Real Food + Real Fair

It has been forever, People.

Forever and ever since I posted on this blog. And yet, the Fair Trade journey continues! And now that I have almost successfully completed grad school, I am back, with new and better Fair Trade ideas and hope to share.

 So let's start simple. This week, I made this:
 



Er. No, I didn't make the delicious can of Fair Trade Baking Cocoa that is on the counter. That was made by farmers who partner with Equal Exchange, a Fair Trade company, to produce great product that provides a living wage and safe working conditions to the farmers and laborers. (Thank you, Equal Exchange)

 No, I made the homemade nutella sitting in front of it. Oh yes, indeed. It took me about 20 minutes. I can't take credit for the recipe. That credit goes to Chocolate Covered Katie, who has inspired some happy and healthy times in the old kitchen lately. (Thank you, Chocolate Health Queen)

Chocolate Covered Katie

 So, a few thoughts about this little endeavor.

 1) YUM. Yes, it was delicious. Rich, chocolatey, and luxurious. I gave it to my kids in a number of ways. I spread it on banana for snacks. I let them dip pretzels and apples into it. I spread it on buckwheat pancakes and called it breakfast. And I sat back and patted myself on the back for adding a nice big dose of fiber and protein to each meal with a minimum of sugar (I used 4 Tbs of pure maple syrup for the whole batch). I just ate it off a spoon while I drank my coffee. That worked well.

2) It was cheap. Well, okay, let me clarify that. It cost the same amount to make this as it would have cost to have bought a container of Nutella. I did the math. $3 Hazelnuts from Trader Joe's, plus 68 cents worth of Fair Trade Cocoa, less than 10 cents of vanilla extract and ditto the maple syrup. Voila.  Same amount of money for a product that has no additives, or preservatives, or other junk. And is Fair Trade. Such a deal. (There is, in fact, a very nice Fair-Trade Nutella called Choco-Dream which is available at Whole Foods Market and on-line, however it costs about $6, which is more than either my version or Nutella's version)

3) It was "Real". As you can probably tell, from reading "It was cheap", I am happy that all of the ingredients in this recipe were simple whole foods. (Okay, I don't know about the vanilla extract being whole, since there is alcohol in it, but it was "pure" at least). The real food thing has become more and more important to me since the time I last posted on this blog. For one thing, I watched Food Inc. and read Animal, Vegetable, Miracle.  And then I discovered Lisa Leake and her awesome blog, 100 Days of Real Food.

100 Days of Real Food

And it all started adding up for me. I would like to give my kids the least amount of processed food that I can. (Don't be too sad for them, they get more of that stuff from birthday parties, school, and holidays than I ever got in my whole childhood ever). And I would like to not go broke.** So in short, I have been making my own stuff a lot more. And using Fair Trade cocoa for the chocolate component has been easier than I ever imagined possible. It's delicious. And Fair. And how nice, that moving away from processed foods has included a move towards Fair Trade. Because let's not kid ourselves, Real Food people. Hershey's and Nestle and all the big Chocolate makers are in fact the same as Kraft, General Mills, Kelloggs, and all the other food giants who helped to campaign against GMO labeling in the state of California. Big business, banking on our dependence.

** As we all know, it is more expensive to purchase organic and Fair-Trade ingredients than to purchase regular. This is not to imply that the raw ingredients cost less. But rather, the cost of the processed, prepared food, when compared to the homemade kind is way closer than I would have expected.

So in a nutshell: DIY - who knew? The journey continues.

Because I say so

A few days ago, I found myself staring at someone's discarded cardboard Starbucks cup. Okay, it was my husband's, since I was driving his car. He had left the cup in the car and it was lying, empty and unloved, on a pile of other football junk, in the passenger seat.

Ah Starbucks. They are a powerful and interesting player in the world of coffee. I believe (and would need to double check this, but I believe it's true) that they are the 8th largest purchaser of coffee beans in the world. More complete details about Starbucks and their (minimal) Fair Trade involvement can be found on the Transfair USA website, but I will provide a few basics. Starbucks offers for retail sale, one brand of Fair Trade coffee, their Fair Trade Cafe Estima label. I was gifted some of this for my birthday (thanks Jen!) and am really looking forward to trying it out. When I say that the Cafe Estima brand is Fair Trade, I mean that it has a Transfair label on the package that shows it to be Fair Trade.

BUT, apparently, Starbucks doesn't think that this is really necessary. Because as I was looking at my husband's discarded cardboard cup, I saw this nice little message written on the side. I don't remember exactly how it went, but here was the gist:

"Starbucks pays farmers a living wage for coffee, and sources all of our products ethically. We keep close track of this stuff. So you can feel good about drinking the coffee"

Really. Oh. Okay. Thanks. There's nothing that makes me feel quite so good as having my hand patted in a condescending manner. Fill er up.

