It’s spring, the bees are out, the sun is shining and it’s time for a celebration!
What better way to celebrate the suns return than with bright yellow nutrient dense raw chocolate, heck yes.
These little gems are a cinch to make and packed with the ample benefits of bee pollen, a truly amazing superfood. Some nutritionists say we could live on bee pollen alone as it’s such a perfect food. Bees are amazing insects, their specialized hairs attract pollen easily with a sort of static electricity. To make one pound of honey bees must visit around 2 million flowers!
In the spring I usually get seasonal allergies which bee pollen, local honey, and wildcrafted nettles effectively eliminate. Bee pollen is one of the easiest foods to digest and assimilate. Not too mention its got a subtle chewiness that adds a lovely texture to these superfood sunshine chocolates. Raw cacao is loaded with amazing benefits as well as talk about more in detail in this post. It’s certainly no secret how much we relish in our raw chocolate around here!
Melt the cacao butter in a boil over a double boiler until liquid, add cacao powder and 1 Tbs of honey or maple syrup and stir until smooth.
Pour this chocolate mixture into your choice of moulds, I used a mini muffin tin. Pop in the freezer to set while you make the sunshine layer.
Warm up your coconut butter and coconut oil on the double boiler until smooth and creamy, mix in turmeric, bee pollen and sea salt.
Remove chocolate from freezer and top each with a dollop of sunshine mixture until evenly distributed. Pop back in the freezer for a few minutes to set. When the chocolates are set you should be able to easily pop them out of the mould.
I worried a lot. Will the garden grow, will the rivers
flow in the right direction, will the earth turn
as it was taught, and if not how shall
I correct it?
Was I right, was I wrong, will I be forgiven,
can I do better?
Will I ever be able to sing, even the sparrows
can do it and I am, well,
hopeless.
Is my eyesight fading or am I just imagining it,
am I going to get rheumatism,
lockjaw, dementia?
Finally I saw that worrying had come to nothing.
And gave it up. And took my old body
and went out into the morning,
and sang.
I Worried
by Mary Oliver
If there’s a poem to summon to the surface the realization that worry is of no use this would be it. Not that I’ve fully grasped that concept yet, it seems still there is always something to fret over.
Whether my taurean moon is stirring worry over money and bills or I leave the house certain I left the stove on. The eyes of many may close when we rest our heads at night, but the minds are another story. My head hits the pillow and that is where the real fun begins, the continual thought stream until the sandman’s magic dust forms a crust so thick I can’t help but drift away.
There is a light, a reprieve, sleep arrives and worries melt away and wander around our dreams. A new day, and a chance to let it all go, brush it off. As I meander through my mind, I wonder, is there any purpose to imagining the worst, focusing on the bad? I’ve never been one to ignore the gritty, less appealing details of life. Life is messy. Plants don’t grow in sunshine and rainbows, they grow in shit and darkness. Yet there is a balance, a line we walk along which crossed too often into fears allure causes dis-ease. Especially when fears bubble up in a selfish hungry manner. Stepping into the world beyond our thoughts takes courage, but more than that it takes connection. Living in our heads is boring after some time, there’s a whole big wild world out there beckoning us to just release and be vulnerable.
I’m happy when my mouth is on fire, when my heart is on fire, when my soul is alight. One worry has at least been squandered and that is not having any hot sauce. I’m slightly ashamed to say this bugs me, there’s something fundamental about always having hot sauce on hand. This recipe makes sooooooo much, you can give it away, hoard it for months or a little of both. It also makes a great marinade for pork or chicken, but be warned, very very spicy.
In a large pot melt the coconut oil, add whole garlic cloves and brown on all sides.
Add the diced onion and cook until translucent.
Using a mortar and pestle or an electric spice grinder, combine allspice, cloves,peppercorns,coriander seeds and thyme, if using a mortar and pestle smash the ginger with the spices, if not, throw it in the pot.
Add carrots, habaneros, salt, sugar, vinegar, water and lime juice. Cook until carrots are tender and puree until super smooth. Adjust thickness by adding more water until desired consistency is achieved.
Makes a large amount (10 C) of hot sauce and lasts in the fridge for a long time.
