Love, Love, Love. Blogging Along Sing a Song

There’s nothing you can say that can’t be sung… There’s nothing you can say that can’t be said with an unexpected gesture at an unexpected time. It’s easy, all you need is Chocolove.

Fitting perhaps, is that during Thanksgiving we are often contemplating what we are thankful for and then resonating with that. There is a certain feeling in our hearts that comes from hanging out in that space of gratefulness and appreciation; it might be love. For me, I am there daily and more so this time of year. And we at Chocolove are there for you as well.

As we swing from feeling thankful and giving thanks, from Thanksgiving to gift giving, to giving a little bit of love, Chocolove is ready to help. What if… What if a Chocolove bar were a battery of sorts for thankfulness and love, where one could contemplate and feel thankful and charge up a Chocolove bar with a heart-to-hand connection and share the love?  Having seen the effect of a gift of Chocolove received, I think it indeed works that way, and it’s easy.  Add a note and perhaps some ribbon, a sprig of shrubbery and you will certainly have made the day of someone in your life. This season gives you permission to say thanks, to say I care about you.

Love can come in many splendid forms; from romantic to neighborly to platonic to brotherly to sisterly to self-love. By all means, be sure to put yourself on the list and enjoy Chocolove while sharing the love with others. First get your Chocolove on and then help others with their Chocolove.

Put a little Chocolove in your life and the world will be a better place for you and me, just go for it and see.

Happy Holidays from Chocolove

Happy Martin Luther King Jr. Day

Martin Luther King Jr. was a person I vividly recall from my childhood and have read about every year since.

One benefit of longevity is to recall events from your life and compare these with current events. I lived in North Carolina as a boy in the 1960s and I recall events of that time.

As a sign of enduring legacy, in 1986 President Ronald Reagan signed a law making the birthday of Martin Luther King Jr. a national holiday. A national holiday is a great gift as it allows us a day to remember and reflect on his life’s work and legacy. Today, January 15th, his true birthday, I choose to take time to remember and reflect.

In 1963 King lead a peaceful march of 250,000 people in Washington D.C. where he delivered a speech that came be known as his “I Have a Dream” speech. This speech was a powerful message to me a child and has resonated with me since.

While many remember King and can link that memory with his “I Have a Dream” speech, fewer know that he gave an acceptance speech for a Nobel Prize for Peace in 1964.

In the acceptance speech, given on behalf of the civil rights movement, King said, “After contemplation, I conclude that this award which I receive on behalf of that movement is a profound recognition that nonviolence is the answer to the crucial political and moral question of our time – the need for man to overcome oppression and violence without resorting to violence and oppression.”

King continued, “Sooner or later all the people of the world will have to discover a way to live together in peace, and thereby transform this pending cosmic elegy into a creative psalm of brotherhood. If this is to be achieved, man must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression and retaliation. The foundation of such a method is love.”

Love was a good foundation in 1964 when I was 4 years old, and love is still a good foundation today, and every day. Happy Martin Luther King Jr. Day.

The Making of Chocolove

The core and heart of Chocolove is in our crafting of chocolate treats that bring joy to you and those you share them with. At this time of year this becomes clear and something I am thankful for.

Our master chocolatier and team hand make all the gourmet chocolates that we sell only on our website. This dedication to craft work and the artisan approach to hand-made products is laborious and time consuming, but in it is a real value of resonating with the art of chocolate. This hand work or craftwork helps us keep the product real and in touch with every detail and ingredient quality.

At the simplest view, it is a person making something to bring joy to another person. This essence— you might call it love—is in and of itself so valuable for us at Chocolove. We are aware of others, feel connected to others, and strive to bring joy to lives of others. Thinking of and working to bring joy to others by way of handmade chocolate: Chocolove.

In the craft of hand making chocolates you enjoy, we return to the basics and pursuit of the excellence of chocolate, and we also benchmark the rest of our work. The entire crew in the Chocolove factory benefit from the knowledge and dedication to bringing joy for you and yours. 

Cheers.

Happy Holidays from Chocolove.

Celebrating Mother’s Day

Mother. An amazingly deep word, worthy of a single word sentence.

Perhaps the next most common word in a sentence with mother is love.

