Tag Archives: Chocolate

Town Day.

September 8, 2015 Munchkin

Hello Everyone!! It is so difficult finding a time slot to write a post; right now, the Internet is reliable from 4am to about 8am…this is however, our outside farm time and business emailing. After 8am, the Internet is virtually non-existent with a few minutes, now and then, of Internet activity to download emails. Not enough to quickly write a post for a Blog. At about 5pm, the Internet starts back up in spits and spurts…this is when I dive in and take my opportunity. After 6pm, Gnome uses the computer/ Internet to do Linux stuff. Oh and by the way, we share the one computer so that also limits usage.

Sometimes, because of all these complications, there is simply no opportunity to write a post. Hence, the reason why you might get short periods of silence.

Anyway, it was town day today. Instead of waking up at 4am, we made a compromise and woke up at 6am. This is still really early because nothing really starts opening in Punta Gorda until about 9am. The Government offices start at 8am but they aren’t really getting down to business until a later in the morning. If you ask me…the best time to go a Government Office is at 11.30am which is just before lunch. Don’t go at 11.45am because they will already be enroute to their favourite Rice and Beans joint. Supermarkets (the majority are Chinese owned) open after 9am…the Chinese can be a tad tardy and if you drive pass one of this places, you usually see the Belizean workers loitering outside waiting for their Chinese bosses to open shop. It is all very slow and everyone takes their own sweet time to start up.

So, at 6am, we were up and jumping about like hyperactive frogs waiting for the faithful opening hour. Gnome was laughing at the fact that we had to wait three hours for everyone else to start. It is extraordinary how farm life works on a completely different time line from town life! Anyway, we mixed up a batch of chocolate soap in the interim:

We are making Milk Chocolate, Dark Chocolate and White Cocao Butter soap for the new tourist season in November. This is the Milk Chocolate Soap:

Oooooh…looks like you could eat them!!

Anyway, we managed to get into town…trundling along slowly. Here are some pictures of places that we frequent in Punta Gorda.

We usually pick up the “chocolate trash” from The Cotton Tree Chocolate Factory. We use the trash for mulch around our trees:

And this is Tropic Air; we deliver all our orders nation-wide with Tropic Air because they are reliable, very friendly and they have a flight everyday so orders can be dispatched on the same day (yes…you can get 24 hour delivery in Belize).

The staff are absolutely lovely:

After town, we went to visit our friend Isabel at Cotton Tree Lodge.

It was really muddy and wet driving up to the lodge. At one point, our wheels nearly got stuck…we had to go on 4-wheel drive for the whole time. Boy, what a drive…the heavy rains have really made these back roads difficult to travel in.

Amusing, Belize, Farming, Food, Plants

Working Hard!!

August 17, 2015 Munchkin

Ha-ha…this is a real picture of us at last!! We have been messing around with the computer to see if we can use it to take pictures for the posts. I am sure you would recognise us now if you saw us on the street!!

Phew!! We have been working hard on the farm! Gnome has procured his big stick for knocking down coconuts and so we are back to processing them again.

We are back to making coconut water and coconut cream for the local market. Also, we grate coconut for Cotton Tree Chocolate for their coconut bars.

I really do need to get a camera because I have so many exciting things to show you. I have been preparing bamboo shoots:

I want to show you step by step how to prepare, cook and preserve bamboo shoots. It is really quite simple but it just requires time and dedication.

Also, we have had huge bunches of peach palm. So much food on the farm, it’s coming out of our ears!! And the dogs are getting fat. Gnome says that we need a couple of pigs and a gaggle of geese to eat all the food!!

As always, still eating yummy food…

Have a good night everyone!!

Belize, Our Products, Soap

Chocolate Festival Pictures.

May 23, 2015 Munchkin

Hello Everyone!! We just got back from the Chocolate Festival in Punta Gorda, Toledo. There were crowds of people, so much activity and chocolate stuff everywhere.

