One of the perks of staying at an organic farm in Colombia, is the chocolate grows on trees! Tonight Dave and I roasted and shelled some cacao beans, then ground them up and we’ll melt them into hot chocolate during breakfast mañana en la mañana.

Here’s how it works:

• When the pods turn yellow, pick them, slice them open with your machete and scoop out the beans
• These beans are covered in a white pulp and should be fermented for four days
• Next dry the beans in the sun for a week
• After that roast them in a pot on the stove until they’ve turned completely black – it smelled like they were burnt
• While they’re still hot, grab the beans and shell them. Throw the inside of the bean into a new bowl and chuck the shell
• Grind the shiny, shell-less beans with a grinder to make a paste
• Put dollops of this paste on a banana leaf and let them sit (away from the cat) for at least four hours
• Each dollop (about the size of a small cookie) will yield five cups of hot chocolate

Our gracious host – the son of Mama Lulu – rattled off a few chocolate facts as he stirred the cracked metal pot of charred beans.

• A cacao tree takes three years to produce seed pods
• For every 100 flowers the cacao tress produces, only 5 will set fruit
• The trees will live between 40 and 50 years
• One pound of beans will make enough chocolate for a family to consume hot chocolate every day for a week
• About five pods yield one pound of roasted beans