My Chocolatey World Essay Procedure: You may use any of the texts we have read in class and for homework to support your thesis for essay 1. Read for key i

My Chocolatey World Essay Procedure: You may use any of the texts we have read in class and for homework to support your thesis for essay 1. Read for key ideas that relate to your thesis. You may also research outside sources for your essay to explain your thesis.

Answer the essay prompt
3-3.5 pages required
Format the first page MLA style (look to the module MLA for an example
Include cover memo to front of essay
Write this essay in first person. This will be the only essay you write in first person though.

Readings available on Canvas: (Look under modules essay 1 Your Chocolate Story)

The Chocolate Cake that Saved my Life by Dorie Greenspan (article)
This is My Chocolate Story from the Boston Globe (article)
One Woman’s Story by Amy E. Robertson (article)
These Ivory Coast Cocao Farmers Had Never Tasted Chocolate by Eliza Barclay (NPR article and video)

Essay Prompt: What is your chocolate story? (Your answer is your thesis!)

Minimum Requirements:

The essay contains a clear introduction, body paragraphs, and a conclusion.
The essay supports your thesis with appropriate quotes and paraphrases the author’s ideas.
Proofread, making sure that grammar errors don’t interfere with readability and comprehension and attempt to use coordinating and subordinating conjunctions.
Write a final draft answering the essay prompt (3-3.5 pages) and include a cover memo answering the three questions.

An “A” paper will meet all the minimum requirements AND…

The essay contains a thesis statement that gives the readers a clear idea of what you are critiquing.
Included are three quotes from texts and writing that shows you carefully unpacked and critiqued those quotes.
Develop ideas completely and wrap it up to conclude strongly.
Students should pay close attention to style and mechanics in all of your work by implementing the organization and writing skills introduced in this class.
Careful proofreading together with correct grammar and punctuation usage is crucial in this class. Although the spellchecker is a valuable tool, one that students absolutely should use, students cannot simply run a spell-check without also proofreading a paper. As we know, spellcheckers do not flag everything, and may incorrectly flag some items. Only careful proofreading can find all the errors. In conjunction with the spellchecker, also enable the Microsoft Word grammar checker to run concurrently with the spellchecker. Lack of proofreading — formatting, punctuation, spelling and grammar mistakes — will result in an NP grade.
Questions always arise regarding what constitutes a “page,” so to ensure we all use the same guidelines for essay length, a “page” for essays is a full 8 ½ x 11 inch page.
Follow the standard MLA formatting guidelines.
-Essay is double-spaced.

-Use 12 pt. Times New Roman text running from the top margin to the bottom margin

-All margins are one inch wide, no greater. The exception is the first page with the author block and essay title, in which the text runs from one line space below the title to the one-inch margin at the bottom.

-Single space after period (or punctuation) at end of sentence.

