Chocolate...!

Oops.  It appears that quite of bit of time has passed since I last updated the ol' blog.  And it's not that I haven't been doing anything are having any fun down here.  In fact, I recently returned from a 'visa run' to Costa Rica.  Turns out that US visas for Nicaragua are valid for 3 months at which point you either have to pay for each additional month that you stay in the country or you have to leave the country for at least 72 hours and then come back.  However, Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala are not considered acceptable countries due to an agreement between all the countries called the CA4 - turns out that wasn't a big deal since I cannot currently travel to those countries as the UofR has placed those countries on its Black List ever since the Peace Corps decided they were no longer safe enough for them to send volunteers there.  Oh well.  Hopefully, Honduras gets it's act together in time for the Fam Med trip in October or that Guatemala gets marginally safer by this time next year - it seems a favorite past-time of post-Match med students is to jet off around the world and Guatemala sounds fantastic to me!

So I went to Costa Rica and had a great time.  Spent some time in the mountains and chilling out on the beach.  It truly is a beautiful country but at times I felt like it was almost a mini-US hanging out in tropical central america...Nicaragua is definitely quite a bit different.  Hopefully photos will be coming soon.

But other very interesting, fun and tasty adventures have been going on in the Sauce.  In fact, yesterday Michaela(a peace corps volunteer) and I engaged in a chocolate making adventure.  It was long and involved but well documented:

3 lbs of cacao beans will make any chocolate lover happy!

The workspace.  However, before getting to work home-made hummus and asian-style noodles (a delcious rarity in El Sauce) make for a delicious lunch.

So the chocolate making process involves about 7 steps.  The first is to roast your cacao beans for about 30 minutes until they pop - and pop they do - in fact they put popcorn to shame with the power of their popping.

That's Michaela and stirring roasting beans for 30 minutes could be considered boring - unless you're rocking out to good tunes.

Downside to making chocolate in El Sauce at the end of March?  It is really hot - over 100F hot.  But that's why there is ice-cold beer to compliment the scent of roasting cacao.

And that scent sure is delicious!  The beans taste quite good as well...

So after roasting the beans you have to remove the  shells - step 2.  I had a brilliant idea to make the process slightly quicker that actually made the process waaaaaay longer.  But what do you do when you have cacao nibs and little bits of cacao husks all mixed together?  Find a fan and blow the husks away.  Michael definitely enjoyed this part...

The next step involves making a mixture that turns out to be just like cajetas - a cooked milk and sugar treat that is sold all over the place down here.  You simply boil equal parts milk and sugar together for supposedly 30minutes to and hour (or in our case almost 2 hours) until it boils down into an almost solid.

 The next step is grind the cacao into whats called chocolate liquer.  While Michaela was making the cajetas I went to the local Molino and had the cacao ground.  It's pretty cool that the ground beans forms a liquidy but very bitter mash.

After that you simply take the cajeta-like stuff and mix it with varying amount of the chocolate liquer and whatever other ingredients you want.  At the end of the day we had:
1. Plain chocolate
2. Almond Chocolate
3. Vanilla-Almond Chocolate
4. Vanilla-Raspberry Chocolate
5. Rum Chocolate
6. Spicy Chocolate

We are guessing that is about 6 -7 lbs of chocolate!  and all for less than $10!  But it did take aaaalllllllllllll day.  We started at 1 and finished about 8pm, but it was totally worth the time.

The next step is to guard our chocolate from all the wide-eyed vultures that are circling the house!

The chocolate is not anywhere close to smooth, but it does taste delicious and is definitely on the darker side of the spectrum, which for a climate as hot as it is here in El Sauce is probably the best way to go anyways.

In other news, the end of trip is rapidly approaching.  Only 6 weeks left from this Sunday!  It's incredible that so much time has passed.  But the last 6 weeks will be a blast as I am picking Fiona up from the Managua airport on Sunday to start a combined Nica adventure for a bit.  And in another crazy turn of events there are 3 UofR medical students currently in León, one of whom is my good friend Mac.  Hopefully I can convince them to come on out to the Sauce and show them around my Saucey world.

6 weeks are gonna fly...