At Chocolove, we look at love and resonate with love in as many ways as we can. And what bigger and better love than motherly love; a love we all share as we all have (or had) a mother. Some who are mothers also have this love for their children. The love we all feel for our mothers is a love that spans the test of time and for the rest of life, and is such a huge and lasting love.

As we celebrate Mother’s Day, we also celebrate life and love. A great way to say “I love you” is the Chocolove way, Happy Mother’s Day.

Easter: A Time of Renewed Life

The return of green grass, blue sky, and yellow and purple flowers is a reminder of life renewed. The change of seasons to spring and the Easter holiday have always been some of my favorites.

As I child I looked forward to Easter as it was a day filled with hope, hope on a few levels. On a simple level, I hoped for a chocolate bunny and Easter candy. Somehow chocolate made the day and time of year that much brighter. As we celebrated the changing of the seasons and life renewed, I was aware that it was somehow more colorful and refreshing with chocolate.  

On a deeper level, I felt hope of a new year. It seemed the change of the seasons from winter to spring was more like a new year than a date on a calendar. I was set free in a way to run and play in sunshine.

Easter has also always been, and still is, a time of contemplation and a search for meaning to life. This year I feel that we as a world have been in a long winter and just maybe are entering into a spring of hope and happiness. I feel what the world needs now, more than ever, is love.

Chocolove exists today for many reasons. The love of chocolate born out of the joy of chocolate in the spring and the search for deeper meaning and purpose in life many years ago are still present today in Chocolove. Happy Easter from Chocolove, please share it with someone you love.

Happy Valentine’s Day

What is Valentine’s Day?

I like Valentine’s Day because it is a holiday about love and a day when everyone can express their love.

“I love Chocolove.” I have heard this said countless times over the years.

What is love, but the feeling and the recognition of kindred spirits. The feeling of common ground and connection that can extend from one to another. The recognition that in some way we are all connected.

In some relationships it is expected (or hoped) that you would express yourself. Of course, most of us wish the other in our lives would take more than one day a year to express or be receptive to a celebration of love; no need to limit it to just one day. But it is great to have a day to remind us.

I am reminded of Louis Armstrong’s “What a Wonderful World” at this time. His composition and delivery are so clear and enjoyable on the level of a song that we might miss the actual message. I have read that he was a prolific writer. When you look at the song’s lyrics from a writer’s perspective and see things from his time and place, the message reads more like a Valentine: what he is really saying is ‘I love you’. The poetic grace of the message of “What a Wonderful World” is fitting for Valentine’s Day: a sort of universal or higher love. Music was his delivery of his wish for more happier people, and he succeeded.

This time of year, I also spend more time pondering, calculating, and imagining the number of people that are happier each day through Chocolove. I see people sharing Chocolove, and as they do, what they are really saying is, ‘I love you’.

Happy Valentine’s Day.

When We Give, We Give A Little Love

This time of year, my thoughts turn to giving and to giving to a large number and wide variety of people. I consider that there is love in the act of giving and in the gift itself. The love that sparks the idea of a gift, the attention to the person, the appreciation for who they are, the recognition of connection with them, the significance they have in your life: all are in essence, love. Love can have many forms and shapes and sizes. Whether we overtly try to consider why we give or what sparks us and motivates us to give, I would put forth that in giving, we feel some love of some type on some level.

This love can also be shown in how we see ourselves in one another: we recognize on some level that we are all connected. We are not really giving away something never to see it again, but we are sharing in a way that recognizes and reinforces love and nurturing the connections in the larger human nature.

And so it is that at Chocolove we are, in fact, aware of this. Even if you don’t see it the same way, we share that we see it this way, and we are happy to give a little love in everything we do and everything we make.

Chocolove

Giving Thanks

My son recently asked me, “Dad, why did you write ‘Giving Thanks’ on the calendar instead of ‘Thanksgiving’?” I shared with him that often we say a word or phrase without awareness of its origin and meaning, so I wrote it that way to give me and others extra time to think about giving thanks on Thanksgiving.

Every day that I wake up I am thankful. There was a time that either I was not aware, or I simply took this for granted. Perhaps taking things for granted is the opposite of giving thanks.

‘Thank you’ is a common phrase that I say and write dozens (some days over a hundred) of times a day. Many of those times I am aware of and say or write it with a deeper connection and feeling. I liken it to saying (or writing), I love you and even thanks, love you, or love. All phrases can be said or written to convey a depth of feeling, meaning, and sincerity that varies and may be quite deep for some. It is an expression from the heart.