*Students should always keep an electronic copy of work in case of loss (yours or mine). One Woman’s Quest To Tell ‘The African Story
Through Chocolate’
Amy E. Robertson , November 28, 2017, https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2017/11/28/563760910/onewomans-quest-to-tell-the-african-story-through-chocolate
Selassie Atadika, owner of Midunu Chocolates, says she likes to use African
spices in chocolate because its “a way to introduce people to our flavor profiles in an easy format.”
Midunu Chocolates
When I meet Ghanaian chocolatier Selassie Atadika, the first thing she does is pull a box of chocolates out of
her bag. Then, introductions aside, she launches into a story.
It’s a story of melding chocolate and spices, of straddling Africa and America, and of connecting cultures and
people through taste.
Atadika opens the box of chocolates and points to a powdery green confection in the middle. “This is moringa
with white chocolate. Moringa is a leaf, it’s known to have medicinal properties.” The inside looks like a pale
green marzipan, but the taste is mild and grassy, and the mouthfeel is of a dense ganache.
Another truffle has a pattern of cocoa pods embossed on its shell. It’s filled with milk chocolate scented with
Atadika’s own blend of five West African spices. She only reveals one of the spices: prekese, a Ghanaian plant
whose fragrant pods are traditionally used to flavor soups. Prekese is at risk of extinction due to deforestation,
and Atadika notes that the spice has been included in Slow Food’s Ark of Taste, which aims to protect culinary
heritage. The taste is nuanced, both fruit and peppery, and utterly delicious.
“It’s telling the African story through chocolate,” says Atadika.
Atadika’s story
Born in Ghana but raised in Westchester County, just north of New York City, Atadika grew up thinking she
would become a doctor. Once at Dartmouth, she switched from pre-med to geography and environmental
studies. Although Atadika dreamed of culinary school, her father objected. She ended up instead in a successful
career with the United Nations.
“But I still kept cooking,” Atadika says. She has lived in Liberia, South Sudan, Kenya and Senegal, and her
work took her throughout the continent. “I really enjoyed it. I ate my way through a lot of countries with
UNICEF.”
I ask Atadika how many of Africa’s 54 countries she has been to. “The list of countries I have not been to would
be shorter,” she says. For the record, Atadika has been to 43.
While working in Senegal, Atadika joined forces with two more food-loving friends, and created a pop-up
restaurant that was wildly popular. After dipping her toes in the culinary world for a couple of years, she finally
took the plunge. In 2014, Atadika resigned from the UN, moved back to her native Ghana and began cooking
full time.
Atadika started with catering and pop-up dinners. “It wasn’t my plan to do chocolates,” she says. “But whatever
I do in food I look at in terms of adding value, and chocolate just kind of popped in, because we have this cocoa
but we weren’t really processing it at the level we should be.” Midunu Chocolates was born.
Chocolate in Ghana
Ghana is the world’s second largest producer of cacao, after neighboring Côte D’Ivoire. The country produces
some 900,000 tons of cacao per year, primarily planted and harvested by small farmers. Unlike Côte D’Ivoire,
Ghana still uses plantain and banana leaves for the fermentation process, which Atadika says gives the
chocolate a special flavor. With few exceptions, the fermented cacao is purchased by the government of Ghana,
which sterilizes and sorts it, then sells it on the open market. Cargill, Nestle and Hershey are all major buyers.
For now, Atadika is a chocolatier (creating truffles) and not a chocolate maker (turning beans into bars),
although she hopes to also become the latter one day. “It would be really important to me to be able to identify
the farmers that have the practices I want,” Atadika says. There are exemptions to purchasing cocoa from the
government which allow buyers to purchase directly from farmers, and Atadika is looking into that for the
future.
Africa on a plate
In her experience as a chef in Ghana, Atadika realized that Africans themselves weren’t necessarily familiar
with flavors from other parts of the continent — and sometimes not even from other parts of Ghana. As she
does in her dinners, Atadika seeks to inject those flavors into her chocolates. “It’s a play on sweet and savory,
and a way to introduce people to our flavor profiles in an easy format,” she says.
Left, a ripe cacao pod. Right, truffles from Midunu chocolates contain spices and flavors from all over Africa.
Midunu Chocolates
Atadika says that she is narrating stories of Africa on a plate. Cape Malay curry from southern Africa, berbere
chili from the Horn of Africa, and ras el hanout from Northern Africa all make appearances. “I like to pick the
