LOTS TO SHARE - THIS MONTH'S EVENTSEnrique Cerda, a member of the Kallari Chocolate Association in Ecuador, and translator/intern Rebecca Roebber will be visiting Friday Harbor as guests of Land & Sea Slow Food San Juan Island March 16, 17, & 18. Kallari chocolate has been called “the best chocolate in the world”.
Two public events:
“FROM BEAN TO BAR” PRESENTATION AND CHOCOLATE TASTING, Wed March 18, 3:15 - 4:45 PM SJ LIBRARY MEETING ROOM
1010 Guard St.. Free, Open to All, donations will be gladly accepted to go directly to Kallari to help defray costs of travel and chocolate. Presentation to promote sustainable agriculture and indigenous rights with Ecuadorian cacao farmer and truffle maker Enrique Cerda and translator/intern Becca Roebber of the community owned Kallari Association chocolate. Followed by a chocolate tasting featuring single origin bars of various percentages from around the world - helping participants understand the taste and reason for the wide range of flavors available in the diverse array of chocolates. Info: 472-0880/317-5890
WED. MARCH 18, 5PM-7PM TRUFFLE MAKING CLASS AND CHOCOLATE TEMPERING DEMONSTRATION
With Enrique Cerda Master Truffle Maker of Kallari, and Patrick, owner of Bakery San Juan, trained French pastry chef and master baker, using Kallari chocolate.
Where: BAKERY SAN JUAN, 775 Mullis Street, Friday Harbor
$25 recomended donation. RESERVATIONS REQUIRED, due to limited class size.
Contact Linda at 317-5890 to make a reservation, or email slowfoodlandandsea@gmail.com.
About Kallari
KALLARI (kah-YAH-di) is a cooperative of over 850 Kichwa cacao farm families in the Amazonian Napo Province of Ecuador. With student activist Judy Logback, the Kichwa people created this cooperative for more control over revenues. Realizing most profit is made from sales of chocolate bars, not the cacao beans, the Kallari Association decided to produce their own chocolate. Robert Steinberg, a founder of Scharffen Berger chocolate, advised the cooperative on chocolate making and Stephen McDonnell, the founder and chief executive of the Applegate Farms organic food company, helped them establish the Kallari Chocolate Company. Kallari is doing something never done before in the global chocolate industry, with self-reliant governance and innovative economic model. The cooperative provides the Kichwa people economic resources to resist both logging their forests and short-term-only riches offered by environmentally harmful petroleum extraction. 100 percent of profits from sales of chocolate bars is returned to the Kallari cooperative. The Kallari cooperative is Rainforest Alliance Certified, which is denoted by the little green frog seal on the packaging. Farms that are Rainforest Alliance Certified protect wildlife, wild lands, workers' rights and local communities. In 2004 a chocolate bar made with Kallari beans was presented at the Slow Food Terra Madre conference in Turin, Italy. Slow Food selected the rare organic Cacao Nacional cacao bean found only in the Kallari communities for the Presidium Award.
23 year old Enrique Cerda is one of over 80 members of the Kallari Association participating in the process of chocolate making. His success in the complex tempering process led to an apprenticeship with Montreal master chocolatier Eric Gilbert, who trained Cerda in the art of truffle making. Now Enrique has begun experimenting with Amazon fruits to create unique truffle fillings.
He is the only indigenous cacao grower to achieve such a high level of expertise in the art of chocolate making.
Enrique’s community is Shandia, a Kichwa village on Jatun Yaku, the main tributary of the Napo River.
Rebecca Roebber spent a year in South America; the majority of her time in Argentina and Ecuador, and through University of Oregon began an internship with Kallari and the Kichwa people. She values that experience and wants to continue working with the Kichwa people in the future.
This spring Becca is finishing her undergrad degree at the University of Oregon, major International Studies, minor Spanish.
The Napo region of Ecuador, home to Kallari, is home also to more than 500 bird species, 800 butterfly species, 100 mammal species and 2000 species of flowering plants as well as a species of endangered Caiman. Estimations are that the Ecuadorian Amazon has been inhabited by hunter-gatherer groups for the past 10,000 years, and the majority of Amazon peoples still carry out their cultural traditions.
Read our Feb. 6 post for news of Ecuador's groundbreaking constitutional amendment protecting biodiversity.
Also "Livin' la Vida Pura" about activist and Kallari founder Judy Logback.
Kallari and the Open Architecture Challenge
AMD and Open Architecture Network's international design competition invited architects & designers from all over the world to find ways of improving living conditions for the half the world's population surviving on less than $2 a day.
Winning designers are from Nis, Serbia, and Indianapolis. Winning design here, and young architects' Ecuador blog here. Art and design work for Kallari cafe and cooperative by writer/designer/activist Leonora Oppenheim here.
Enrique and Becca will be informally touring the island and meeting islanders during their 2 1/2 day stay, will meet with San Juan Island farmers, visit 5th grade classes, FHHS cooking classes, & have dinner with our Land & Sea Youth club during this visit arranged by Land & Sea. We are so happy Becca wrote to us; to have them as visitors; and are especially excited about this new connection to the world-wide farming community!
OK - That's not all...Youth Club Event!Sunday March 8: Land & Sea Youth Club Cob Oven Building Workshop with Ryan Browne
Where: Marinkovich's 252 Treeline Drive 11 AM - 4 PMquestions -472-0880/317-5890 or slowfoodlandandsea@gmail.com
Our Youth Club has been busy, even for this wintery time of year!
We've had ongoing cob oven building workshops with Ryan Browne, cooking and chocolate workshops with chef Madden Surbaugh of Steps restaurant and Margaret and Joel Thorson, we've met with a young traveling farmworker to hear all about the WWOOF farmworker's organization, visited a certified raw milk dairy, organic chicken and biodynamic vegetable farm, farmstand, and the SJI Community Co-Op, and we are planning our club demonstration garden and putting together our farmworker training programs, with training opportunities already available! Check our club web page for photos of some of what we've been doing!
One last thing - Looking for youth interns to train in farm work - and right now we have a possibility for an internship learning all about goats, including kidding, milking, and cheesemaking. Wonderful opportunity for work once or twice a week for a focused individual, or two. Age seventh grade through 2o's - All you need is maturity, and a sense of responsibility, to have the wonderful world of sustainable farmwork open up to you! Contact us at slowfoodlandandsea@gmail.com or 317-5890 for more info.
