I enjoy a chocolate bar as much as the next person, and these days it’s generally a pretty inexpensive treat. Busy updating our Choc-affair website led to naming one of our bars of chocolate, simply ‘Milk chocolate’, and I commented about how those two words don’t really seem to do the bar of milk chocolate justice.
Why not, you may ask, that’s exactly what it is, simply a bar of milk chocolate, with no extra flavour, just the taste of milk chocolate… So what’s the big deal?
I don’t know about you, but it can be a stretch to think that the sweet treat we enjoy starts off with a tree in far off countries growing melon shaped pods, which produce huge white seeds, which in turn turns into brown cocoa beans, which eventually after some additions and processes ends up as what we know and enjoy as delicious chocolate. I mean, it just doesn’t seem possible that you can call a chocolate bar plain when that is it’s journey and origin, does it?
It’s at this point it would be good to introduce you to John, our cocoa farmer in Uganda. We met John whilst out there with our charity Seeds of Hope, and he talks about cocoa, and what it has meant for him and his family. Listen to how he pronounces the word cocoa, it’s just lovely!
From the start of the journey in Africa, this precious commodity called cocoa continues to be valuable. Within our factory, and our team we support the employment of probation service users, and we have our charity out in Uganda, with 30 children supported on a sponsorship program and an orphanage we now partner with. All started because of the simple cocoa bean.