I am thankful for family and the opportunity to love and share love. My thanks extend to everyone I interact with and for their thoughts and actions. This goes even further to those I may only exchange a message with who are in distant lands and are awake while I still sleep. I wake up earlier than most and am working with people halfway around the world before the sun rises, and so my thanks extend halfway around the world most days.

The tradition of Thanksgiving when I was growing up in the farming state of Iowa was that thanks were given for any amount of food gathered and especially for a good harvest. I think this still rings true. If we are giving thanks for a good harvest we are, by extension, giving thanks for harvesters and farmers of food. So, I take this moment, and ask you too, to give thanks for the farmers of cocoa, sugar, milk, and fruits and nuts. Being a farmer of sorts, I imagine farmers and harvesters are thankful too.

In my view of life, it is not enough to simply think that money equals thankfulness, or that it’s enough that someone got paid for their work. Instead, I think it is essential for the being part of being human to feel appreciated and thanked. And there is a profound feeling of wellbeing in the sharing of thankfulness. Happy Thanksgiving Day.

Chocolove: Putting the Love in Chocolate

Chocolove has worked smartly and persistently for years to get cocoa sourcing right. We see that the love is put in early in the process.

Beginning in 1983, I worked as a volunteer overseas in various farmer development programs managed and funded by VOCA, USAID, ACDI, and Land O‘Lakes Cooperative. Yes, the same brand of delicious butter and dairy products is in fact a farmer’s coop that also helps farmers around the world. Even after starting Chocolove in 1995 I continued to volunteer.

So, when it comes to buying cocoa you might consider that many years of working with farmers in producing countries on spice, herb, and cocoa crops shapes our policy on buying cocoa. It absolutely does.

Chocolove specifies certified, fully traceable cocoa. Over 90% of the cocoa beans that we purchase and package are traceable to the farmer coop where they were grown. What this means is the cocoa in a Chocolove bar is the cocoa that is from certified farms. You might expect this to be a simple fact for all chocolate, but not so for some other companies. Certification on our wrapper means that the cocoa in the bar was made by people following the laws of the International Labor Organization and the rules of the Rainforest Alliance. While you might think the Rainforest Alliance only cares about the rainforest, they are in fact focused on people first as stewards of the land and forest.

When buying chocolate, we write contracts 2 to 3 years in advance of taking delivery. We must, to secure contracts with farmers to get their agreement in advance to grow the cocoa the Chocolove way. In order for the farmer to go through extra training, inspections, and comply with extra rules and record keeping, the farmer receives more money for their cocoa beans. We are happy to give them predictable revenue at a better rate. In addition to paying more for complying with labor rules and protecting the rainforest, we pay more for quality. Because we contract with the same farmers year after year, we get consistent taste and quality. The added benefit of agreeing in advance to pay more is that the farmers leave the beans on the tree a little longer and cure and sort them better, putting a little love in the cocoa from the start. This results in value built in at the farmer level and great consistent taste year after year.

As we celebrate our 25th year, we continue to strive to do more to do right by the farmer. We quietly and consistently do what is right because we believe that Chocolove’s connection to the farmer and to you is something you can taste and well-being you can feel. So, when you say, “I love Chocolove”, it rings true.

Happy Mother’s Day

You may ask, “What does a chocolatier get their mother for Mother’s Day?”. My family tradition is making a gift, so this year I will be making chocolate chip cookies for my mother. 

My mother taught me to cook and I was happy to learn and help. From a weekly task of baking chocolate chip cookies as a kid for my family, under the watchful eye of my mother, I learned the art of making a taste and the joy of helping people be happier. From the seed of the joy of cooking for people, planted early on, grew Chocolove.

It is a joy once again to be in a much bigger kitchen and bake cookies for a much bigger family. Fortunately, I have the help and watchful eye of master chocolatier, Patrick Peeters. I will be working together with Patrick to bake chocolate chip cookies; I think we will have a few dozen extra.

Please place your orders early—for your mom of course. Check the website under the “Gift Boxes” category and place your order. Orders placed by the 5th will be baked the 5th and will ship out on the 6th. Happy Mother’s Day.