The Mind of TCHO

Out of many, one

What excites me about our time is the ascendancy of personal, direct action to make a better world - as opposed to trying to seize the instruments of (top down) political power to effect abstract electoral "change." We don't need faraway hierarchical organizations, we have the self-organizing Net empowering individuals and groups to change attitudes and/or work directly on a problem or create new solutions. Which is why I love this ad (thanks and a tip of our hat to Shane Vella):

Person, Place or Thing (Utah)

How happy I was to get off the plane and find myself somewhere warm (it's about 63 degrees in SF right now). It was 1 A.M. and I was in Salt Lake City, Utah. I was in town for the Chandler family reunion (my grandmother's side) and I hadn't been to any of the reunions for about 10 years. This year it was going to be held in the small town of Huntsville, about an hour and a half north of SLC and over the Wasatch Range.

This is about one quarter of my family on my Mom's side (the Garbett's). My Mom, Beau, to my right.

My cousin David, me, and my Aunt Ann.

The competiton was stiff in the " sweet- things-in-a-pan " category. My Aunt Jan clearly had a winning recipe for something chocolatey AND peanut buttery:

Peanut Butter Fingers

Makes one large cookie sheet

Preheat oven to 350 degrees

Cookie
1 cup butter, softened
1 cup brown sugar, packed
2/3 cup peanut butter
2 cups rolled oats
2 cups flour
2 eggs
1 cup sugar
1 tea. salt
1 tea. baking soda

Cream butter, peanut butter and sugars together. Add eggs, salt, baking soda, and beat until fluffy. Mix in flour and oats. Spread over large greased cookie sheet (I use the butter wrapper to grease the cookie sheet).

Bake in 350 degree oven for 15 min. until golden brown.

Frosting
chocolate chips (or TCHO chocolate)
3 TB. butter
1 tea vanilla
1/2 cup peanut butter
1 cup powdered sugar
1/4 cup milk/or less to spreading consistency

Immediately after removing the cookie from the oven, sprinkle chocolate chips (or chopped up TCHO chocolate) on top to your liking.

Cream together butter, vanilla, and peanut butter. Add powdered sugar and enough milk for easy spreading consistency.Then spread frosting on top of the warm chocolate chips to marble.

Let cool before cutting into squares.

My cousin Sam enjoying his mom's tasty treat.

My Uncle Bryson (I'm linking to him just to embarrass him) and Aunt Ann.

Pineview Resevoir

It was really great to meet relatives I'd never met before. Collin Chandler's family in Ogden, UT, fed us delicious things from the grill and their garden.

Eat Dessert First

While in New York for the Fancy Food Show (more on that soon), I met up with some friends at Pastry Art and Design Magazine. Waiting to head out for lunch, I flipped through their latest issue - a feature article caught my attention…it talked of a new phenomenon trolling the streets of New York: Dessert Trucks. A new, updated take on an old favorite: the ice cream truck. Instead of Good Humor, these new fangled “sweetmobiles” were said to offer up gourmet desserts the likes of crème brûlée, goat cheese cheesecake and coconut tapioca. I had to learn, and taste, more.

Later that night, in the name of research, I struck out in search of one of these mysterious vehicles that promised to relieve my aching sweet tooth. At St. Mark’s place, I found one - the Dessert Truck. There it was… parked and ready to serve up a little something sweet. 11PM, standing on a New York City corner, serenaded by the din of traffic, illuminated by streetlights and traffic signals, I indulged in a small dish of warm chocolate bread pudding. Heaven.

The very next week - back home in theBay Area - I saw this headline in the New York Times: “Save Room for the Truck.” Now the secret is really out. Hopefully it means dessert trucks (maybe even TCHO chocolate trucks…?!) are coming soon to a street corner near you.

The Wall: For An Amazing Man

One of the most amazing men—ever—Todd Blair—was in an accident last September that has changed his life and the lives of the people who love him ... forever. Todd was production manager for SRL at a performance in Amsterdam at Robodock and was struck by a prop while loading out.

For the past 10 months his wife Alex has been at his side as he makes his way on his journey to recovery. She blogs as she can to keep their community of friends and loved ones up to speed on their progress.