spices that have a little bit of complexity,” says Atadika. “For example, the berbere, it’s not just a chili flavor.
There’s cardamom, there’s coriander. There are different flavors that you will taste at the beginning of the
chocolate, and by the end you get the heat, so there’s always a little bit of a surprise.”
Using savory in sweets is unusual in Ghana, and Atadika attributes her willingness to break the chocolate mold
to her American upbringing. She describes Ghanaians as conservative in the way they see food, and herself as
unafraid of playing around with new ideas. But she also wants to experiment with flavors as a way of
safeguarding traditional ingredients — like prekese. “You need to find a way to keep it relevant in the context
of today to make sure it’s still used.”
Not all of Midunu’s 22 flavors are savory. A jelly paste of basil-scented pineapple is in encased in one chocolate
shell, while a fruity pink concoction of hibiscus, spices and white chocolate fills another. Some flavors are
seasonal, such as chocolate infused with African star apple, a tart orange-colored fruit with seeds that form the
shape of a star. Native to Nigeria, the fruit is only in season for about six weeks.
It’s all in the name
Like any good storyteller, Atadika chooses names carefully. She has bestowed on each chocolate a woman’s
name from the region that the flavors represent. West African five-spice — Adwoa; Ethiopian berbere —
Almaz; North African spices — Laïla. And the company name, Midunu, is a story in itself.
“Midunu is an Ewe word,” Atadika explains. Ewe is one of the 250 languages spoken in Ghana. Short for “va
midunu,” it means “come, let’s eat,” and was what Atadika’s father would say to call the family to dinner each
evening. She adds, “In many African cultures, you never eat alone. There’s always an invitation, no matter how
much or how little you have, to always invite anyone else around you to share.”
This is my chocolate story. What’s yours?
Some sweet and bittersweet memories from civic leaders, pastry chefs, and restaurateurs to
celebrate Chocolate: The Exhibition, through May 7 at the Museum of Science.
February 1, 2017 https://sponsored.bostonglobe.com/museum-of-science/my-chocolate-story/
Nothing beats Baileys’ hot fudge
Mention the hot fudge sundaes at Baileys to any resident of the bay state over the age of 50 and I’m guessing
the majority will pause a second before recalling greater Boston’s now shuttered chocolate emporium and the
purveyors of Beantown’s most sensual experience this side of the combat zone. Why even members of the
storied Watch and Ward Society, incorporated as The New England Society for the Suppression of Vice, would
find their mouths watering at the memory of freshly ladled hot fudge cascading down twin peaks of velvety
vanilla ice cream then overflowing lava-like onto silver plated platters that could’ve been lifted from a Sargent
watercolor. Richard Johnson, curator, New England Sports Museum
A visit to the chocolate capital
“My favorite chocolate experience was visiting the chocolate capital of the country in Hershey, Pennsylvania. It
was unlike anything I had ever experienced before. It smelled like chocolate in the entire town, it was
incredible. I ate way too much chocolate during that trip, but I don’t regret it.” Boston Mayor Marty Walsh
Mayor Marty Walsh
Learning from a chocolate legend
Prior to meeting Robert Steinberg, one of the founders of Sharffenberger chocolate, I had
never been a chocolate lover. Sure I *liked* chocolate, but love? Nah, chocolate felt like a cop-out. As a
professional pastry chef I knew the quickest way to increase my dessert sales was to fold, pipe, or pour
chocolate all over my latest creation. It didn’t matter what the dessert actually was; if there was chocolate in it,
people clamored for it. Robert marched into my pastry station at Rialto some 20 years ago and handed me some
rough chopped chunks of dark chocolate. “Don’t chew. Just let it sit in your mouth,” he instructed. As the
chocolate slowly softened and eventually melted, I tasted raspberries, raisins, coffee, red wine. Was that a hint
of pepper? I was blown away. I had never really understood what people talked about when they tasted wine or
coffee. Now I got it. We tasted several varieties that day, comparing how the chocolate felt on our tongues,
what you smelled after swallowing, how tasting chocolate with some salt mixed in made the chocolate deeper
and richer. He contrasted his chocolate with what I had in the kitchen and it was clear how much more acid and
depth and fruit his had. From that day on I have adored chocolate. I obsess about the flavors and mouthfeel of
all of the chocolates we use at Flour. Sadly we switched from Scharffenberger about 10 years ago when we
noticed that the flavors had distinctly changed. (The company was sold to Hershey’s and Robert passed away.)
Every day I eat either a chocolate chip cookie or a double chocolate cookie and let the chocolate chunks slowly
melt in my mouth. Joanne Chang, owner, Flour Bakery
