Hummingbird Chocolate

June 2, 2013 will forever be etched in my mind. It was the first time I tasted chocolate. Really tasted chocolate. I’ve been eating chocolate my whole life, but this was the first time I’d seen a cacao bean or even tasted one. For all the years that I’ve been eating chocolate, I thought I’d built quite a palate for this divine goodness. Then one Sunday at the Ottawa Farmers Market I came across Hummingbird Chocolate. I was lured by the exotic cacao beans, and by the unusual chocolate bars wrapped in gold paper.

I decided on the Amazonas bar and bit off a small piece. It was like the nostalgia scene in Ratatouille when food critic, Anton Ego, samples the ratatouille and is instantly transported to his childhood where he is enjoying his mother’s home made dish. In that moment his pen drops to the floor and he experiences what the food industry describes as the “bliss point”. I had such an experience as one piece of chocolate with its dark, tangy layers and hints of fruit knocked me off my feet. 

Erica Gilmour and her partner Drew, owners and founders of Hummingird Chocolate, scour small cooperatives in Latin America to purchase cacao beans from local farmers. Their bean-to-bar model is beyond impressive. They import the cacao beans directly from farmers in Latin America and then roast and produce chocolate in Carp. Last year Erica travelled to Costa Rica where she purchased beans from a cooperative. According to Erica, Hummingbird is one of a handful of chocolate producers in Canada who produce chocolate directly from cacao beans.

The benefits of single-source chocolate are plentiful. Erica connects to farmers directly who in turn receive a higher premium for their cacao beans. She has full control over the production. Where large food companies have devoured the chocolate market with bars loaded with all kinds of processed ingredients, we all now have access to traditionally made artisan chocolate and its simple ingredients: cacao, cane sugar and cocoa butter.

Last Friday Erica was gracious enough to invite me to her facility in Carp.  I squealed in excitement at the prospect of visiting my very first chocolate factory and see how the process unfolds. Located in the basement of Alice’s Village Cafe, Hummingbird Chocolate is a quaint production facility. Erica took me through the process of making chocolate:

The raw cacao beans arrive in large bags, so the first thing Erica does is sort through the beans to remove any bad ones or any foreign objects (like sticks or small stones) that made their way into the bags. The beans are taken upstairs and roasted in an oven. Then they are placed in a Crankandstein where they are crushed into smaller pieces:

But to truly separate the cacao (nibs) from their shells (husks) they are then run through a winnower. Props to Drew who hand built this contraption:

Eventually, there is a bucket of nibs (from which the chocolate will be produced) on one end and a bucket of husks on the other end. An interesting tidbit: Erica sells the husks as mulch for gardening or to customers who make tea from the shells.

The nibs are then placed in a melanger with stone wheels to grind them for about three days. Here they are heated and turn to a moist paste called liqueur. Raw sugar is also added at this time.

The liquid chocolate is then poured into baking pans and then ages on a shelf for about two to four weeks or however long is needed to develop the flavours.

The large chocolate bars are then broken up and put into a temperer to melt and to achieve perfect smoothness and shine. The bars are then poured into moulds to set before being wrapped.

I didn’t get a photo of Erica, except while she was busy preparing the chocolate:

Thanks to Erica, I have a new found appreciation for chocolate. I never imagined that I would learn about chocolate from a small production facility in Carp. I can’t think of any more fitting expression that the words of Anton Ego who wrote in his review of Gusteau’s, “[l]ast night, I experienced something new, an extraordinary meal from a singularly unexpected source. To say that both the meal and its maker have challenged my preconceptions about fine cooking is a gross understatement. They have rocked me to my core.”

Berry Picking at Rideau Pines Farm

I’m thinking back to our cold and long winter months when any glimmer of summer would lift my spirits. A trip to the grocery store would sometimes give me a boost. What’s not to love about mangoes, strawberries and cantaloupe when it’s -40^oC outside? Then it happened. I walked into my local grocery store one cold January evening and saw this:

My first thought was that we’re in one of the coldest capitals in the world and someone is trying to recreate a tropical paradise for me. Great, except the longer I stared at this set up, the less I actually felt convinced by the dull lighting, the fake straw and leis that dangled around each sign. My frozen feet and fingers were still numb from the blistering wind outside.

