Chocolate Cake, Valentines Day, Slave Chocolate and Water

With Valentine’s Day just around the corner, naturally I would think chocolate. I am not alone. According to a 2009 Nielsen Report (the most current report I could find), Americans purchase 58 million pounds of chocolate in the days leading up to Valentine’s Day. The water footprint of a pound of chocolate is 3,000 gallons of fresh water, multiply that with 58 million pounds and you get a water footprint in the billions.

Cocoa pods dangle from trees like christmas ornaments in the hot, rainy tropical area of the world. This leads me to conclude that cocoa trees are not irrigated but rain-fed, as is 90% off all food that grows on the planet. The chocolate we eat is made mostly with green water. This is good news from a water conservation perspective. The bad news is your favorite bar of smooth decadent chocolate is likely contributing to water pollution. Chemical pesticides, herbicides and fungicides of non-organic chocolate are commonly used to protect the pod from capsid bugs and black pod disease. The worst part of this story is the egregious practice (this is putting it lightly) of using child slave labor to apply chemicals (without any protective gear), in addition to harvesting the cocoa and clearing the undergrowth of the trees with machetes.

“Is this slave chocolate?” my son asked while swiping a piece that quickly disappeared in his mouth.

I laughed at my six year old’s clever terminology but the relationship of child slavery and chocolate is not the slightest bit funny.

Seventy percent of the world’s cocoa beans are grown in West Africa, much of it produced using enslaved child labor. Tulane University released a report early last year that estimates that 1.8 million children are involved in cocoa production in West Africa. This disturbing child slave/chocolate connection led Iowa Senator Tom Harkin and New York Congressman Engel to create the Harkin-Engel Protocol of 2001 (Cocoa Protocol), aimed at reducing child labor in cocoa labor. Unfortunately a decade later the practice remains widespread in West Africa.

The chocolate I offered my son was not “slave chocolate” but Fair Trade Organic Chocolate I found at Trader Joe’s for under $2.00 bucks a bar. The chocolate is certified by Fair for Life.

Fair trade certification not only ensures that workers are being paid fair wages and have good working conditions but it also requires that environmental criteria be met. In the case of Fair for Life, certified companies must comply with several environmental criteria that include water conservation and ecosystem management in addition to being certified organic. Fair Trade USA is another certification organization that requires both fair wages for workers and environmental responsibility.

Fair Trade USA reports on their website that Ben and Jerry’s is committed to purchase only Fair Trade ingredients for all their delicious ice creams by 2013 and Nestle announced it’s Kit Kat to source Fair Trade cocoa in the United Kingdom. It is a start, but we got a long way to go.

This is when we come in, you and me who buy the 58 million pounds of chocolate on Valentine’s alone. Together we can end child slavery in Africa AND support farmers who grow cocoa sustainably with our purchase of fair trade certified chocolate. Ask your favorite chocolate brands to purchase fair trade chocolate like on their Facebook page. Companies like Nestle and Cadbury are purchasing fair trade chocolate for the UK market. Why not for the U.S. market. I want a fair trade certified Kit Kat. Don’t you?

Check out these websites of chocolate brands that offer fair trade chocolate and ask for these at your favorite market.

Alter Eco
Dagoba Organic Chocolate
Divine Chocolate Love the label. So pretty.
Equal Exchange
Theo Chocolate You can buy chocolate by the case for a discount
Taza Chocolate Chocolate with a Mexican twist. This chocolate can also be purchased bulk.

Now for my favorite chocolate cake recipe. This is the recipe that I used to make those pretty little cupcakes dressed in blue pleated paper cups pictured above.

