On the Edge of Spring!

The sun is shining in Pennsylvania country this morning. The soil is waking up, it's smell loosening into the air. The birds are back, calling to each other from the trees and powerlines. A horse and buggy just clopped down the street: Mennonites on their way to church.

Inside my tea is steeping. Socca is soaking. Skillet is piping.

Oh yeah, and the giveaway is closed!

I'll post the winner in a few days! Have a great week!

Giveaway!

CSN stores is offering another gift certificate to FG readers!

In case you missed the first giveaway, let me catch you up. CSN stores have a ton of items, from modern furniture to cookware, lighting, and more. They have over twenty stores!

This time, they are hooking up a winner with $60 bucks! The $60 gift certificate applies to any of their stores, too. Pretty awesome, eh?

There are two ways to enter.

First, head over to a CSN store and tell me what you'd like to buy with the gift certificate.

Second, check out my review of Oasis Raw Foods at Go Indie. Tell me what tasty stuff you're eating this week, that's also doing good for your tum.

This giveaway will be closed on Sunday, February 27th! Have a great week! And thanks for playing! :)

Buy Your Bitch Some Chocolate!

Did you know that the cost of chocolate is going up? I don't mean a couple cents. In twenty years, a bar of chocolate could cost anywhere between eleven and fourteen bucks!

Why? Read the articles.

This Vomitine's Day, you have a choice. You can buy your love the heart-shaped box of chocolates that the TV wants you to buy - OR you can buy FAIR TRADE!!!

Right now, farmers don't want to harvest cacao because they aren't getting bank. When buying fair trade, you pay the farmers fairly for their work. They keep harvesting cacao. I mean, can we really blame them?

ALSO - most big chocolate companies aren't selling you chocolate. Most bars you're indulging in contains a very small amount of healthy iron-and-magnesium rich cacao. Instead, you're eating refined sugar and artificial flavors.

Chocolate can be good for you - but you have to pay for it.

Above are two of my favorite kinds of chocolate - Bakers and Alter Eco. While both are tasty, the latter has a much higher percentage of iron, magnesium and fiber. It's closer to the source! You can tell in every bite too.

You can tell by the packaging which one is fair trade and which one is not. Once I read about the prices in cacao going up, I stopped buying Bakers.

And I started sampling every fair trade bar I could find!!!

The Alter Eco cacao nib bar was my first favorite. An entire bar contains only 20 grams of sugar (Most bars contain 30-40 grams) and is 73% cacao. Plus, it contains cacao nibs! They add this satisfying CRUNCH to every bite.

I've tried several Righteously Raw bars. The maca is not my favorite. It has too much maca in it for my taste. I like the goji and caramel much better! All Righteously Raw bars use natural sugars. Each little twig contains about 4 grams of sugar.

Kallari is my current favorite! The entire bar contains only TEN grams of sugar. It's 85% cacao! BUT it's smooth as hell. Is hell smooth? Yes, if there's Kallari chocolate in hell. These people are magicians. Dear Kallarians, I love you!

Of course - my favorite way to eat chocolate is the cacao smoothie. I mix about two tablespoons of cacao, one teaspoon of maca and one teaspoon of stevia in sixteen ounces of nut milk. The maca adds SO MUCH richness and flavor to the cacao. It baffles me why Hershey's hasn't picked up on this. But I also hope they don't get any ideas! Ha! :)

You may notice - I left out A LOT of brands. That's because MOST chocolate bars contain soy lecithin. I don't have none of that. Over the past two years, I've discovered that soy causes problems for me - especially soy lecithin chocolate bars. I also don't want to consume any GMOs.

Next - when my bulk cacao runs out, I'm going to try cacao from David Wolfe's company, Sunfood. I'll let you know how it is!!!

Toots

Valentines Day or Vomitines Day?

What do you think?

Doing anything for the holiday?

Are you a chocolate person?

If so, what's your favorite?