Chef Joanne Chang
When chocolate saves animals
One very fond memory was when we had Endangered Species chocolate bars and gave them out to guests
asking if they would make a contribution to our Conservation Fund. One little girl’s eyes lit up and she said
something to the effect of, “Wow! Eating chocolate and saving animals!” John Linehan, president, New
England Zoo
At the peak of flavor
To hike the Kanneralm, a mountainous region in Austria, one buys supplies at the
open farmer’s market in Salzburg: chocolate, oranges, schwarzbrot (black bread), and Austrian dried sausage.
My wife, who is half-Austrian, leads the way from her family’s small cabin, hiking inside the tree line and high
scrub and then, after an hour, breaking out onto high pastures and ridges. In the distant valleys, cattle graze for
the summer, but on the ridge tops it’s windy and cool. We find a good spot on a boulder near a large metal cross
and break out the provisions. We chew the tough, dried sausage along with the rich, dark bread, malty and
slightly bitter. The oranges are followed by the sharp snap of Manner dark chocolate. It’s the way chocolate is
meant to be eaten — bold and bare, bittersweet and offset by the juicy tang of citrus. Chocolate is not an
ingredient, it’s a thing unto itself. You put it in your knapsack and then travel the world. Chocolate, oranges,
bread, and sausage — one could live an entire life of gourmand extravagance and do worse. Christopher
Kimball, owner, Christopher Kimball’s Milk Street
A Girl Scout’s confession
“This is terribly embarrassing and the first time I’m speaking of it publicly, but when I was a young girl, I was
harshly reprimanded for pretending to have sold all of my Girl Scout thin mint cookies when I actually ate them
all. Honestly, I couldn’t eat chocolate for many years after… and I learned my lesson.” Ayanna Pressley,
Boston City Councilor-at-Large
City Councilor-at-Large Ayanna Pressley
Baby’s first chocolate ice cream
Soon after I opened the original J.P. Licks Homemade Ice Cream shop in J.P., I encountered my first
“Chocolate Baby.” I waited on a young father who was buying ice cream for him, his wife, and their baby. The
mother and father got cups of Oreo ice cream and the dad ordered a chocolate ice cream cone with a cup. It was
a slow day, so I was able to watch an American rite of initiation occur in its entirety. Seated across from his
wife and child, he handed the chocolate ice cream cone to his wife, who then presented it to the child. The
father had his camera out and began documenting the moment. The child grabbed the cone from their mother
and began pushing the ice cream in the general direction of their mouth. Within seconds cheeks, forehead, and
mouth were a creamy chocolate mess. Both parents were cheering their offspring on and the baby screeched in
delight. The more of a mess the child made the happier all three became. This was the first of scores of
chocolate ice cream initiations I have had the privilege of witnessing over the past 35 years at J.P. Licks. Vince
Petryk, owner, J.P. Licks
The secret to living to 103? Chocolate.
My grandparents began selling chocolate out of their home in the fall of 1925, officially opening a shop in 1935
in Belmont. Today, their business is Phillips Chocolates with stores on Morrissey Boulevard and South Shore
Plaza and an online business that sells chocolates nationwide. Since I was a little girl, chocolate has been a
central part of my life. I vividly remember working in the chocolate shop as a very young child. Because I was
underage, I was always ready to run out the door should the authorities come! While I swept the store or packed
boxes, I would watch my grandmother dip each chocolate painstakingly by hand. We did not have a conveyor
belt then, so we would polish paper to put the chocolates on so that their bottoms would be perfectly smooth
and flat. Before air conditioning, we would control the temperature of the room with ice, and my grandfather
would make coffee cream centers by brewing a pot of coffee, as a start. Sometimes we’d make a flavor called
“Wedding Cake,” by cooking down all the leftover scraps and putting decorations on the finished piece. My
dear mother, who lived 103 incredible years, ate a little bit of chocolate every day. Dark chocolate peppermint
patties were her favorite. She would put them in the refrigerator so when she took a bite they would have the
perfect snap! That snap was very important! Mary Ann Nagle, third generation chocolate maker of Phillips
Chocolate, Boston’s oldest chocolatier
24 layers of chocolate goodness
“In Greece, we celebrate Name Days, similar to birthdays, and each year my family here in the U.S. would get
me a decadent, 24-layer chocolate cake. It is a special memory because it combines my love of food (and
chocolate) and a little bit of my home country.” Ioannis Miaoulis, president, Boston Museum of Science
Extra innings call for extra cookies