Free-Trade Chocolate Cake
(Adapted from One-Bowl Chocolate Cake from Martha Stewart Living)

3/4 cup unsweetened fair-trade cocoa powder (Equal Exchange sells this as Baking Cocoa)
1 1/2 cups all-purpose organic dry farmed or rain fed flour
1 1/2 organic fair-trade sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
3/4 teaspoon baking powder
3/4 teaspoon salt
2 large eggs (preferably from a pasture-raised hen)
3/4 cup organic low-fat buttermilk (I like Organic Valley. It is coop of small family dairies across the U.S.. This brand can be found at large and small grocery stores. If not at your grocery store yet, ask and ask again.)
3/4 cup water
3 tablespoons organic oil like vegetable or canola
1 teaspoon organic pure vanilla extract

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Butter two 8-inch round cake pans (2 inches deep) dusted with cocoa powder. If making cupcakes, butter the muffin tin just the same unless you are using cupcake paper cups. I found that one scoop of batter using a ice cream scooper works perfectly for each cupcake.

Sift all the dry ingredients into a big mixing bowl.

Beat ingredients together with a mixer on the lowest setting or with a whisk until just combined.

Add all the wet ingredients into the same bowl. Beat until all combined and batter is smooth about three minutes with a mixer and a few minutes longer when mixing by hand.

Divide batter into both pans and bake for 35 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center of the cake comes out clean. Cupcakes do not take as long to bake. Check if the cupcakes are done after 20 minutes.

Note: to remove the cake from the pans with ease, you must let the cake cool off completely. This takes at least 15 minutes. While you wait make the frosting (frosting recipe to follow). Place one of the cakes on a cake plate. Frost the top of the first cake. This will be your yummy center. Place the second cake on top and frost the top and sides of the cake. I like to decorate the cake with fresh berries like blueberries or blackberries when in season…organic of course.

Chocolate Frosting
I love this frosting. The sour cream gives it a nice little twist. I have found that young kids are not as big on the slight twang to this frosting. When I am baking for a younger crowd I will replace with a butter cream frosting. If you are making cupcakes you can half this recipe.

makes four cups

2 1/4 cups organic powdered sugar
1/4 cup unsweetened fair-trade cocoa powder
Pinch of salt
6 Ounces cream cheese, room temperature
1 1/2 sticks unsalted organic butter, softened (Organic Valley also makes butter or some farmers markets sell butter)
9 Ounces bittersweet fair-trade chocolate, melted and cooled slightly
3/4 Cup organic creme fraiche or sour cream

Sift together dry ingredients and combine in one bowl.

In a larger bowl beat together the cream cheese and butter at medium speed until smooth.

Gradually add the sugar-cocoa mixture into the cream cheese and butter mixture and beat until combined.

Pour in the melted chocolate.

Add the sour cream or creme fraiche and beat until all combined.

Kneading Bread Dough Around the Kitchen Table

Last Saturday, nine woman stood around my kitchen table kneading bread. My premise for my book in progress, Eat Less Water, is that the most important water conservation that any of us can do happens at the kitchen table. To have a group of people making bread using water sustainable ingredients around my kitchen table was a joyous moment for me.

A participant in the class asked if the bread we made had a lower water footprint than other bread. Each slice of bread whether it is the bread we made in the class or the bread purchased from the grocery store requires 11 gallons of fresh water on average to produce. That number doesn’t change. What changes is the type of water that is used. The bread we baked in the Baking Bread: Water Sustainable Class was made from rain-fed flour, what water researchers call green water. Food grown with green water is the most water sustainable.

As you begin to rethink your food purchases with water in mind learn the source of the water. I always ask if the water it produced using green water (natural rain) or blue water (from reservoirs, rivers, underground aquifers). I look for dry farmed or rain fed food followed by food irrigated with drip irrigation. Finding these answers is not easy in the grocery store aisle, so I encourage you to get out to your local farmer’s market and assemble your own list of favorite food vendors; farmers who as we speak are rewriting the story of water scarcity on our planet.

The second thing to consider when you buy food is water pollution. When you purchase organics you reduce petroleum pollution used to make synthetic fertilizers and chemical pollution from pesticides and herbicides. As you know, water doesn’t disappear but clean water does each time chemicals, nitrogen, and petroleum (all by-products of food production) find its way into streams, rivers or underground aquifers.