Why did this mealy little speech get my goat? Because it's totally disingenuous and they know it. This, in my mind, is the same exact thing as when you buy chicken or something that is labeled "All-Natural". Meaning basically, it wasn't cloned in a lab by Dr Frankenstein. Very reassuring.

So here is my open note to Starbucks:

Hi Guys,

Saw the cup. And I am insulted that you think that I don't know the difference between an independent third-party agency that labels and certifies Fair Trade and your advertising department. You know that most of us here in the United States will never set foot in a coffee field, nor visit a coffee farmer, and that we are totally reliant on someone else's audit of your production methods to know exactly how ethical you are. You also know that people are starting to ask questions about how coffee is grown and produced and about what is happening in the third world. And so, this is your answer? Write some syrupy paragraph on your coffee cups about how you pinky-swear that you're not exploiting people?

Here's the deal. There are people who just don't care and will never care. They will not read what you write on the cup and if they do, their eyes will glaze over. Then there are the people like me, who are concerned about the issue at hand, and we will actually read the cup. And the cup says nothing, except: "Trust us, we are not bad guys." You need to give us, the mindful consumers, something more than that. I didn't just fall off the turnip truck. I know that you have shareholders and employees to factor into your business calculations. I know that protecting your bottom line must be part of your top level decisions about sourcing. And it is for that very reason, BECAUSE I understand that, that I know - (and that YOU know), that it is not sufficient for you to be your own judge and jury on this issue. So until there is something of substance to write on that cup - something that has actual verification, SAVE THE INK!!!!!! Because your haiku about sustainability isn't making me feel any better!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Phew. Someone needs a nice big cup of Fair Trade coffee to straighten out that grumpy mood. I'm off to fill that need.

Until next time!

My Fair Easter

As Halloween approaches this year, I find myself thinking of....what else....candy. Halloween is like the Superbowl of Candy. When I was a kid, searching through my pumpkin at the end of the night to see what I got was one of the biggest thrills of the whole year. I think my favorite part was pulling something cool out and thinking "Wow, I don't even remember getting that one!". The whole ritual and the candy... it was mystery...it was excess...it was sweet. Truly better than digging through a trunk of gold pieces (when I was eight).

So, you might ask, knowing what I know about the chocolate industry...what does that mean for my holiday candy planning?

Here is a little story about last Easter. Last Easter I had just learned about Fair Trade. I had just heard this stuff about the chocolate industry. And I had found myself wondering what exactly the Easter Bunny was going to come up with for my kids. Because let's face it: we all know that an Easter Basket that only contains Peeps is a pretty weak way to greet the dawn.

Luckily for me, my church bookstore decided to sell Fair Trade Easter candy. They had chocolate bunnies, little chocolate eggs with hard sugar shells, and some filled chocolate eggs that had stuff like caramel in them. I know - YUM, right? These items were all beautifully foil wrapped and lovingly created, and, like most Fair Trade chocolate - they were more expensive than the alternatives. But after I saw them, I knew I was going to bite the bullet and go Fair Trade on this holiday. I was ready to take a first, wobbly step out onto the platform of change.

Now let me add to this story, that my lovely daughter had not, until this past year, had the "true" Easter experience of the Easter Bunny bringing scads of candy to her home. My husband and I thought on her first few Easters, that we could get away with hiding Easter eggs that had play-dough and stickers in them, with the rationale that what she didn't know, wouldn't hurt her. But, this year she was three, and thus, she knew the hard facts. The Easter Bunny brings candy.

So. Operation Fair Bunny was set. And the night before Easter, a pink and green Easter basket was carefully filled with fake grass, Fair Trade chocolate goodies, some Peeps, and a toothbrush that played "Here Comes Peter Cottontail". The toothbrush (which was an enormous hit, to you doubters out there) was purchased at Walgreens, a day or two before Easter. And while I was walking the aisle at Walgreens at that time, I came upon The Display of chocolate Easter bunnies and Easter swag. I had a moment. I stopped in front of a bunny that was literally the size of an actual rabbit, except it was made entirely out of chocolate. It was, and I don't think I'm exaggerating here, FRIGGING HUGE. And I thought, oh man. This bad boy in your basket would inspire shock and awe that wouldn't soon be forgotten. And the next thought I had, immediately following this thought was: Um, yeah, I can do without my kid gnawing away on this thing for weeks, thanks. For multiple reasons. I left Bunnyzilla at the store and came home and tucked the toothbrush into the pink and green basket and looked it over again, to make sure that it was a good basket. And it was. And I realized that I could, in fact, up the ante on the basket over the years, making it more special with each passing year, and still do it with a Fair Trade supply of candy if I wanted. I just needed to use imagination. (Although I have since discovered that I can buy big bombastic chocolate goodies from Fair Trade retailers too, if I'm out of ideas.) It felt good at the time though, knowing that I could wow my kid without the assistance of Hershey's, if I wanted to do so.