I’ve become so accustomed to eating tropical fruit during winter. I’ve justified it with the idea that if I didn’t have access to the vitamins and other rich nutrients from these fruits, I’d have no other way to fill my diet. And my kids! How can they survive on legumes, squash and potatoes all winter long? My baby loves bananas and avocados, important first foods for growing babies.

On the other hand, I feel so disconnected from these foods. Where do they come from? How are they grown? I didn’t even know that pineapples grow from the ground until I read this book. I always thought they grew on trees. I’ve eaten pineapples my entire life, and I had no idea how they were grown.

What better way to connect to food than to pick it myself. So this past week, I packed up the kids and we headed out to Rideau Pines Farm near North Gower in search of raspberries. Strawberry season is coming to an end, but raspberries are plentiful. And, apparently, so are black currants. These are the things I’m learning about food, when they are in season, what they look like, and how they grow.

It was quite an experience walking through the farm fields lined with thick raspberry patches. My little one was mesmerized by how easy it was to just pluck the berries from the leaves and put them in her basket. We were surrounded by rows of fresh raspberries and black currants:

Rideau Pines Farm was more than we expected. The Vandenbergs are so inviting and took the time to explain how their farm operates. They don’t use pesticides, but rather ash fertilizer. I have no idea what this means, but kinda like the idea of pesticide-free berries. Not only did we get to pick berries, but there are sugar snap peas for picking and all kinds of other goodness. Plus, you can pick up fresh garlic, kale, cauliflour and jams in the barn store where they are for sale.

An added treat: the “village” that the Vandenbergs built. A wooden structure surrounded by trees which makes for a perfect spot to land a picnic.

I’ve never picked my own food, except from my garden. It was an experience that I will treasure especially because I was able to share it with my daughter. At least she knows what a raspberry batch looks like, an asparagus plant, and cauliflower blooming in the ground. Hopefully this will give her an added appreciation for food and where it comes from.

She’s packin

Who would’ve thought July would bring such bounty. The last time I visited the local farmers market there was some variety of fruits and vegetables. Yesterday, there was a plethora of delicious goodness which wasn’t even a possibility a few weeks ago. It couldn’t have come at a better time.

The other night I overheard my daughter complain to her dad that she wants to bring her own lunch to summer camp. She’s never complained about the food, but suddenly she was “tired” of always having to eat “alphabet soup”. For someone who prefers to pack her own lunch, I couldn’t have been more pleased (although the real reason for wanting to bring her own lunch was to be like the big kids who pack their own lunches).

The down side: I hadn’t packed a kids’ lunch in years … since I myself was a kid. So as I grazed passed the different vendors yesterday I was amazed by how much selection I had to fill an entire week’s worth of lunches.

This is some of the delicious goodness I picked up at the Ottawa Farmer’s Market yesterday at Brewer Park. My absolute favourite: pesticide and herbicide-free strawberries. A few years ago at the market I asked a vendor if he sold organic strawberries. “There’s no such thing as organic strawberries,” he scoffed because, according to him, all strawberries need to be sprayed with pesticides. Well, these ones didn’t, which means it is a possibility. And while they aren’t organic, I take comfort in the fact that they haven’t been sprayed with any chemicals (at least pesticides and herbicides). That’s particularly important to me since strawberries are a listed dirty dozen, alongside apples, grapes, celery and peaches.

Kids can be picky eaters and it can be hard to convince them to choose healthy snacks and lunches over those filled with salt, sugar and fat. So creativity is essential. Those fava beans! Well they’re actually seeds from Jack and the Beanstalk. The colourful stems from the Swiss chard were picked at the end of a rainbow. A little imagination, I’ve found, can go a long way in making my little muffin enjoy new foods.