Saturday, May 9, 2009

Happy Mothers' Day!


Happy Mothers' Day Mama! I wish I could celebrate it with you and the family, but I'll see you in less than 1 month and we can make up for all lost celebrations with a frappe and kukubeenya! Have a wonderful day and I love you! And Happy Muthas Day to all my other lovely mothers. Kisses.

Tuesday, May 5, 2009

Chocolate and Farewells!


I am getting ready to go to my COS conference. I got my visa to India and my tickets to Greece and India. I have 3 more weeks in village. I saw Slumdog Millionaire in a movie theater in Accra and it was so cold in the theater that my feet were frozen by the end of the movie. I made chocolate. I finished reading Audacity of Hope. I think this will be my last blog entry...I will see you all very soon, so I leave you with some pictures and a chocolate sauce recipe.

1. Ferment the cocoa beans.

2. Roast the beans until they balloon up and begin to pop.




3. Shuck the outside shelling of the beans.


4. Take your shucked beans to the mill...mine was mixed with corn flour.


5. Take the powder back home and create a double boiler. I did this with my closest neighbor, Chrissy. Isn't she pretty?


6. Add un-sweetened condenesed milk and sweetened condensed milk (depending on taste, add more sugar) to the double boiler and then once the milk is boiling add the chocolate powder.

7. Stir until the chocolate melts.



I made brownies with some of the remaining powder and it tasted delicious. I think the more you process the chocolate the less green it tastes. I plan on showing my women's group how to make this because there are so many coffee/cocoa farmers who sell the beans, but don't know how to transform them. I'll be bringing some of this back home for shizzle.

And here are some pictures from the weekly baby-weighing/vaccination appointments in my village.



See you soon!