A Trip to Chocolopolis

Yesterday I visited Chocolopolis, the new chocolate shop on Queen Anne. As I expected, it felt rather boutiquey, but you probably have to go for that feel if you're opening a shop in that neighborhood. It did feel like a shrine and, as someone who experiences awe in the face of the magical cacao bean, I felt appropriately reverent.

The chocolates are arranged by region. I told the salesperson that my all time favorite chocolate bar is Michel Cluizel's Mangaro, and she pointed out that, because it's from Madagascar, I should try other varieties from the same area. It was a good suggestion, and I'll probably take her up on it next time around.

This time I bought a bar made from beans grown in Northeastern Brazil. My sweetie is Brazilian, and I'd never run into a Brazilian chocolate bar before, so I couldn't resist. I also picked up a bar from a company called Askenosie, which had a photo on the front of the farmers who grew the beans. I loved the packaging, which was deeply rustic and had a piece of twine at the top.

I checked out the company's website, which explained that the proprietor personally meets each of the growers who supplies his beans, pays them more than they would receive with a fair trade arrangement, and even offers them profit sharing. The chocolate was good (although for flavor alone, I'd still choose Mangaro,) but I'm really glad to have discovered this company. I'm partial to approaches that creatively circumvent programs like organic certification and Fair Trade, especially when they exceed the certification program's standards, and rely on their own outreach to communicate about the integrity of their practices.

Fire at the Putney General Store

On Saturday night a fire destroyed the general store in Putney, Vermont. The top floor burned completely, and the lower floors were destroyed by water damage. The building was more than two hundred and fifty years old, and it had been a store for nearly a hundred and fifty years.

I was staying up the road at my sister's house, in fact, I must have been one of the last people in there. The fire department got the call at eight minutes to ten. I'd stopped in a little before nine and they hurried me out because they were closing. I'd gone in ostensibly to buy a chocolate bar, but really I was just looking for an excuse to browse.

I'm fascinated by food stores of all kinds. I love to see the different permutations, the product mixes and the ways items are organized in different regions, different countries, and even different neighborhoods.

The Putney General Store had a wonderful mix of mainstream food products, along with organic and locally produced foods, not to mention the toothpaste, video rentals, and fishing tackle. It was one of two groceries in town, the other being the food coop, which has its own charm, although you sometimes have to endure a very long wait for a very simple transaction.

Every time I passed the store on Sunday there were people milling around, looking stunned. My sister said she saw a police car out front. Having grown up in New York City, she assumed they were there to deter looters. (Nobody loots stores in Putney, Vermont.) Then she looked over and saw the police officer sitting motionless taking it all in, as stunned as anyone else.

A Trip to Costco

My Costco membership is going to expire this month. I joined mainly because they have great prices on a lot of the equipment I need for my farmers' market booth. I probably won't be renewing.

I'm proud to say that, in the entire year that I've had the membership, I haven't bought a single food item.

I headed up there today to buy a few pieces of equipment while I still can. I figured that, while I was there, I should take a closer look at the food, to see if it defied any of my preconceptions. As far as quality, there were quite a few "industrial organic" items. I was glad to see them, but I wasn't tempted to buy any.

I was mainly interested in comparing prices with some of the other places I shop. The meat seemed really inexpensive, but I rarely buy meat, and when I do it's usually at the farmers' market and I'm more interested in quality than I am in price. (Buying it only occasionally gives you that luxury.)

I do look at a lot of produce prices in a lot of different places, so I figured that would be a good section to use for comparison. I found a 10 lb. bag of red potatoes for $5.29, pineapple for $2.99, a couple of small watermelons for $6.79 (they looked like they were about 5 lb. each,) and 5 avocadoes for $6.99.

After having my receipt scrutinized by the guard at the door, I headed up to one of my favorite produce stands, Country Farms, in Edmunds. They had 10 lb. bags of potatoes for $2.49, a 3 lb. pineapple for 98 cents a pound, and 10 lb. watermelons for 39 cents a pound. They had baby avocadoes at 5 for a dollar, so I couldn't compare that price precisely, but I do know that the last time I checked, Trader Joe was selling 4 avocadoes for $3.

I'm not denying that Costco has great prices on many of their items. But I do think that people who shop at big box warehouse stores often assume that any price they see there is cheaper than what you'll get elsewhere, and it isn't necessarily so.

And I'm left with the perennial question, if you spend less money on stuff you don't really need, are you actually saving money?

HT Market

I love the HT Market. I love it in spite of the fact that it carries virtually no local or organic food.

I've never seen a place with such a wide range of ethnic foods, from the vast array of Asian staples which are their specialty, to the Eastern European, Hispanic, and African products that fill their shelves.

Wierd as it may be, considering my mostly-vegetarian orientation, I prefer to see entire pig carcasses hanging than antiseptic styrofoam trays of meat. They have the styrofoam trays as well, with specialties you don't find at Safeway, like pig kidneys and goat skins.