The vast community, of which I am apart, has been doing all we can. Yesterday we unveiled our latest effort—The Wall.

The Wall is a 7'x9' steel structure with 25 1/2" aluminum gears. Designed by Greg Jones and built by Kevin Binkert and Mark Pauline

25 people and organizations modified 25 gears. Each raised money for their efforts which has resulted in an extraordinary physical manifestation of love and respect for Todd. And... some much need financial assistance.

300 or so people came to The Wall:Unveiled and much money was raised. More fun to come.

and .. TCHO was a hit.

Wall of Gears from Scott Beale on Vimeo

For more info on Todd, The Wall and ongoing fundraising efforts:

http://www.ToddNow.org

Bees

I worry about bees. If you haven’t heard about it, Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) is happening all over. Bees are just leaving their hives. There are plenty of guesses as to the bees’ motivation, but no one really knows why it’s happening so much lately.

There are almost no feral hives left.

But we have one in my backyard. What is now my dad’s office (nicknamed “The Cottage”) used to be a garage. There’s a steep, winding path that connects it to my house. Leaning over almost the whole backyard (and possibly tall enough to hit my room were it ever to topple) is a Monterey Cypress tree. And in the tree is a hive.

It appeared about ten years ago, when my brother and I were in elementary school. The bees never really hung out around our house, and didn’t bother us.

The first time I felt true compassion for the bees was when our neighbor across the street from the Cottage asked us to get rid of them. We asked her why. “Because someone might be allergic,” she told us. We asked her if she was. She said no. We kept the bees.

When I started hearing more about CCD recently, I felt warm affection for our bees rising in me again. (Like the opposite of bile. Honey?) This affection is not entirely free of self-interest. Honeybees are not native to North America, so no native plants rely on pollination for food-production. However, many of the food crops we eat today are non-native, and would be devastated if the bees all disappeared.

No more almonds, peaches, soybeans, cucumbers, apples, or pears (to name a few). If we think food prices are high now, imagine if we had to import most produce from other continents.

But our bees give me hope. A lot of us are counting on the ever-rising popularity of environmentally friendly practices to save us from the myriad looming disasters we’re facing. I hope that people will stop planting one crop (looking at you, almonds), so that bees stop starving ten months out of the year. I hope people are motivated enough to do something out of their everyday routines. I hope people start planting bee-friendly plants to attract them.

In fact, maybe that’s why the bees came to our yard. My mom has always loved roses, and we have a ton of them in our front yard. And the bees seem to love the ivy that covers our house. And I know lots of people are scared of bees, but if you’ve actually looked at a bee up close, they are incredibly cute. But maybe that’s just me. Or my bees.

I worry that in some Douglas Adams-y move, the bees will all just take off someday, buzzing a “So long, and thanks for all the pollen,” before heading back to the moon. But hopefully, my bees will stay behind, not just because I am a particular fan of non-native fruits, but also because I care about them. And if my worrying about bees will help secure their survival and/or existence on this planet, I’m just going to keep on worrying. Care to join me?

(Pictures by my dad, Stephen Linden)

Open-source phone system rocks: asterisk, freePBX, and PBXinaFlash

phones.

we all need them. they are the way communicate apart from IM, email, etc, and the other techology gadgets we employ. In the early days of this company, everyone used their cell phones. "Do we really need a phone system?" some users asked. But isn't it nice, instead of walking downstairs from your desk, getting distracted by a thousand shiny things (ooooh chocolate!), to just dial someone's extension and ask them the question you needed to ask? All in the name of productivity my friends.

Now I am not a big fan of voicemail. I pretty much hate it. Somehow, though, when it comes in to my email inbox as a .wav file, it's just that much less annoying, and I actually listen to it.

So I knew we needed phones, and I made sure I had money in the IT budget for them. I got quotes for $30k, 100k, and 15k, respectively for moderately-featured Avaya, Cisco, and way-stripped-down Avaya systems. And this is for 20 handsets, mind you! Ummmm, no. Then Louis reminded me, "can't you just turn a regular PC into a PBX and be done with it?" Oh yeah...Asterisk! So I got on the trusty interwebs and started researching open-source PBX alternatives.