The path to a water sustainable lifestyle shouldn’t be overwhelming. Just do a little more than what you now do. We can all do better. And our collective “betterness” will rewrite the story of water pollution and water scarcity of fresh water sources.

The morning after the class my husband Michael made buttermilk french toast using the french-style baguette we made in the class. Living a water sustainable lifestyle is good and damn tasty.

Below is the recipe for the French-style baguettes adapted from a recipe from Beard on Bread. The secret of good bread is in the kneading. As one of the participants said in class, “you need to knead.” So take this recipe, find dry farmed/rain-fed flour and get kneading.

French-Style Bread
[2 long loaves or 4 small baguettes]

2 cups warm water (100 to 115 degrees)
1 1/2 packages active dry yeast /or 2 tsp.
1 tablespoon organic sugar
5 to 6 cups unbleached organic dry-farmed or rain-fed white flour
3 tablespoons yellow cornmeal
1 tablespoons salt
1 tbsp. egg white (from a pasture-raised hen), mixed with 1 tbsp. cold water

Mix warm water, yeast and sugar.
Set the bowl aside for 30 minutes or until the yeast mixture proofs (when you see bubbles).
Combine the salt with the flour and add to the yeast mixture one cup at a time.
Flour a clean surface with flour and begin to knead. You want to knead the dough until it is no longer sticky and transforms into a smooth round lump of dough. You may need to add additional flour (only a small handful at a time).

Place round, smooth dough into a buttered bowl to keep the dough from sticking. Cover with a dishtowel to keep out drafts. Leave the dough to rise. The dough will double in size in about 1 1/2 to 2 hours.

Punch the dough after it has risen (I love this part). Divide the dough into two equal parts. Hand form the dough ( fancy way to say just stretch the dough out to resemble the shape of a baguette) and place on a cookie sheet sprinkled with cornmeal or flour. Slash the tops of the loaves diagonally in two to three places, and brush with the egg wash.

Bake at 400 degrees for 35 minutes (25 minutes if you split the bread into 4 smaller baguettes) or until the bread has a hollow sound when tapped with a wooden spoon. Note: The original recipe calls for the bread to be placed in a cold oven. I have tried both with a cold oven and a pre-heated oven and found the bread to be great either way.

Variation: For a more tightly textured bread, after the first rising, punch down, knead for an additional 5-10 minutes. Return dough to the buttered bowl and allow to rise a second time before hand forming into loaves.

Baking Bread Water Sustainable Cooking Workshop

The Rose Parade and Water (Flowers and Water)

Today an estimated fifty million people in over 220 countries will tune in to watch the Rose Parade. Floats covered with eighteen million flowers will parade down the sunny streets of Pasadena, California. Early parade officials in 1890, wanted a parade to gloat about the mild year-round weather of Southern California that can grow roses in the middle of winter (gloating about good weather in California is taught at an early age). Yet only two float entries are decorated with flowers exclusively grown in California– the rest are imported.

The official rose of the Rose Parade is South American. The pretty petals from South America are laced with over one hundred different types of chemical pesticides. In Columbia, the supplier of fifty percent of U.S. flowers, is reported to use one hundred and twenty seven different pesticides, herbicides and fungicides in their flower greenhouses. This list includes chemicals banned in the California like methyl bromide and DDT. According to the Journal of Environmental Health, Costa Rican flower producers (another large supplier) are directly responsible for the pollution of important major waterways and underground aquifers in the region.

Rose parade officials can’t recall the last time a float has been covered by 100% homegrown California botanicals. Two floats are a start. But wouldn’t it be grand to watch a parade of roses that are 100% organically grown? That is the Rose Parade I hold out for; a parade whose beauty and splendor is not at the expense of fresh water supplies in the U.S. or abroad.

My wish for the New Year.

To find your own locally grown organic flowers visit Local Harvest.

