Chocolate Lovers!!

Thank you all SO much for your encouraging words and support.  You have no idea how much it meant to me to be walking from class to class and have someone come up to me and start talking to me about my blog, or asking me questions.  I LOVE it!  A week has gone by in which many new events have taken place.

It was a fairly typical, smooth week and Andy and I have been continuously trying to make plans for the Summer.  We found something VERY exciting out and have been praying for ways to make it work if it is what God has planned for us. (And NO I am not pregnant. :)) Prayers for guidance for us would be great and I will share what it is as soon as we figure it out for sure!

Now, on to what everyone is here for...CHOCOLATE!  With Easter coming up quickly, I thought this was quite appropriate!

There are these cookies that I absolutely LOVED growing up.  My mom would make them and bake them for less than the time listed on the packaging so they were gooey and the chocolate split apart like it does in the commercials with the long, milky string of pure bliss.  Tollhouse cookies. Yum.  How about Tollhouse pie?  Anyone ever try that?  It's sort of like an oatmeal pie but it is doused in chocolate...Nestles Tollhouse Chocolate.

Perhaps one of the most devastating finds yet. 

D.

As most other girls (at least that I know) I am completely 100% in love with Chocolate.  If it wasn't for my understanding of how terrible it is for you in excess, I would eat it all the time, tummy aches and all.  And despite those tummy aches, it actually does make my heart feel all better again, in any situation :) (my decision to give up meat and dessert for lent is probably the cause of all this heartburn I've been experiencing lately...lack of chocolate!)

Nestle, Toblerone, Crunch, Swiss Miss, Cadbury, AND Dove chocolate will no longer show up in our house.  Isn't that heart breaking!? That is like every single one of the best chocolates!

If you'd like more information on ethical reasons for boycotting these companies, check it out here.

This is a quote that I found on The Ethical Consumer's Website specifically relating to chocolate:
"A study conducted in 2002 estimated that of about 284,000 children working in the West African cocoa industry, 200,000 were in the Côte d’Ivoire and a “substantial minority” of these children were found to have been trafficked from Mali, Burkina Faso, and Togo.(2) The same study found that some 10,000 children in the Côte d’Ivoire were victims of human trafficking or enslavement, whilst 109,000 worked under the “worst forms of child labour”."

It continues to appall me at the fact that people can be so manipulative, conniving, and monstrous!  These are not cut and dry issues to be read about, they are complex, organized systems that have been around for decades!  The fact that people steal children to make them slaves in the cocoa industry to cheaply produce chocolate bars whose primary consumer is most likely CHILDREN is heartbreaking.

Anyways, I apologize to hand out such unfortunate facts, but these things need to be made known.

On a lighter note, head on down to your local Ten Thousand Villages or Co-op and pick up a few bars of Endangered Species chocolate!  They, along with all other companies that are rated "A", are all slave-free companies!

Endangered Species Chocolate is organic, made from small, family-owned farms, AND 10% of their profit goes to support organizations that are actively supporting humanity, wildlife, and the environment!

Other companies in the A category:Rapunzel, Equal Exchange, Divine.

Also, if you're wondering about Hershey's Chocolate Syrup...C!

Happy almost Easter!