What I found was PBX in a Flash, a product of Nerd Vittles. This is a brilliant solution in terms of a downloadable image that installs on any intel-based computer. Burn to CD, pop it in, reboot, and in 45 mins, voila! instant linux-based open-source PBX will all the functionality you could possibly want in systems that cost mega-buxxxx. I found the installation to be seamless and the instructions on the site to be very thorough and helpful. I bought a $700 Digium PRI card, plugged my Verizon line into it, made some configuration changes and there we have it. Some of the many features include: Visual Voicemail (a la iphone), Conference Bridges, the aforementioned voicemail to email inbox, fax capabilities, follow-me, digital receptionist (IVR), and what is called VmX, or a mini-IVR in your voicemail, where you can give callers options to, say, leave a message, find me on my cellphone or transfer back to an operator.

When I was first setting up the system (with a Pentium 3 933 MHz Dell box I had lying around in my garage), I spent some $$ for FreePBX setup support (www.freepbx.org), and found myself on the phone with Philippe Lindeheimer, the lead developer for the FreePBX project. And, well it just so happened, that that very day he was speaking at the DigiumWorld conference in San Jose. So I went down there and met him, and was impressed with the amount of information this guy knows! Anyway, he also steered me to Aastra phones as the best phones to go with Asterisk systems. I actually tried them out at Digium World and was impressed. Since the phones read XML, you can create an unlimited number of applications for the phones, and they can be had on the net for $200 each. Quite a far cry from the other quotes I was getting for systems that didn't do half as many functions!

Recently Nerd Vittles has posted blog entries declaring Aastra phones "The World's Best Asterisk Phone."

Anyway, I couldn't recommend this system more highly, and Philippe has proven to be a really great resource.

The Starting Line

It’s no secret - I am a rower and in many ways, it is my life. I have a t-shirt that says “I can’t, I row” and it’s true. I row in big boats—fours and eights—and often use my rowing experiences to help me in other parts of my life.

TEAM: There is no star on a rowing crew, no franchise player, no single person that makes the boat go fast or wins the race. In fact, the best boats are where everyone blends in and rows as one. The crew is responsible for the victory.

RHYTHM: It’s what drives a rower—the rhythm of the stroke, the rhythm of the water, the rhythm of your breathing, the rhythmic movement of your crew. Get in a rhythm—let it take you places.

RISK: Sometimes you have to take it, look over the edge, break out of the box, stretch yourself. Sometimes you fail but always your team is there to catch you, pick you up, help you understand the lesson you learned. Sometimes you succeed and again, your team is there to praise, applaud and remind you of the next hurdle.

We are currently in the midst of our sprint racing season, racing each other for seats in the best boats and racing other crews for positions on the medal stand. It’s the time of the year for high anxiety, excitement and that rush of adrenaline.

I have that same feeling about where we are with TCHO. So much happens behind the scenes in preparation for sitting on the starting line. Every day, we get closer and the anxiety builds. I could get anxious about being anxious. I could believe that everything is falling apart. I could stress about things not being finished, critical decisions being changed, and materials not being delivered. But, I believe that anxiety is really excitement disguised. I am incredibly excited to be at the starting line, the crew has done the work and now it's time to race.

Sequencing cacao

Science Daily reports on a technology partnership to sequence the cacao genome. With candy giant Mars supplying the money, the Subtropical Horticultural Research Station (Miami) of the USDA doing the research, and IBM's Thomas J. Watson Research Center using its Blue Gene supercomputer to do the number crunching, the results are destined for the public domain for any and everyone to freely use.

IBM's
Blue Gene

The obvious goal of the research is to help create cacao plants that are resistant to the devastating diseases that cost an estimated $700 million dollars of damage annually and regularly devastate growing regions. Brazil, for example, is only now recovering from a Witch's Broom infection which struck in the 1980s.

Around the TCHO offices, we've been speculating on other potential benefits, including designing plants that can grow in more stable political regions outside the tropics, or that bear fruit that doesn't need fermenting, that have hyper-doses of polyphenols, or are caffeine-free, or that taste of the first kiss you ever enjoyed.