Dry Farming and Water

I followed the rain clouds along the two-lane road leading to With the Grain farm. On a slope above the wheat fields was a small house, home to John DeRosier, his wife Leaf and teenage son Noah. Near the house stood a barn stripped of paint from decades of sun and rain. It was charming. John’s big dog, his only companion on most days, joined us.

Among the gentle slopes of Paso Robles, John’s farm is an anomaly. Lines of grapevines squeeze his farm from every direction. Neighboring vineyards rely on continuous sips from wells that act like big straws, slurping up water from the aquifer for irrigation. John’s well, dug 300 feet deep, maintains the same level as when it was drilled six decades earlier. Surrounding vineyards are drilling 1,000 feet beneath the surface to find water. Wells are being drilled deeper and deeper, a sign that water is being extracted faster than it is replenished.

The summers reach 110 degrees Fahrenheit. Rain was imminent on the spring day I visited, but this part of the valley receives an average of only six inches of water a year, mostly in the winter months. This is less rainfall than the desert city of Phoenix, Arizona. Rain-fed crops need annual rainfall of ten inches or more; and less, and ordinarily the wheat farmer must irrigate. A common choice is flood irrigation that turns rows of wheat into straight, shallow rivers. It’s the cheapest method of irrigation (as long as the price of water remains low), but it has the highest rate of water loss through runoff and evaporation.

“You don’t irrigate your crops even in the dry months?” I asked John.

“I don’t need to. You can come out onto my field in the summer and see dry, cracked topsoil, but just underneath the soil is moist. My soil retains hundreds of thousands of gallons of water when it rains.”

“But why are the farms around you using ground water? Why is your soil different?”

“Your answer starts with the cover crop.” He led me down a slope to his “dirt laboratory,” slender strips of land used to experiment with new grain varieties.

“This is where the elegance of the farm begins,” he smiled. We stood next to a patch of clumpy grass mixed with legumes and peas abloom with periwinkle-blue flowers.

“This is cover crop?” I asked as I pointed down at the grass.

“Yes. Grass is the most important thing we have going on, on our our planet.” He yanked out a chunk of grass, exposing its dangling strings of thin roots.

“Before the rain, I turn the cover crop, incorporating these root systems combined with the tap root of the legumes into the soil until it resembles chunks of chocolate cake.” My mind feasted on the idea of cake as he continued. “The rain water infiltrates into the soil where it’s held in the pores and roots.”

“Why don’t more farms grow cover crops?” I asked.

“Cover cropping requires more time and double the land. For example, my 200 acres are carved into plots. Half the plots are planted with grain and the other half with cover crop. Each plot is on a two-year cycle alternating between grain and cover crop.”

“So that means only 100 acres are producing grain at any given time?”

“Exactly. But remember that I can grow on land that other farmers consider unsuitable for farming because it has no water source.”

We moved to a large field that looked like a giant plate of chocolate cake. The soil was freshly turned earlier that morning in preparation for the rain. John squatted close to the ground and scooped the soil with his hand. Flecks of ground cover were sprinkled in it.

“This plot here is breaking down the cover crop. The roots are feeding the microorganisms in the soil.”

“Why is that important?”

“Microorganisms are bacteria in the soil. They work to convert nitrogen from the air into nitrogen the plant can use.” He continued, “Gazillions of these microorganisms lie underground in the humus.”

“What is humus?”

“Humus is soil rich with organic matter.”

Humus, I learned, is a complex structure that does not occur on all farms. It needs to be cultivated with patience and strategic planning. Humus retains more moisture than synthetic or even organic soils. A report published by Soil Science finds that humus has the water holding capacity of eighty to ninety percent of its weight, much higher than the average of twenty percent for organic soils.

(excerpt from Eat Less Water chapter Wheat and Water)

Pumpkins and Water

Thanksgiving is officially over and Christmas time is now here (ready or not). It is time to move aside the pumpkins and replace them with holly and snowmen.

