make up your whole opinion. I think that Chloé’s mission of creating better chocolate and bringing attention to the subject makes the chocolate industry more transparent … more accountable.

This is a good time to study up on chocolate as it makes its way to new frontiers in the gourmet food industry. I would predict that within the next 5 years, you will see more gourmet chocolate shops, restaurants and new chocolate bar varieties in the main stream. Everyone wants a piece of this emerging market. Chloé Doutre-Roussel is working to make sure that uninspired chocolate isn’t lurking in those beautiful packages and I appreciate her effort! 

On the right side of my blog, I have a section of “Serious about Chocolate” links. Some of these are from this book and some I have found on my own. I will continue to explore this subject and refine my list as I taste the chocolate and get more information.

In reference to the book, you can visit Chloé’s site or read extensive excerpts at Chocolate.org.

Photo credits- top left: chloechocolate.com, top right: Timmy Toucan, bottom left: cstrom and bottom right: misoponia.

 

Today, I went to the bookstore to pick up some recommended reading (In Defense of Food, An Eater’s Manifesto). I asked the nice woman at the desk to help me locate it. She took me to the cultural studies section, where I saw another very interesting book called Hungry Planet: What the World Eats. Apparently, this book was published in 2005 and I missed it. It is a collaborative work by photographer, Peter Menzel and writer, Faith D’Aluisio.

 

The book takes you on a food journey with 30 families in 24 countries. Each family is photographed with their week’s supply of groceries along with the cost and breakdown of every item. In the course of a week, you also see where they shop, how they prepare food and other daily activities. You could read all this information and gain knowledge, but the photography is fascinating.

No matter where you are in the world, food is a basic need that everyone can relate to. It is truly amazing how a family can survive on so little, showing strong insight on inequality. In the back of the book, there is a measuring table for each country. This gives the population density, life expectancy, health care expenditure, etc. For example, in the USA, the percentage of diabetics, age 20 years or older, is 8.8 percent, while Mongolia has a rate of 2.5 percent. 

Here are some examples of what you can see in this book. Notice the size of the family compared to the amount of food and the cost.