Two of the most manipulative film genres: romance movies and girl-friend road-trip movies.
I’m sure I don’t need to tell you all that life doesn’t work like the movies. Nevertheless, it is hard not to put those expectations on ourselves of wanting to have the perfect once-in-a-life-time adventure with a close friend or expecting the dramas of our friendships to be big and explosive, soundtrack montage and all.
I’ve found though, that the feelings evoked by those big cinematic elaborations of life are just as poignantly present if we really submerge ourselves into the meaning behind the moment.
Weeks before Anna was to arrive in the PNW, both of us were dropping nervous hints and doubts about the visit. We reiterated physical limitations, she fretted over budgets and we both let the talk of these finicky details sugar-coat the real emotions that were rumbling underneath.
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| Pike Place entertianment |
But the day she arrived, we neglected all emotions and thoroughly feigned excitement to fuel us through a jam-packed sampling of Seattle.After dropping things off at Sarah’s AirBnB - now a second home to me - we confronted downtown Seattle streets and drove down to Pike’s Place. I hadn't anticipated spending much but found myself swept up in her experience as a new patron and left with some honey, a sweet tonic, chocolate…you know, all things indulgent. While there, we hunted down Sarah at her colorful booth of bags and shirts and confirmed some dinner and cider plans with her for later.
Taste buds sufficiently tasted-out, we left the market to drive across town and explore the Arb a bit. Being in that space brought me back to the time with mother weeks before when the colors of the flowers seemed so inaccessible past the pain i’d felt that day. The reminiscence brought us to the subject of health and we ambled about lie a couple of old ladies relenting our ailments a bit.
Just as we were emerging from our botched navigation that had gotten us on a much windier path than planned, I remembered the possibility of catching a tour at the Theo Chocolate Factory. It was an easily agreeable plan and we made it over to Fremont just in time to get a slot in the last tour of the day. While we were waiting four our group to start, we wandered the store and noshed on their very thorough spectrum of product samplings so by the time the tour started, my palate was already satiated with cocoa goodness. Of course, that didn’t stop me from partaking in the full tasting experience during our tour!
Anna and I were in immediate agreement that our guide, Erin, would be a fun person to have drinks she had no trouble making us feel invested in the story of the Cacao bean. We started the tour in a very green and leafy room where Erin fed us chocolate by the bowl-full and made it feel justified as we learned about how to taste for the nuances of each flavor. We began with their basic 70% dark chocolate which is a blended bar, meaning that the beans come from different locations. Theo primarily uses the following three bean origins: Congo, Panama and Peru. Congolese beans are deep and earthy, Peruvian beans are tart and acidic while Panama’s beans are in between. Indeed, they did taste different. However, it is strictly location/soil that effects the flavor because pretty much all cacao beans come from the same plant: Theobromine Cacao (hmm, I wonder where Theo came up with their name…)
After gorging our faces a bit, we got more familiar with the miraculous plant. Cacao is a “calflerous plant” which means that its fruit grows off of its trunk. Such a gargantuan stem of course takes a while to mature to produce fruit. The tree doesn’t produce until 5-7 years into its quarter-century life, first blooming into a scentless flower as it is pollinated by Midge Flies over the next 6 months on its way to bean. If you’re anything like me, you are a prudent chocolate snob, forking over no less than $4 on a single hand-crafted bar. The prices seem obnoxious to those that will settle for Hershey’s but the economics pans out: most commercial chocolate is at about a 15% cocoa content. It’s like drinking sugar-milk. The good stuff is 60% cocoa on the lower end. The kicker is that a content of that level takes at least 4 pods for a single bar.
This is because that big bulbous sac of a fruit is mainly surface fluff. Beyond the wrinkly skin is the inner casing of cobweb material called “mucilage” and finally, buried beneath that, are the small little seeds; the powerhouses that make the magic happen are the size of your pinky.
So, if you’re going to participate in the consumerist luxury of the chocolate industry, go all out.
As we entered into the factory portion of the building, Erin began to explain the bean-to-bar process. I’d already learned a bit from the exhibit that was featured at MOHAI last year but this time, I had the visual of the machines right in front of me…and I got to eat while learning : ) The first thing that was pointed out to us were the dozens of 69 kilo canvas bags that came into port. These beans have already gone through the week-long fermentation process that allows microbial activity to eat away the fruit debris and the acid production to cook the beans dry as they’re fermenting, preventing mold.
The first step the beans are taken through at the factory is the roaster. The origin of the beans will determine their moisture content, so not all of the beans are roasted at the same temperature or for the same amount of time. Once they are roasted, they are funneled through to the “winnower” which splits husks from nibs. At this point, Erin passed around a few bowls of different cacao nibs which I extended my hands out for excitedly while others in the crowd approached her bitterness disclaimer with caution. One man in particular was thoroughly unimpressed. However, he’d claimed not to like a single thing we’d tried thus far, which made me wonder if he even knew where he was. For those who don’t know, nibs are simply the de-shelled, roasted bean. No additives, no nothin’. Before the situation is sugar-coated, the nibs are liquified. In the next machine, they are melted down into liquor before finally being put into the mixer to be blended with the various amounts of milk, sugar and flavor.
Our final stop was the confectionary room where gourmet gets excessive. Erin showcased her co-workers bordom-induced star wars creations and then broke out a scotch truffle and an “ants-on-a-log” truffle for tastes. The health snack in reverse literally included all the vital ingredients: nut butter (almond in this case), raisins, and celery seed. It was surprisingly delectable.
It was a good thing that our dinner plans followed directly after the tour because both of our pallets were longing to be quenched with something savory and nutritious after all that sugar sampling. We walked over to Chiso sushi and placed an order while Sarah texted to say she’d gotten seat for us at the cider house. Since we’d never hung out beyond her property, I was worried that Sarah would be peeved by our late arrival or tired out from her long day at the market but we arrived to find she’d made herself at home and already tasted a few ciders (she’d picked some of my favorites). We sipped and noshed, Anna and I sharing our paths of unpredictability and Sarah sharing some of her experiences from those times in her life. She has become more and more of an inspiration to me, the more times I talk to her, if only I could get back into my art with more intensity. It was a relief to hear that she too experienced moments of compromise between business and creating. Ultimately, talking with her makes me feel like possibility is expansive instead of constrictive.
We were all ready to call it an evening around the same time, and that is when the exhaustion of the day caught up with our emotions. Subtle hints in our communication indicated that we were stirring one another’s doubts, fears and tensions….
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