On my front porch sits a radio flyer stacked with small pumpkins that were spared the carving knife on hallows eve. It seems a shame to throw them out. A pumpkin has a water footprint of 40.7 gallons per pound. My little red wagon carries about 730 gallons of virtual water (more or less). Pumpkins can be dry farmed. That means that the farmer has cultivated the soil to hold rain and moisture during the dry months so that the crops require NO irrigation. These pumpkins are not dry farmed. The little pumpkins on my porch splashed around in ground water- blue water.

I feel an obligation to be sure this water does not go to waste. The pumpkin cake baked by sister-n-law and served for our Thanksgiving Day dessert inspires an idea. Like my sister-in-law I will roast the pumpkins in my oven and turn them into the tastiest pumpkin cake you could ever dream of. I don’t have my hands on the recipe just yet. But in the meantime I can roast, puree and freeze the pumpkins. Once I get the recipe I will be sure to post for your little pumpkins.

Maybe I will even leave a piece of pumpkin cake out for Santa this year.

Green Eggs and Water

I was first introduced to the concept of water footprint poolside at a hotel in Newport Beach. I reclined on my lounge chair with a book about water and a cold beer to refresh me on a hot Summer day. My beer, I learned had a water footprint of sixty-five gallons. The algorithm used to calculate the water footprint of the average beer adds up all the water used in the production of all the major ingredients, in this case barley and hops. The algorithm goes something like this: water from irrigation PLUS the water from precipitation PLUS water trapped in soil as moisture PLUS ground water utilized by the plant from planting to harvest. The totals are adjusted for water runoff and evaporation. Water footprints can be calculated on all food.

I totaled the water footprint of my breakfast I ate that morning at the hotel. The three egg omelet required sixty gallons of water for the eggs, about one-half gallon for the slices of tomato, thirteen gallons for the half ounce of cheese, and an additional twenty-two gallons for two slices of toast. I washed my breakfast down with a cup of tea with a virtual water footprint of five and a half gallons. Small in comparison to my husband’s coffee. The approximate water footprint of my breakfast was one hundred and one gallons of fresh water. My food measured in gallons.

The omelet and tea I made myself this morning, pictured above, also has a water footprint of 101 gallons. The difference is these are green eggs and tea. Remember the colors of water? The eggs are from my backyard chickens. I know exactly what they eat, some grass from the yard (irrigated with scant amount of water), some organic feed, some compost like veggies, fruit rinds, pasta, rice…..Their manure is scattered around the yard to fertilize my fruit trees and vegetable beds. The tomato was homegrown with a mixture of blue water from the garden hose and water I capture with water collection buckets from the sinks in the house. They are minimally watered tomatoes. The cheese is from pasture-raised cows who eat a diet of rain fed grass. The toast (I forgot to include in the picture) is from my own recipe using organic wheat and local honey (see bread and water). This breakfast is a mixed green and blue water, as most of my meals are. But I try to purchase or raise as many ingredients possible with higher green water footprints. If we all “green” are food just a little more imagine the difference it could make.

For more information on water footprint visit www.waterfootprint.org.

To the Moon and Back – Water Scarcity Part One

In black stenciled letters on the sky blue wall I painted the words, “I love you to the moon and back” in my baby daughter’s room. It was a quote from my favorite children’s book. It never failed that when I read this line aloud to my daughter my voice cracked with emotion and tears pushed their way free. Many years later, I read in a very different book, that women and children of South Africa walk the distance of the moon and back seventeen times each day for water. I thought about the words that had been in my daughters first room. I contemplated the little girls carrying heavy pots of water on their heads to the moon and back. Again the tears pushed their way free.

Drops of Water

Drops of water saved my father’s life.

My father laid in silent stillness from the moment of his birth. For four days he refused offers of milk. My grandmother knew the signs of a child at the doorstep of death. She had birthed ten children, only seven remained.

