Mmmm Chocolate

When I found out about the grim realities of chocolate four years ago (it’s made using child and slave labor in Africa) I gave it up.

I wasn’t a huge chocolate fan to begin with so it wasn’t a huge sacrifice. But man, did I miss brownies and chocolate milk.

One of the best surprises of South America is that much of the chocolate here is grown locally and is slavery free.

One of my favorite memories of the trip so far was in Ecuador at a beach town called Montanita. It was our second or third day there and Brit and I had discovered that the chocolate used in the baked goods was Ecuadorian grown.

The dam had been broken!

I think we got brownies, chocolate chip cookies, or chocobanana bread every day for the next week.

One night we were sitting at our favorite restaurant. We ordered the brownie with ice cream. The night before it came with homemade strawberry ice cream. Tonight it came with chocolate ice cream.

We weren’t sure whether it was kosher or not.

“I can’t imagine store bought ice cream is fair trade.”

“But it said on the menu that it is made in house. If it’s made in house it’s probably made with local chocolate.”

“Okay. Let’s ask the waitress.”

We asked her and she said she didn’t know but that she’d ask the cooks who made it.

We sat there in silence for fifteen minutes. The ice cream just staring us in the face taunting us like the marshmallow in the Stanford marshmallow experiment.

Finally, the waitress came back. “The chocolate is from Ecuador.”

Glory, glory hallelujah!!

Two minutes later it was gone.

I love South America.

#MakeAmericaBrownAgain

(or something like that)

I know that my South American Brownie Heaven is fleeting and that we will be returning to a sad, bleak, Hobbsian brownieless America. If you’d like to help change the odds of brownies being in my American future you can sign this petition.