Hemp hearts and raw chocolate, is there any better combination on the planet? Not likely. Especially when you combine the nutritional profiles of these two superfoods, shazam! Super energy filled nutrient dense healthy fat fuel.
Where there’s chocolate, there are smiles, there is love and joy and sharing (sometimes) so why not make the healthiest chocolate possible?
Hemp hearts are a nutritional powerhouse, they’re the meat inside the seed and have basically no phytates which is the main enzyme inhibitor inherent in nuts and seeds. They have a balanced ratio of omega-3 to omega-6 and are high in protein. These easy to digest little seeds pack a mega nutritional punch. I love sprinkling them all over salads and making hemp butter with them but their addition to chocolate is reminiscent of those crunchy bars that snap crackle and pop when you eat them.
I know in certain states hemp is akin to cocaine and completely illegal. Funny enough as my super medical cannabis advocate man would say ” we wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for hemp” which to a certain extent is true. The boats that European explorers sailed to America with the oakum (caulking) made from hemp. A lot of things used to be made from hemp, including the worlds longest standing bridge in France. New technologies are utilizing the strength of hemp to make sustainable eco-friendly building materials that could change the way we build from petroleum based to hemp based.
If you can’t get hemp hearts, you could certainly substitute them for bee pollen, chopped nuts or seeds or sesame seeds. If you can get hemp hearts, eat up, they are one of the most nutritious foods out there.
Raw chocolate has many advantages to conventional heat processed chocolate. As with all raw foods, the enzymes and vitamins are left intact. Raw cacao is high in antioxidants and its main alkaloid theobromine has been used medicinally to treat heart problems as a vasodilator. Why are antioxidants so incredibly important? Because they fight against cell scavenging evil free radicals on a mission to give us cancer and cause inflammation. In a world riddled with nasty pollutants, we’re exposed to free radicals constantly, in various forms. The more high antioxidant foods we consume, the more protection we’ll have against those evil bastards. Raw cacao is one of the richest food sources of antioxidants on the planet. Not too mention raw chocolate is basically the sexiest food ever. Cacao has phenylethylamine (PEA) the same hormone that is released in the brain when we fall in loooooove. Highest concentrations of PEA are present in raw chocolate, along with tryptophan the precursor to serotonin in the brain. Last but not lease, raw cacao is particularly rich in magnesium, a mineral that most of us are lacking (over 80% of people are deficient). Magnesium helps relax the muscles and nervous system, unlike its constrictive calcium counterpart. The two need to be in balance to be effective, yet most of us are consuming far too much elemental calcium and far too little magnesium.
So have I convinced you yet to try this addictively delicious raw black and white hemp chocolate? Here’s the recipe, and don’t worry it makes enough to share! Oh and you can be haphazard like me and make a bark style chocolate or you can use proper moulds but both yield the same amazing taste.
In a double boiler melt coconut butter and transfer to a bowl. Seperately melt cacao butter.
Mix coconut butter, honey,salt + 4 Tbs of cacao butter and cacao powder in a large bowl until thoroughly combined.
In your preferred tray or chocolate mould sprinkle half the hemp seeds and pour the chocolate mixture over them, transfer to the freezer to set for about 20 mins.
Remove from freezer and top with the rest of the cacao butter and hemp seeds, put back in the freezer to set again and enjoy!
This recipe is equivalent to about 4 chocolate bars
This salad is perfect for a spring detox, I don’t know about you but I always feel like cleansing come this time of year.
And not just the body, but everything- the cobwebs and dust bunnies nesting in all corners of the house. The more intensely tangled cobwebs of the mind are trickier to clean out.
This week I opted out of social media, yep, a whole week without crackbook, I wish that wasn’t such a grand accomplishment. It was necessary, the reset, the relenquishment of my attachment to distraction. Multitasking is the absolute best way to accomplish nothing. I always learn this the hard way, for some reason the drive to multitask is hard wired in my brain. Along with the rise of childhood ADD/ADHD there’s also been a significant increase in adult ADD. I blame the endless distractions, the little red notifications that release happy hormones in our brains, the glorification of busy, the emphasis on multitasking supposedly being the key to efficiency. But I also blame myself, because I know better, yet sometimes I still ignore that little voice.
