Chocolate Grows On Trees!

They grow chocolate here! Chocolate grows on trees! Who knew? We've also recently learned about cinnamon and cashews, but that's another story. Today we're talking about chocolate.

Elder and Sister Javier are a senior missionary couple who work at the temple. They own a house and a CHOCOLATE PLANTATION in a little city called San Franciso de Macoris. 

This is the front door of their house and we are honored guests for breakfast and a trip to the plantation followed by lunch. We experienced wonderful Dominican meals and similar hospitality. From left to right in the picture are the Javier’s daughter-in-law, who helped prepare the meals, Sherrie, Gina, and Sister Javier. The men are all hiding from the camera.

This is a cinnamon tree. Cinnamon grows on trees, too. Actually, it comes from the bark. Brother Javier peeled off some bark for us and we sucked on it. So this is where atomic fire balls come from. But that has nothing to do with chocolate, so we move along.

 





A little way out of town and up into the hills we came to the plantation that has been in the family for several generations. This blue house is where Elder Javier was born. His great great grandfather planted the trees many years ago and they have now somewhere on the order of 8000 cocoa trees. In Spanish it's cacao. In English we call it cocoa. I don't know where the name comes from. 

Pronounce it how you will, this brown thing hanging off the trunk of the tree is a cocoa pod.

 The yellow thing is also a cocoa pod. They come in several different colors depending on the particular tree, and they also change colors as they mature. But you can't tell by the color whether they are ripe. You have to "thunk" the pod. If it sounds like a milkshake then it's the right time.

 One particularly interesting thing is that the inside is not anything like you might expect. The pod is full of slimy white things. Even more bizarre is that you can pull one out, stick it in your mouth and suck on it. It's a little hard to imagine, but it didn't taste bad. Nothing at all like chocolate. That happens much later.

 No, really, you just reach in there and grab one of those slimy things. Remember in Ghost Busters when the guy got slimed? I think this is where they got the slime. And I just stuck it in my mouth and sucked on it for a while. It's quite sweet. Elder Javier eats them like candy. But you don't bite them. At this point only the slime is worth eating. The beans inside the slime are "agrio". I think that means bitter or sour.

 Bananas are ubiquitous. You can't get rid of them. And why would you want to? During a long hot humid day of picking cocoa pods, you might just feel like a banana. Or any of several other kinds of fruit for that matter. There are all kinds of strange fruit growing among the cocoa trees.

 Yep, Sherrie was there too. I think this particular pod is not quite ready yet, although  I didn't personally thunk it.

 On the other hand, this one looks pretty much ready.

 Pretty cool, eh? They just sort of grow all over on these trees. It's very strange looking to me.

 I guess it's time to stick another slimy thing in my mouth. Generally I'm not much for eating slime, but this is the stuff that becomes chocolate. How bad could it be?

 Elder Javier threw me this pod. He didn't say anything, he just tossed it to me. I decided to keep it. Experiment time after we get home.

 Here are some more pods just unexpectedly hanging off a tree trunk. Most interesting.

 Things tend to be done a little differently in the Dominican Republic. These are a couple of saddles. I presume when you're riding around on your horse through your chocolate plantation you need a saddle.

 And of course sometimes you just need to sit down and rest for a while in the comforting shade of a nice thatched roof pavilion. I suppose this is where they have the Saturday night dances.

 I'm not sure exactly what's in all these little buildings, but there is much extended family living all over the place throughout the plantation.

After you break open a pod, the slimy things you don't eat get put into fermentation boxes. After about a week in there, the slime has pretty much soaked into the beans and they now are set out to dry in the sun for a week or so. These are cocoa beans. If you could find a way to buy these, you could make your own chocolate - like in that movie called "Chocolat".

We had a great visit to the cocoa plantation. It was pretty cool. I don't think it would have been nearly so interesting had it been, say, an onion plantation. Chocolate, after all, is sort of magical. In fact, when it's all said and done, perhaps if Columbus had not discovered chocolate nobody ever would have heard of him again.