(Thanks and a tip of our hat to the ever insightful Kevin Kelly.)

Tour de France

I've been enjoying the Tour de France this year more than I expected to. Monday's stage in the Pyrenees had all the classic reasons why I love watching the Tour: the brutal and heart-wrenchingly beautiful geography, the live chess game of the peloton, the camaraderie, the combativeness, the surprise heroes. And most of all the pain-defying athleticism that is almost impossible to wrap your head around.

A lot has been written about the terrific performances by Team Columbia and Team Garmin-Chipotle so far and the fact that both teams are at the forefront of anti-doping with massive internal testing programs. These teams had the foresight to make investments early on to ensure their riders are clean and be able to prove it. What's great is that they're proving that transparency and doing the right thing is also a sound strategy. They've been able to get sponsors, reduce their risks as organizations and are now showing the world how much more exciting it is to watch clean riders winning stages in the Tour.

To me, the Tour this year is a parallel with what being a sustainable business is all about - being smart about systematic investments in transparency and doing the right thing also happens to reduce your risks, attract capital, make you leaner and make you more competitive. Any other strategy seems just about as boring and outdated as doping. I'll be watching Garmin-Chipotle and Columbia for the next couple weeks, and keeping my fingers crossed.

Why I Asked to Re-Join TCHO this Summer

Sure, there were considerations like the flexible hours, the good pay, the warm-spirited coworkers. Those conditions help make the morning wakefulness and the commute worthwhile. But when I emailed Timothy and Louis at the end of my first year at UCSC, I was looking toward a lot more.

I want there to be some kind of connection, however abstract, between the book that I read during the BART ride (“Redistribution or Recognition?” by Nancy Fraser and Axel Honneth) and the work that I do after I arrive. I won’t stand for a lifestyle that neatly separates the values of my upbringing from the values of my workplace.

Humans seem intended by nature to do art, science, philosophy, and to pursue social justice. Fulfilling work, I think, must be broadly geared toward at least one such creative endeavor — and the beauty of the Bay Area is that it always feels like it’s at the forefront of these realms of culture.

TCHO is supported by the same ethical underpinnings that make San Francisco such a special place in this world. Our chocolate is a powerful convergence of artistic passion, scientific rigor, and a steep inclination toward social consciousness.

We're trying to negotiate our way into a fully interdependent future — and regressive, purely self-interested forces will not carry us there safely.

There is a golden possibility. That the globalization of economic production could become a mechanism for uplifting disadvantaged human communities, instead of a mechanism enabling deeper and more far-reaching forms of exploitation. And on the level of a business like TCHO, it doesn’t even have to mean a radical system of conviction or practice.

It just takes some extra energy.

We’re very interested, like every business, in being financially successful. But we think we can do that while being honest to consumers and even treating labor fairly. What ties these two ideas together is an unflinching orientation toward quality.

We are not lazy about quality.

Our central product principle remains the depth of our chocolate’s flavor, and that implies taking a long, hard look at the source of our raw materials. Chocolate is typical of the myriad economic goods that follow a well-worn path from the poor southern hemisphere to the rich northern hemisphere. Such trade deficits are woven into the economic fabric of our global society.

This is partly the heritage of European colonialism.

What we have today are poor, underdeveloped equatorial regions whose people never seem to reap the benefits of their labor because they are brutally under-compensated for it and because the markets for their products exist far, far away.

It’s the epitome of a vicious circle. Here is the orthodox version of Marx’s analysis, restated by Nancy Fraser in that book I’m reading on BART: “The working class is the body of persons who must sell their labor power under arrangements that authorize the capitalist class to appropriate surplus productivity for its private benefit. The core injustice of these arrangements is exploitation, an especially deep form of maldistribution in which the proletariat's own energies are turned against it, usurped to sustain a system that benefits others.” Phew.

That old critique of the inhuman characteristics of capitalism is newly vindicated, on a massive scale, by the production schemes of many multinational corporations (including ones that make chocolate). Those are the institutions currently directing the course of economic globalization. The result is that Latin America, sub-Saharan Africa, and South Asia remain immobilized and enslaved by the fervent export of their material wealth. This has been the case for centuries. The pattern is as insidious as ever.