And the next morning, my daughter ate a breakfast of Fair Trade chocolate. I can report that she was very happy until about 1pm, when she was overcome by the vast amounts of sugar that go into candy - ethically produced, or not. And then it was meltdown city. But it was chocolaty fun while it lasted. In fact, my one-year old thought that it all looked so good that he waited until we were all out of the room, somehow found a foil wrapped chocolate caramel egg and had the good sense to just cram the whole dang thing in his mouth, so that I came back in to see him drooling long brown strings of chocolate out of his mouth onto the couch with a look of pure joy. I think the best thing I can say about that scenario is that it was, in fact, Fair Trade chocolate. I'll let you imagine how it went when we tried to pry that egg out of his mouth. Good times.

So where does that put us for Halloween, you may ask? Well, aside of the Fair Trade chocolate minis that I am going to hand out, along with Skittles, I'm not usually fool enough to purchase anything that looks like it's going to hang around the house for awhile. I did, however, discover that Sweet Earth, the company that made our Easter candy, makes these fabulous Dia De Los Muertes chocolate items. So this might be the year that I help my kids build a little dark chocolate Dia De Los Muertes shrine, complete with skulls and bones, to eat. The Superbowl of Candy is still on.

Chocolate, Chocolate Everywhere

“The US Department of State has estimated that more than 109,000 children in Cote D’Ivoire’s cocoa industry work under “the worst forms of child labor,” and that some 10,000 or more are victims of human trafficking or enslavement.” 2008 – International Labor Rights Forum


So back to me and my good intentions. When I met Emily back in October 2009, I was inspired to join the Fair Trade group at our church and get involved. Emily made this especially easy for me, by creating a group that was child-friendly. (A key phrase in my life). I was excited to be able to bring my kids to....yeah, wait...what were we going to do? Help the church bookstore sell Fair Trade chocolate. Wrap Fair Trade Christmas baskets for sale and Valentine's Day candy bars. Encourage the church to serve Fair Trade coffee. At first blush, it didn't seem like much. Until I started asking questions about my favorite item: the chocolate....

A brief bit about that yummy goodness that we call chocolate. Almost 40% of the world's chocolate, starts as cocoa beans growing in the Cote D'Ivoire, a (relatively) small area of Africa. Kind of amazing that something so popular, the world over, comes, in such large part, from one country. Godiva, Hershey, See's, Nestle, and the other major confectioners all, draw on these beans to make their product. And this is a problem because....of the quote that I used to start this post. There is child labor and slave labor running rampant in the area. But wait, I asked, as I could feel my heart kind of sinking, when I learned this....Do the companies know this? Well, yeah. Back in the early part of the decade (around 2001), the BBC and other news sources started reporting the enslavement of young children working in cocoa fields in the Cote D'Ivoire. Here in the United States, congress started pressuring the larger confectioners to ditch the slave labor cocoa. Legislation was introduced to ban the import of slave produced chocolate, but the companies stated that they would handle the problem by themselves. With the assistance of Senator Tom Harkin and representative Eliot Engel, the confectioners put forth a proposal (known as the Harkin-Engel protocol) announcing that they would eliminate child slave labor from their supply chains by July 2005. The follow-up report, written by Engel and Harkin themselves in 2008, is generally vague, but admits that there is "more work to be done" in the Cote D'Ivoire. However, according to our own State Department (see above quote!) as well as a number of Human Rights organizations, there is still plenty of child slave labor.

When I heard all of this information and started reading and checking sources, it might sound silly, but I felt a little betrayed by Hershey and the others. I mean, sure, they never promised me a rose garden, but seriously? That's what you're wrapping up in pretty sugar-coated shells and dumping into my M&M bag? Little kids being beaten and made to live in sheds so that they can slave over this stuff and watch some farmer sell it for less than nothing? My immediate knee-jerk reaction was - Well, I'm not paying for that.

But wait. Sure, it's one thing to cut out candy bars. No bigs. But what about chocolate chip cookies? And chocolate ice-cream? Now I can't have a mocha? Or toss together some brownies from a mix? Or make a chocolate cake from a mix, for that matter? And what do I hand out on Halloween? Or leave in an Easter basket for my kids to wake up to on Easter morning?

My head was spinning. It was kind of overwhelming. I decided to take a little while - a week or so, to let it all sink in before I started planning any personal changes for myself. I felt like the first step was to just sit with what I knew. Turn it over in my head. Be critical and be realistic. I knew that in order to go forward, I would need to do that.

What is Fair?