Lesson of the week: just let it go and focus. Focus is the path to success, all those distractions, all the wayward worrisome thoughts, they’re useless.
A note on this recipe, it’s incredibly simple and fresh. The ginger gives a spicy warming feel to the fresh lingering taste of anise from the fennel. Fennel haters aka J actually greatly enjoyed this pairing. The burst of sweet citrus really goes a long way in bringing everything together. Don’t skip the red onion either, it really adds a necessary intensity.
Vegetables rock. They never get boring, truly there must be millions of variations to get your veg in. While I’m starting to feel the itch for fresh spring veg, I’m also still ever so enamoured with hardy winter varieties. These roasted root veggies have all the flavour of stuffing without the bread. Perfect with roast chicken or turkey, you could even mix them up and throw them in the roasting pan with your bird.
There’s a little sage bush right outside my house, its starting to spring back to life and I’m enjoying the bounty of fresh sage. Crispy friend sage is sinfully delicious, but it also adds a certain aromatic lingering presence to all things hearty and roasted.
I hope you all had a great weekend, mine was jam packed with birthday cake and love as my little baby Mav turned 1. Such a big day, hard to believe it was just one year ago he came into our lives and made life so much more joyous. Being a mom has been such a trip. Did you fall into the parent role naturally? Or does it take time for everyone? It took awhile before I even thought of myself as a mother, there’s so much to learn and I’m sure it’s endless. Now I’m starting embrace this fairly new role, I am now the one who makes birthday cakes (delicious paleo ones) and kisses sore knees. About that cake, I really wanted to share it with you. Admittedly I am a terrible party planner but I ace the catering side of things. Perhaps I’ll make the cake again just so that we can photograph it and share the recipe, it was sooooooo perfect!
All cake aside, we’re talking root veg. This Roasted Balsamic Sage Root Vegetable Stuffing is about to become your new best friend.
Green food is good food. It’s a rule I stick to, and trust me I don’t stick to many rules.
Matcha is a delightfully antioxidant rich green tea powder, it has an earthy taste that is akin to pure freshness and it isn’t overpowering. There’s something about matcha, it tastes like youth, it tastes clean and it transports you to a far off land, unless you live in Japan, then it’s probably more nostalgic.
You may have seen fancy matcha lattes at your local cafe, the craze is catching on- even my mom drinks matcha. She mixes hers with cacao powder though and I just can’t get on board, sorry Ma. But matcha paired alongside creamy cashews and delicate coconut, shazzam that is a flavour combo my friends. These little treats should grace your St.Patties day table, or just any days table. They’re the perfect little mid day boost alongside a nice cuppa tea.
I drank it when I was pregnant as I was trying to limit my caffeine consumption. Matcha has some caffeine but its energizing component lies mostly in its abundance of L-theanine, an amino acid that helps increase focus. Buddhist monks drink matcha to help with meditation.
Now that I am a sleep deprived mama I’ve switched back to coffee and matcha has been allocated to the treat category. It gives a nice energy boost to things like these matcha cashew coconut energy balls and my matcha cupcakes.
Ok so lately I’ve been listening to Esther and Jerry Hicks and boy are they trippers. Law of attraction is the name of the game and I swear if they taught this stuff in school the world would change. Again and again my lesson is gratitude, when I embody gratitude everything in my life unfolds so perfectly. It’s so easy to take simple things for granted, hot water and warm socks, strong legs to hike up mountains and an garden to grow food. I’m really grateful to have this space and to be able to share my small little world with yours. Even if just for a moment in time it’s pretty cool. Glad I’m not the only one who loves good food 😉
Hey I'm Chantelle, my alter ego would be a mermaid if I wasn't such a terrible swimmer. I love writing authentically and cooking in my pyjamas. My favourite pastimes include eating avocados, travelling the world and hanging out with a toddler.
is a delightfully antioxidant rich green tea powder, it has an earthy taste that is akin to pure freshness and it isn’t overpowering. There’s something about matcha, it tastes like youth, it tastes clean and it transports you to a far off land, unless you live in Japan, then it’s probably more nostalgic.