This is a picture of our table:

This is a picture of another booth selling cocoa powder and various assorted chocolate themed stuff:

There was a lot of noise with a combination of Garifuna drumming and “Punta” music. Here are some drumming pictures:

This is food from the Cotton Tree Lodge Booth; they were serving food in cacao pods:

Overall, it was a good event and there was a lot of interest in our products especially with the Chocolate Artisan Soaps. A surprise winner was actually the Clay Artisan Soaps scented with sandalwood; they went like hot-cakes…we did not realise that so many other people shared our passion for this spicy scent. Oh, and I sold my first bottle of “I Can’t Believe It’s Not DB’s.” We are not taking over the world with our products…but we are pleased that some people recognise the time and energy that we put into our stuff.

Belize, Our Products

Chocolate Festival Toledo 2015.

May 22, 2015 Munchkin

The Chocolate (Cacao) Festival is taking place this weekend in Toledo, Belize. It is a welcome distraction from farm headaches and issues. For those of you who have been following our water problem, the saga continues as it is literally pouring bucket-loads so we can not pull up our well-pump to fix or replace it. I can’t complain because both our water tanks and numerous 5 gallon buckets have been filled right up to the top. And, the frogs haven’t had the time yet to deposit their spawn everywhere! Better get my washing done before the tadpoles start appearing.

Anyway, Casa Mascia Apothecary will have a booth at the Cacao Festival tomorrow. We will be located at the Chocolate Factory (near Uno Service Station). It will be fun for all the family with plenty of food and chocolate…what more can you ask for!

We will be bringing our Chocolate Artisan Soaps which will be on special for the festival:

And, of course, we will bring our Copal Medicinal Products:

We would like to launch our new product at the festival tomorrow. It is called “I can’t believe it’s not D.B’s”; this is our coconut castile soap similar to a famous brand named after a doctor. Castile is oil-based liquid soap which is free of chemical detergents. This product is still made by doctors (ie. us) but the only differences are that we are not well-known and we live in the middle of the bush in Belize! This item is available in litre bottles in original and peppermint.

We hope to see you there. If you can’t make it we will be sure to take lots of pictures. I will make sure that Gnome does not take the pictures because they would be fuzzy and out of focus!

Just in case you can’t find us we have many of our non-chocolate products in Vance Vernon Pharmacy on Front Street, Toledo (next to BTIA). They have all our Copal Products, Massage Oils, Lemongrass Insect Repellents, Bitters Oil and much, much more.

Belize, Elixirs, Fermentation, Food, Our Products

It’s Cacao Picking Time!

May 7, 2015 Munchkin

April and May are the months for collecting mature cacao pods here in Belize. Today, we harvested a whole lot of pods; they come in all shapes and sizes and colours:

Here is a picture of an opened cacao pod:

The white pulp around the seeds is edible and has a sweet aromatic, acidic taste to it. For the actual chocolate making process, the seeds/beans are fermented with the pulp and dried out in the sun (for up to 7 days). Fermented cacao beans at this stage are shipped by container loads overseas to be processed into chocolate.

We use cacao in many of our products; one of the main ones is Cacao Absolute which we are know selling as a product in The Apothecary. We use this essential oil in our soaps, body oils, massage oils and body sprays; for more information on how we make this check out Making Chocolate Essential Oil.

We are collecting the fresh cacao beans to make Elixirs (or liqueurs). This is a favourite with the chocolate connoisseurs. This is what it looks like initially:

This is on Day 7; look at the spectacular burgundy hues!

The Cacao Fruit elixir requires time to mellow out and develop the complex layers of taste of cacao fruit and bean. The beans will be removed soon and thereafter it is left to sit to allow natural sediment to sink down to the bottom. Every two weeks, the liquid is siphoned into another glass jar so that the sediment can be discarded. There is a lot of work required in creating clarity in this product. We will probably make a batch of about 5 gallons of this which will be ready in about 12 months time. The best things come to those who wait!

Belize, Our Products, Soap

Artisan Soaps and Apothecary Additions.