My Aunt Antonia, the eldest child, was instructed to borrow the small table that stood in the neighbor’s chicken coop. Once cleaned, the table would occupy the center of the tight concrete house. This is where my father would lay once he died.

My aunt brought the table to my grandmother but snuck back out of the house. She ran through the thick heat of the Mexican summer until she arrived at the door of the town doctor. She willed herself to walk thru the door, this was not the time to be shy. With no payment in return, the doctor agreed to come the following day.

That night my grandfather slept with his newborn son. A loud sound woke my grandfather. He felt cold air envelop the humid room. Instinctively, he shielded my father with his body. He felt a cold hand press down on his back. He believed the hand to belong to la muerte, death. As sudden as it arrived, the cold air retreated.

The doctor arrived the next morning as promised. My father’s condition was unchanged. The young doctor examined my father and concluded that what he needed was “gotitas de agua,” drops of water. The table from the chicken coop was returned unused.

As a child, I was fascinated by the magic in my father’s story. I enjoyed retelling the story to childhood friends, sure to emphasize the part about death paying a visit to my father, only to leave empty handed. As an adult I see that the magic had always been the drops of water.

——–
At an Earth Day event several years ago a park ranger stopped at my booth, intrigued by the shower timers I offered for sale.

He asked me, “Did you know that all the fresh water in the world can be expressed in one drop of water?”

“How so?”

“If we could pour all the water on our planet, both salt water and fresh water, in a gallon bucket, the proportion of water that we can use to shower, drink and grow food is one single drop.”

We live on a water planet. The Earth is 2/3 water, yet most is salty, 97.5%. Of the 2.5% of the water that remains, 69.5% is contained in earths natural freezers (snow, glaciers and permafrost) another 30.1% is hidden in deep aquifers. The remaining 0.4%, the drop, sustains life on this planet.

Santa Fe Farmers’ Market and Water

“Can I have a dozen rabbit eggs? asked the woman ahead of me in the line for eggs at the Santa Fe Farmers’s Market.

“Ma’am rabbits don’t lay eggs,” answered the farmer with a straight face. “The sign ‘we have rabbits’ means we sell rabbit meat in addition to chicken and geese eggs. The steadiness to his answer indicated that this was not the first time the question had been asked. I confirmed that indeed it was not.

She released an embarrassed laugh after she recognized the absurdity to her question. I did everything to keep my laughter from escaping my mouth but was unsuccessful.

The Santa Fe Farmers’ Market does have a way of loosening a mind into a world of imagination, one where rabbits could lay eggs.

The market is a feast for the senses. Orange dahlias were a bloom, chunks of goat cheese swam in marinades of oil and roasted green New Mexican chiles and heirloom tomatoes burst from their skins. The smell of roasted Chimayo Chile danced arm in arm with the fragrance of barbecued sausage from free range pigs. The market provided an experience of food unmatched by the aisles of a grocery store.

At the mouth of the farmer’s market, Mr G’s vegetable stand caught my attention. It was bustled with customers who patiently waited their turn to buy the organic local vegetable harvested this week.

I asked Mr G. how he irrigates his vegetables. This is a state that aches for rain.

He was the second farmer that told me he used acequias, a four hundred year old irrigation ditch system built by the Spaniards. His acequia is fed by the Chama River in the Espanola Valley located 20 miles from Santa Fe.

“I never thought to use flood irrigation. It is too inefficient,” he answered. “I use drip lines and misters.”

Vegetables need a steady source of water to grow and thrive. Unless located in a wet climate, vegetables need to be irrigated. The drip line conserves the most water.

Many vegetable stalls had signs that read organic or pesticide free which for me is code for ‘this food uses no synthetic fertilizers and chemicals that compromise the water quality of rivers and wells.’

I took back with me two bags of roasted chilies. Now back in California I will chop them up and add to quiche using the recipe in Eggs and Water which calls for chicken not rabbit eggs.

Visit the Santa Fe Certified Farmers’ Market page for more info, recipes and food and farm events.