Tag Archives: costa rica

Chocolate

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While we were in Costa Rica we stopped at a chocolate plantation. I’m sure everyone know the story; how a chocolate drink was served to the Spanish conquistadores and from there went on to become one of the most popular foods in the world.

cocoa pods

Cocoa pods on a tree.

The seeds inside are coated in a sweet jelly like substance. That has to be taken off.

cocoa bean

Once the jelly like substance is removed, the beans are fermented. After fermentation, the beans are dried.

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Then the beans are cleaned and roasted. The shell is removed. The tool used to do that at this plantation was a large mortar with a pestle to crush the shell.

crushing

The inner seeds, the cacao nibs, are then ground to cocoa mass, unadulterated chocolate in rough form.

deshelled

These nibs are heated and reduced to a liquid. Adding sugar, cinnamon, nuts and more -yum.

The higher the amount of the chocolate (you will see 70% for bittersweet for example) the stronger the chocolate flavor.

Coffee

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While on our vacation to Costa Rica, we went to a coffee plantation. As anyone who has read my books knows, Rees is a big coffee drinker. Then coffee was even more of a luxury good.

Coffee us reputed to have been discovered by a shepherd who noticed his sheep and goats were more energetic once they ate these beans. From Africa, coffee went to the Arabs who discovered roasting and made a drink from them. They went to Italy and France, to the rest of Europe, and then to Central America in the 1700s. In Costa Rica coffee is known as the gold grain because it became such a huge part of their economy.

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Two seedlings are planted per hole to maximize yield.

flowers

Pretty white flowers bloom on the bushes before the berries form.

Picking coffee has to be done by hand since a coffee bush will have both green and red berries on it. A basket is attached to the picker’s waist and they walk around picking.

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The the coffee has to be dried and roasted before blending into the drink most of us have every morning.