April 18, 2015 Munchkin

Phew…today started off with steaming, stifling heat at 5.30 in the morning and it just got hotter and hotter. In the dry season, strategy is the key and there is a small window of opportunity from 6am to 10am to “get things done” and in our case this means brush-mowing the farm, collecting coconuts and processing them into cream, weeding, watering plants, housework, making soap and packing products. It is indeed a mad rush before the wall of heat gets the better of you and you collapse into a red-faced, sweaty heap. What Fun!!

Here are the Artisan Chocolate Soaps that we made yesterday:

The soaps turned out to be more of an “impressionist” style of art, as you will see from the following Rorscharch examples. For those of you who are not familiar with Rorscharch, it is a test which uses a system of ink-blot pictures as psychological analysis. Being a doctor, I think it is fun to try to perceive impressions from our Artisan chocolate swirl soaps.

Rorscharch Gallery:

A Crab…

A Pig Snout…

A Willow Tree Bending in The Wind…

I do have quite an imagination! Do you see it too? Or am I just getting googly-eyed from the heat?

Last but not least, there have been new additions to The Apothecary which include: Body Salt Scrubs (Lavender, Lemongrass, Passionflower, Ylang-Ylang) and Foot Soaks in the same scents. This completes our Spa range of products.

Belize, Fermentation, Our Products, Saving Money, Soap

Hatcho Miso Belize Style.

April 9, 2015 Munchkin

Miso Madness is almost over as the Munchkin is starting to feel twitchy over our dwindling supply of soap…

…which means that our run of frenzied fermentation is coming to an end and the previously, prematurely terminated Soap Marathon is going to have to resume (yeah, our soaps are really popular and people just can’t get enough of them; this is A Good Thing, she tells me ;-P).

After the frenzy of rice koji making and the resulting shinshu and shiro misos, we are ending our run with a couple of pig tail buckets of hatcho miso. The first bucket was made two days ago, however, it turned out to be about a gallon short because I held back some of the black bean koji to reinoculate the next batch of beans. There was a slight set-back with that particular batch (yes, yes, I’m sure you’ve heard about the Great Bean Bungle…let’s move on…) and to make a long story short, another batch had to be introduced into the equation. Anyway, back to the short bucket: I just “happened” to have a gallon batch of miso from last year which was made with cacao beans and while very aromatic, the chocolate taste was just too overpowering (yes, chocolate-lovers, this is actually possible!). So, we emptied all of the containers, mixed them together again with the addition of bird peppers (Korean-style??) and a generous handful of black peppercorns.

Mixing Black Beans, Last Year's Chocolate Miso, Chilli Peppers and Black Peppercorns. — Mixing Black Beans, Last Year’s Chocolate Miso, Chilli Peppers and Black Peppercorns.

And voila’, the first full bucket of Belizean Style Chocolate (Cacao Bean) Hatcho Miso (with chilli and black pepper) was born:

Time to start thinking about soap…

Belize, Fermentation

Toucans and Making Miso.

March 21, 2015 Munchkin

I’ve been banned from doing any real work today (using heavy machinery to clear brush) since I’ve been afflicted with horrible sinus headaches and a substantial load of snot and mucus (probably from smoking too many cigars…naughty, naughty!). I’ve tried to cooperate with my doctor’s prescription but being an obsessive compulsive git makes this sort of thing difficult…

Anyway, the results of my “light duties” include the following:

I finally managed to take a couple of shots of one of the toucans that come every morning around 0530-0600 and hang about on our Cotton Tree (Ceiba Tree) while we have our morning hot beverage. Check it out, I actually succeeded in taking not one but yes, two reasonable photographs!!

See, I can take photographs!! Two in less than a minute. Eat your heart out!!

Getting excited about miso, koji and fermentation again. With the help of Munchkin, we took out our three jars of experimental miso and bucket of soy sauce for a quick look-see:

This is what real (commercial) miso looks like.

You can see that our miso needs another six months at least before getting that smooth even texture. Our miso was made with rice koji and the ubiquitous Belizean Red Kidney Bean. It is still young but has a lovely floral, fruitiness that imparts a wonderful umami-ness to food.