Mother Nature's richest, most useful resources are often found in the tropics. Cacao, no exception, grows only within 15 or so degrees of the equator.

Companies like ours must somehow operate within these economic horizons. We would seem to have a tricky set of competing imperatives because we need to turn a profit but we also give a damn about the hands that touch our product. Those who care enough to think deeply about it eventually realize that the two ideas are not incompatible. They can be mutually constitutive. They realize that socially just business practices can be a win-win situation. Economics does not always have to be a zero-sum game. Financial success can coexist with — even be a derivative of — other ethical considerations. In our case, these considerations include the social, economic and ecological sustainability of rural growing communities as well as the quality and reliability of the cacao they produce.

Witness TCHO Sourcing. Our sourcing program goes beyond the "Fair Trade" label, a standard that ought to go without saying in this day and age (anything else can't be squared with a human conscience).

High product quality and the extreme alienation of labor are antagonistic to each other in important ways, especially for the food industry (that’s just part of the reason that globalized food production is often so unhealthy). Like many other foods, the way cacao is grown (and fermented, and dried) strongly affects the flavor, sensory experience, and nutritional quality of the final product. It’s startling, but perhaps not unexpected, to learn that a great many cacao growers have never tasted chocolate. If that ain’t alienation...

In our view all this means growers need to be brought closer to chocolate. They ought to be able to make their own small batches, to tweak their techniques, to improve their harvest, and at the same time achieve some measure of self sufficiency. This is what our direct, personal relationship with growers seeks to achieve.

We get to treat this project as an art and a science. People from the former colonies should have the means to treat their work that way as well, and to reap the economic benefits.

For those connected to TCHO, cacao is far more than a commodity.

Innovation should not be limited to Pier 17. Fair trade must not be limited to material goods. This is the Information Age, after all. We can be good to each other.

Take a Trip

I smiled.
I cried.
And then I wanted to buy the world a Coke.

And now why I love the internet:

Person, Place or Thing (SF Fun!)

Two Saturdays ago my friends Evan and Onnesha invited me to go with them to a special place on Capp Street: Oddball Film+Video. Every Saturday the director of Oddball, Stephen Parr, puts on screenings. He selects a handful of films for that evening from the thousands of reels he has stacked to the ceiling.

A fraction of all the stacks:

Still from "Dudin" (1955). "Find out how city folk vacationed in 1955’s America's wild West."

Evan and Onnesha on Capp Street as we leave Oddball Film+Video.

The Great Outdoors

"You can play as well as you can imagine. Believe it then see it." - Derek Robins

Being from Santa Cruz, I thought for many years that disc golf was just a Santa Cruz thing. For years many of my friends, as well as me, went up to De LaVeaga to play (for those of you who have not been to De La…

not exactly the best map, but you get the idea), and many of us were unaware that there were courses outside of SC. After moving to Austin Texas, I found out that there were courses all over. I think there is something like five or so in Austin—and that it really had quite the following.

Now to present day, I’ve been finding myself enjoying the great outdoors—especially in the summer months—playing here in the beautiful course here in San Francisco. Granted, the course here isn’t quite like the one in Santa Cruz; the terrain is much more forgiving—many of the holes in Santa Cruz are well over 350’ (vs. 250’ in SF) and there aren’t any steep gullies to lose your disc in. The weather is however quite similar (avg. temp for June is around 70 degrees). But the view from the “Top of the World” (the 27th hole) is quite the sight…on a clear day you can see all the way to Monterey.

I Love My Mom

My mother is Congresswoman Lynn Woolsey ( woolsey.house.gov ). She is pictured above (with the green lapels) with former Congresswoman Pat Schroeder (pink lapels) at a fundraiser for my mom this past weekend.

Indeed these two amazing women look alike, sort of. Silver white bob and all. But mostly they act alike. They are both total crack pots. My mom, still stopped now and then in DC by people who mistake her for the honorable Mrs. Schroeder, thought it would be a hoot to dress as twins and celebrate their collective fabulousness.

It literally brought down the house.