A lot of friends and family members ask me what "Fair Trade" means. In order for a product to be certified Fair Trade, it has to meet certain, very specific standards (much like USDA Organic). The major certification agencies - Fair Trade Federation and Transfair have their own standards that they are very transparent about.

Here is how I would personally explain it:

First, the item in question must be "traded". So it will, by definition, be something imported from another country. (In the United States of America, we have labor laws and public health laws that protect workers from being underage or exposed to dangerous chemicals, etc. Not all countries have this. So the products coming out of fields and factories elsewhere in the world can be, and often are, made by children, slave labor, or under dangerous conditions. Sometimes people ask me why we don't have Fair Trade farms here, and the answer is, in general, America is already pretty fair! We are protected by law in many cases, from doing what is being done in other places. Sure there are sweatshops and other bad rackets here too - but they are illegal. In other countries that do not have these laws and standards, this stuff isn't illegal - it's the norm! )

Secondly, the item in question was produced/grown etc under safe conditions by consenting adults who were paid a living wage (for their area) for their product. (So none of the above conditions were part of the the creation of this item.)

Additionally, Fair Trade co-ops must run transparent business practices, reinvest into their communities, and operate sustainably (this is why so often you see the organic label side by side with the Fair Trade label - you virtually have to have one to have the other.)

There are other elements, but these are the most important to me. When I began to learn about Fair Trade it was first described to me in terms of the people on the other end. How their lives were changed and bettered by working in a Fair Trade co-op. How they could send their kids to school instead of to work. How they were healthier and safer by not working with chemicals. But after a while, it started to dawn on me what the benefit of buying Fair Trade was on this end........
Because, yeah, after it came out that there was lead paint on a lot of American toys imported from China back in 2008, I have to admit, there was more than a few times that I walked into Target, looked around, wondered how many thousands of things in the store were from China or other countries, and then wondered how much we don't know about what we don't know. A lot, I am guessing. As dangerous as lead paint? Maybe not. Maybe.
I think it just kind of surprised me to realize that there was a label that could be put on imported products that basically said "This one was made the way you hope it was."

Good to know.

The Best of Intentions

Welcome to Fair and Square! I am Annie, and this is my blog about my personal journey through the world of Fair Trade.

"Fair Trade" means a lot of things to a lot of different people. While I have included links on this blog to larger, more comprehensive websites about Fair Trade, this blog is a lot smaller in content. It is just about me. Me and my family and the ways that Fair Trade has opened my eyes to the world around me and to my own habits.

A little history. About two years ago, I purchased several baskets of coffee, tea, cocoa and chocolate for my sisters at Christmas from the Fair Trade group at our church. At the time, I had no idea what Fair Trade was. All I knew was that I had a 9-month old baby, limited shopping time, and a memory that seemed to be functioning at low capacity. Without much convincing, I bought the baskets, exchanged pleasantries with the women selling them, and went on my way.

That might have been the end of my Fair Trade story, if I had not met my friend Emily. Emily was (and is) a member of the Fair Trade group that sold the baskets. When I properly met her, over a year later, at a church festival, I remembered the baskets, and I was able to ask her about them. We started talking about Fair Trade, and a part of me that had been asleep for a long time began to wake up.

Before having my children, I would have characterized myself as someone concerned about the planet and the people who live on it. After the birth of my daughter (my first baby), I kind of stopped caring about other people for a while and only worried about...well....my people. I think when I saw how many diapers a newborn can soil in a single day, and how much money it actually does cost to raise a family on a single income, my heart got a little hard. I didn't think that I had the time anymore to go help out at our local soup kitchen on Thursday nights (if the people there could tolerate colicky crying from a baby bjorn anyways). I didn't feel like I could wash out cloth diapers on five hours of sleep a night. And horror of horrors...sometimes after a day of errands, I found it easier to roll through McDonald's than to prepare something nutritious for my family. I felt like I was in survival mode at the time, and I just needed to get through however I could.

By the time I met Emily, though, I was looking for a change. I wanted to do something. I wanted to extend myself a little bit beyond the immediate needs of my small family. I titled this entry "the best of intentions" because I feel that good intentions get a bad rap in our society. Most of the time when you hear the phrase "the best of intentions", it is said with a sneer, and usually implies that whomever had these good intentions was an unhelpful dolt. But good intentions are the origins of truly good deeds, of social change, and sometimes of personal transformations. So I take them seriously. And I had them. I just didn't know what to do with them.

More on that in future entries!

For now, I will just say, that I decided to write this blog because my journey through Fair Trade is a journey that anyone could take. Being involved in Fair Trade, I have met many amazing people - TRULY amazing individuals, who have taken incredible journeys and done huge enormously good things. I hope to write about some of these people here. But I am not one of these folks. I am just one person doing what I can do. One of the choir, if you will. Choir members wanted!