The next jar we tried was our Chocolate miso: Rice koji and cacao nibs. Definitely needs another year to do its thing. We’re hoping it will turn out like a vintage hacho miso.

Noni miso is the next lot. I have to say this technically didn’t start off to be miso. It was an attempt to use rice koji to “malt” some rice to then ferment into a rice wine/beer; I didn’t like the way it was going though so, I mixed it all up with some noni fruit and seeds instead. Again, this would benefit from at least another year. Great umami-ness in this one as well that marries very well with the noni-ness. I predict that it will be a favourite.

Finally, the soy sauce…which doesn’t have any soy beans in it but rather black beans, fully fermented craboo (you can tell we are becoming Belizean), peach palm fruit and balam (and the necessary koji, of course). Yup, you guessed, needs another year and more frequent stirring. Came up with the idea to use a paint stirrer to really get everything agitated:

And here is the bucket:

Non-soy sauce after paint stirring accomplished. You can see the orange bits of craboo and balam in it.

We really need that Mallard reaction (no ducks are to be harmed in the process, I promise!!) to start happening in order to be taken seriously as a real non-soy sauce.

Oh yes, I also wrote a post after a long hiatus from the keyboard.

Anybody out there want a photograph of what is coming out of my sinuses?!?!?Munchkin not happy with that last statement.

PS: I didn’t take the miso photographs!! ;-P

Amusing, Belize, Our Products, Soap

Soap-making, Selling, Doctoring and Waiting!

January 30, 2015 Munchkin

Today we did a combination of things; the first thing was making soap which actually spans through the entire day. We begin by mixing and pouring the soap into molds. Later in the day, once the soap has hardened and done its magic, Gnome cuts it one by one with a wire implement; this is actually the longest part of the procedure and can take him about 2 to 3 hours to cut a whole batch of soap. The soaps that we made today are Chocolate Vanilla which involved the addition of essential oils. At first, you will see that the oils actually cause a lack of uniformity of colour:

As the soap ages, the blotchy appearance does fade and it takes on a smooth finish as you can see from the next picture:

This soap is a custom order and will be hand-stamped one by one over the next few days. Phew..making soap actually requires time and dedication!

I had to put on my “selling hat” today and show samples of our products to hotel management. Honestly…I don’t like this part because I feel like I am going through a script and I feel so automatic and robotic. You can see that I have not been to marketing school and what I would like to say is, “buy my stuff, it’s good ****!”

In between all of that, we saw some patients and did some doctoring.

Also, I had to queue up in a bank and a post office and it was painfully slow! This was actually the worst part of the day. Remember that every person in front of you is an additional 15 minute wait. Aaarrghh!!

Lastly, we saw a Fridge on a Pick-up, which is worth a 1000 points!! Donum Bonum!

Belize, Our Products, Soap

Soap Marathon!!

January 19, 2015 Munchkin

Living in Paradise sometimes isn’t all it is cracked up to be especially when it starts getting very buggy. Right now the weather is cloudy and rainy and it is bringing out the biting bugs; the no-see-ums (sand-flies) are the worse because you can hardly see them until you start getting an antsy, itchy feeling. They are coming out in swarms and as a result, we are staying indoors! So, this is the perfect time to do a soap-making marathon.

We started off by making our Artisan Chocolate Soap. This time we opted for a more blotchy appearance as opposed to our usual swirl. It turned out well and it is amazing how one batch can make such a variation in designs!

Splotchy-Designed Chocolate Soap. — Splotchy-Designed Chocolate Soap

Since some designs can be very unusual, interesting and unique, we have come up with an idea to pick 12 of the best looking soaps and offer them packaged in a Special Edition Silver Tin. So, when our Apothecary finally opens, look out for our specials.

Playing with the “Doctor” theme, Gnome has come up with an idea to select some of our soaps as Rorschach Soaps because they have that ink-blot look which is associated with this well-known psychological test. So, keep an eye out for the Rorsharch Gallery devoted to possible interpretations of pictures on our soaps!

Everything Handmade in Belize.