Pat Schroeder was in congress from 1972 until 1996 (thirteen terms!).

My mom has been in Congress since 1992 and is about to embark on her ninth term.

Another thing these amazing women have in common—stamina.

As the daughter of a congresswoman I can tell you—Congress is a drag. Imagine swimming up stream in the ultimate bureaucratic environment riddled with democrat wishy-washiness and republican heinousness (my words - not hers)—and you know what—my mom rocks it.

Amongst a billion amazing things she does and has done—she (as of July 2) has presented on The Floor 270 (her guestimate) 5 minute speeches on how and why to end the war in Iraq. This is a record. No member of congress has ever used the much unknown “take 5 minutes at then end of every session and talk about whatever you want” opportunity to make such a statement.

It is on the record—forever and ever. Just like how I love my mother—forever and ever.

New Product Development at a Chocolate Factory

The world of New Product Development at a newly forming chocolate company is a sweet but busy world. There is a huge list of yummy products to launch in the coming months — and they are all at various stages of development.

As the person wrangling all these products — I am constantly interacting with various teams to strive for timely launches. I say ‘strive’ because in actual fact, our two launches to date have not quite met our original schedule. I will say it has all been a learning process; everything seems to take so much longer than anticipated.

At times it can feel like an elaborate team dance and I am the choreographer, trying to keep each mover in motion and coordinating with the others. Or maybe it is more like a symphony orchestra; each team here is a different instrument section filling a critical role that contributes to the overall sound, playing at times separately or in unison, each dependent on each other for the end result:

• The Cacao Sourcing team brings in cacao bean samples and final orders from all over the world
• The R & D team tests all the cacao, recording and archiving all quality notes and deciding what is superior enough to purchase
• The Operations team ensures timely production schedules and accurate inventory records
• The Marketing team ensures we have effective product launches — with great packaging, a cool website, successful public outreach activities and good media buzz
• The Sales team sells it all

Of course every single person in our team in some way is contributing to any launched product (where would we be without our brilliant engineers who are building out the factory?) — but the peeps above are the ones I most commonly interact with.

A typical conductor’s score for a symphony orchestra can include the notes for 10 - 20 different “voices” all playing at once. The conductor’s role is to follow the music for each player, keep the tempo, communicate incessantly with everyone, listen critically, and respond constantly to keep all of the voices working smoothly together, thusly:

So, imagine Cacao Sourcing (violins), R & D (violas), Operations (cellos), Marketing (bass), Sales (horns) — and more — all working in unison to propel each launch.

There are certainly lots of interacting moving parts in a newly emerging chocolate factory — and when it works smoothly I bet it will sing; but we are still working out all the moves. If we were a symphony, I would say we are still tuning our instruments and learning how to play together. New protocols are constantly evolving and I am incessantly considering how everything can improve for the next launch. The sheet music is being written as we grow and learn.

For now, we are busily working to launch our new Fruity chocolate and there is an exciting crescendo of activity around here.

How to Taste Chocolate

Enjoying chocolate should involve exploration, learning, and all of your senses. With that in mind, here's our guide to help you to learn, explore, and taste chocolate like we do in the TCHO lab while teaching your palate a new trick or two.

Smell is 90% of taste. To smell your chocolate, you should start out by giving it a little massage. By warming up the chocolate, you release some of the scent that’s been locked in, and you also get your taste buds ready to receive the chocolatey goodness. Different smells can indicate different parts of the world, and even specific bean breeds. What do you smell? Let your brain make associations, even if they aren't logical. Does your chocolate smell like Muir Woods? Your grandma's cranberry sauce? A lavender bush? Go with it.

Look at the consistency of the chocolate's color. Is it even? Is the chocolate shiny? The shinier a chocolate, the better it's been tempered (tempering is the process that lines up the chocolate molecules into a crystal lattice). Is there any white, powdery-looking stuff on the top of your chocolate? This is called bloom, and happens when chocolate isn't tempered correctly.

Listening to your chocolate is more important than you might think. And the sound your chocolate makes is also related to the molecules in it. When they're all lined up (and shiny), it's harder to break them apart. So when you break good chocolate apart, it should make a clean, bright, snapping sound.