“My biggest weakness is chocolate chip cookies. I “stress- eat” them during the late innings. Not good, given
we have 162 (plus) games a year!” Sam Kennedy, president, Boston Red Sox
Not a chocolate fan. Well, except that one time . . .
“I know it’s sacrilege to say, but, for the most part, I’m not a huge chocolate fan. I do, however, have one rich
exception: Belgian hot chocolate. A long time ago I was visiting Brussels (a little city, right between France and
Germany). It was a busy day, and by late afternoon I was exhausted. I stopped in a two-floor cafe that
overlooked a small park. It was a little touristy, but it was warm and smelled heavenly. Like I said, I’m not a big
chocolate guy, but on a whim I ordered the classic hot chocolate. Why not? The server dropped it off. I took a
sip. I almost spewed the contents everywhere. NOT what I was expecting. It was insanely bitter, and insanely
good. The server noticed my confusion and explained that classic Belgium hot chocolate has little to no sugar
and is often made with dark chocolate (hence the bitter goodness). I highly recommend it, but be forewarned.”
Garrett Harker, owner, Eastern Standard
A pastry chef’s moment of truth
“Twelve years into my career as a pastry chef I had the opportunity to travel to Chicago and visit the French
Pastry School for a “Chocolate Showcase” class with Stephane Leroux, one of the top pastry chefs in the world.
Over four days, I saw that he was able to make absolutely anything out of chocolate. He used random household
objects, like old blinds, to make incredibly detailed and realistic shapes and textures. I realized in that moment
that I still had so much more to learn and that inspiration was in every corner of my life. I often think back to
that moment when I realized that while I was more of a chocolate expert than most people in the world, there
were so many more creative ways I could be working it.” Ryan Pike, executive pastry chef at The Langham,
Boston
Unforgettable edible art
“Of all my chocolate experiences, the chocolate tart at Alinea stands out as an unforgettable end to an
unforgettable meal. I had to work hard to get a reservation at the fancy Chicago restaurant, but it was worth it.
Chef-owner Grant Achatz himself made the dessert tableside, right on a silicone table mat. He poured milk
chocolate atop a crust in a frame, which he then removed, leaving a perfect circle of velvety chocolate magic.
Next, he painted the table mat with streaks of violet syrup, which tasted like purple, and crème fraîche. Achatz
finished by sprinkling hazelnut pieces and edible glitter. I can’t imagine a better finale than that chocolate tart:
chocolatey, creamy, nutty, crunchy, floral — as delicious as it was beautiful. ” The Girl Who Ate Boston,
blogger
The Chocolate Cake That Saved My Vacation
Credit…Sarah Anne Ward for The New York Times. Food stylist: Maggie Ruggiero. Prop stylist: Amy Elise
Wilson.
By Dorie Greenspan, https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/30/magazine/chocolate-cake-lisbon-recipe.html
Oct. 30, 2019
I don’t see how it’s possible to rack up frequent-flier points without racking up mishaps too. There will
inevitably be delayed flights, bad meals, drivers who take the long way around town, lost scarves or hours spent
wandering in a jet-lagged daze because your room’s not ready. Despite these annoyances — all of which I know
well (I still miss the hand-knit gloves I bought in Copenhagen and left on the flight to Stockholm) — I’d always
thought of myself as a lucky traveler. Until Lisbon. That’s where, earlier this year, I was felled by hubris, the
tragic flaw of Macbeth and many of us who were raised in New York City.
I paid no heed to the concierge when she implored my husband, Michael, and me to take the sleek black tour
bus across the street and steer clear of the No. 28 tram, a trolley that goes through the center of the city, passes a
clutch of monuments, curves around, so that the shoreline comes into view periodically and majestically, and
then stops on a hill with a vista. Mentioned in many guides as the ideal way to get a quick lay of the land as well
as to be pickpocketed, I thought I could beat the odds. I’m sure it was the good-looking guy in the porkpie hat,
the one turned toward me when everyone else on the tram was facing front, who got all my credit cards and my
spunk too. I sat on a bench at the end of the line and cried.
Michael says that the first full sentence I uttered after I discovered the theft was: “Don’t tell the concierge!” I
really didn’t want to hear her say, “I told you so.”
Over the hours that it took to call emergency centers on two continents, I went through all the stages of shock,
anger and shame. I would never come to acceptance, and I hadn’t reached resignation, but was I ever hungry.
Famished, actually, and craving the comfort I can usually draw from food. Armed with the must-taste list we’d
spent days preparing, we headed…
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