Organic Chocolate

Green & Black’s Organic Maya Gold chocolate. I hadn’t tasted this in years. It used to be one of the weekly temptations lurking in the organic aisle of Sainsbury’ s or Waitrose, when we lived in London, a luxury but available for the occasional splashing out for a chocolate orgy. Since we came to South Africa, and rural South Africa without all the city delis at our disposal, anything organic has been a rare find. One of the things I missed at first was being able to shop for organic flour, pasta and the rest, at fractionally above normal prices, as part of the weekly grocery shop. Here we have to ‘source’ organic products or grow our own.

It is starting to improve now as awareness grows and farmers start to realise that there is money to be made from converting to organic. There are now several organic farmer’s markets around Cape Town and organic products are starting to have a presence in the city, but the market here is proportinally smaller than in Europe, trade standards not as evolved and the distance from other producer countries means that imported goods are expensive. Here are a couple of Capetonian blogs that can tell you far more than me about the state of organic living in our city: MotherCityLiving who is also a finalist in the SA Blog Awards - (don't forget to vote for us!) - and Urban Sprout.

When my husband arrived home one evening, having been requested to pick up some milk at the petrol station, not only did he bring the milk but he also triumphantly brandished a precious bar of Green & Black chocolate. Now this is a small service station beside the N7 out of Cape Town with a KFC and a grocery shop attached, busy catering to holiday makers off to the West Coast, but not a deli, nor a gourmet organic store by any means. Dangerous to have such an addictive substance available so close by!

If you are a chocolate lover and haven’t yet tried this chocolate, you must. Maya Gold is a dark chocolate with the addition of a hint of orange and spice. Unlike all other forms of chocolates in our house, which have a tendency to diminish rapidly once opened, this one has lasted a whole week, with a small taste of its intense flavour every evening enough to satisfy the senses. Seconds are possible, any more would be overkill. Think the book Chocolat where she mixes up exactly the right combination of chocolate for every customer, some with rare spices and exotic ingredients. Chocolate with mystique, a chocolate bar that lasts a whole week is a miracle indeed.