Texture is a big deal, so how does the melting chocolate feel in your mouth? Waxy? Smooth? Gritty? Smooth usually means good, but there really is no right or wrong here; if you enjoy something, don't listen to anyone who tells you it isn't "good."

On to the big question. How does your chocolate taste? If chocolate is overly sweet or vanilla-flavored, it more or less defeats the whole point of eating chocolate, which, ultimately, is to taste chocolate. So what does the chocolate taste like? Is it bright? Bitter? It might help to work your way from generalities to specifics. What other foods does the chocolate remind you of? How does the flavor change as the chocolate melts and dissipates? Do the flavors interact in different ways over time?

The taste of chocolate matures over a tasting session, and after the chocolate is gone there are still opportunities for taste. The length of a chocolate aftertaste, or "tail" as it's called, is an indication of quality, as long as you enjoy the tail, of course. Is the aftertaste different from the way the chocolate tasted when it was present? Is it woodier now? Drier? Did the chocolate improve or deteriorate with mouth-time

Remember: every mouth is different, and there are no right or wrong answers in tasting. Discover your chocolate!

A Trip to Texas

This week I traveled back to my hometown of Austin, Texas, and BOY! was it hot. And wow, since I have been gone, so many things have been built up. And I think it's only been a year and a half. Sheesh! Pictured below is just one of the razed buildings downtown (the former home of Texas' first brewpub—that will be making way for more high-rise condos):

While we were there we saw and did many things:

We saw cats...

And kids...

And rented a boat...

And ate duelling paellas...

And boy did we eat meat!

One thing that Texans are REALLY interested in is MEAT! As evidenced by the meat-fest at Cooper's Old Time Pit BBQ in Llano, Texas:

And, as always, everyone is interested in chocolate, and I enjoyed bringing some TCHO love with me to share with my friends and family. One thing I always had to remember, however, was never leave it in the car!!

Anyway, it was quite an interesting time I had there, reconnecting with friends and family. I have to say, though, that I was quite happy to be back in good ol' 65-degree SF!

Blog Clog

Lately Chocolate seems to hogging my internal blog—between factory deadlines, chocolate making equipment, permitting issues and delays, production planning, ERP/MRP systems, packaging machines complexities, health department certifications, HAACP plans and on and on....

This weekend however, what is really top of mind is my great friend of 15 years and housemate of 2 years, Patrick. It's Patrick's birthday this weekend, and traditionally I would remember and celebrate his birthday a week or so after I would serendipitously find out it had passed. Even though Patrick lived with me he would never intimate in any way that his birthday was approaching. Two years ago I travelled 14 hours from Munich to San Francisco after spending 10 days at the world cup with him—not knowing it was his birthday. I was so mad at him! I am someone who highly reveres the sacred birthday, celebrating and engaging all of my friends in celebrating " the 11 days of Laurel"—5 days before and 5 days after my birthday (really, it's not as self-indulgent as it sounds!). Patrick has religiously served as the "11 days" organizer and chief roaster, relishing every bit.

This weekend we planted a tree in remembrance of Patrick, who died two months ago of a massive heart attack…must stop blogging now, too emotional…. I guess writing it means it is real, and I still cannot believe he is gone.

OK, back online.... The tree, a tazmanian tree fern, is so very Patrick: its thick stocky trunk like him, unique and very, very Jurassic Park. He would comment when we went to Golden Gate Park how cool and prehistoric looking the grove of tree ferns was.

I miss the constant professional dialog between us, as we served as de facto career consultants for one another for the last few years. I toiled over my decision to take the job with TCHO or the job with Shutterfly, Patrick's company at the time. He wanted me to work for Shutterfly, but knew me well enough and listened carefully enough to me to acknowledge that "my heart was into TCHO," and nudged me in my natural direction.

I miss a million things about him—his void is profound—but most of all his insane laugh jolts me alive whenever I think of it, reminding me what a daily gift it is to be working, loving, and playing. Happy Birthday, Padu!

In Germany, at the World Cup:

His mother's favorite picture—seriously:

Juggling in Berlin:

At the Ice Bar in Poland: