October is Fair Trade month

But actually every month is Fair Trade month. New products: Natural Nectar's biscuits, slathered with Fair Trade chocolate. They did not stint with the chocolate, and this classic French "biscuit" is very good, indeed.

We sell lots of Fair Trade chocolate.

Equal Exchange chocolate comes in lots of flavors--the Panama dark is the Coop's favorite. But don't hesitate to try the new chocolate caramel crunch. Of course, we sell hundreds of pounds of Equal Exchange coffee purchased from farmer-owned cooperatives around the world. Soon they will be introducing a new line of teas.



Madecasse chocolate was developed by a former Peace Corps volunteer who worked in Madagascar. The chocolate beans are grown and made into chocolate in Madagascar. Almost all other chocolate is made from beans shipped to Europe. This provides jobs in the country of origin and allows them to reap the added value. Raw cocoa beans are relatively cheap--the finished chocolate is not. Madecasse has a salt and chocolate nibs bar.





Divine chocolate is very popular at the Coop. And now that we are approaching the holidays, their boxed mints, gelt coins and their Advent calendar with some bits of chocolate behind the windows are all available. They have some new holiday bars in sparkling packaging: dark chocolate with orange and ginger and milk chocolate with spiced cookies. Divine products are very tasty as well, and the chocolate is from a farmer-owned cooperative in Ghana.






We sell lots of Wholesome Foods Fair Trade sweeteners: light and dark brown sugar, raw sugar, agave, and honey. Please consider using these sugars for all of your holiday baking.

New Fair Trade chcolate: Caramels & salt chocolate--

Equal Exchange introduced two new chocolate bars this week at the Coop: Organic Dark Ecuador 65% and Organic Chocolate Caramel Crunch with Salt 55% cacoa. Initial reviews are very favorable.

Coop chocolate lovers are sophisticated--the best sellers are the very dark chocolates and chocolate with salt is second.

The bearded Mast Brothers in Williamsburg used to have a corner on the chocolate w/salt market--pricey at $5.57 per 2.5 oz. Chocolove recently introduced a very popular chocolate (55%) with almonds & salt= $1.89 per 3.2 oz. Lindt's Excellence dark chocolate/touch of sea salt = $2.12 for 3.5 oz. Equal Exchange rings up at $2.84 for 3.5 oz. and is the only fairly traded chocolate in this group. (These are current August prices.)

Another bulk update plus, plus

TVP, or Texturized Vegetable Protein, is being discontinued in the bulk bins. TVP was a very slow seller. We are adding packaged Bob Red Mills organic TVP in Aisle 2A. Bob's TVP is a different texture but it is organic. Vegetarians may rely on TVP as a meat substitute, but it is hard to equate a highly processed product made with non-organic soybeans as health food. I had to resort to Wikipedia to jog my memory as to exactly what TVP is, but I read no further than "fibrous lamination of thermoplastic soy flour.."

The good news is that organic red quinoa is once again available in bulk. And if that isn't enough quinoa diversity, there is now Alter Eco black quinoa in Aisle 6A.

Alter Eco is a company specializing in Fair Trade products from cooperatives around the world.
We have just added two olive oils, "Planted, picked, and processed by fair trade cooperatives in Palestine, Jenin, West Bank," re Alter Eco's website.

In the News.....

Wall Street Journal has an interesting article on fortified foods--also known as "functional" food. Manufacturers are increasingly pushing this concept. Classic example of overkill: Tropicana orange juice "fortified" with Omega oils. Do you really need fish oil in your O.J? While the taste is being processed out of that fish oil, what is happening to the Omega 3's? Bottom line seems to be: eat whole foods, take a multivitamin if you must. You'll save a lot of money.

And speaking of fish, last Wednesday, the NY Times hosted a discussion on the choices (or lack thereof) facing fish eaters who want to be environmentally correct.

On a happier note, last week Martha Rose Shulman presented a series of recipes focusing on one of my favorite foods: polenta. Interestingly, she led off the series by recommending cooking polenta in the oven. I like to make polenta using DeLaEstancia polenta, sold in Aisle 2A. This polenta only needs to cook for about a minute on the stove and is delicious. Bob's Red Mill polenta needs to cook longer. The corn meal sold in the bulk bins also works and is the cheapest. Sixty of our members opted for the super fast method--buy the cooked polenta in the plastic tube sold in Aisle 6A. We were sold out on Monday. If you are a tube purchaser, make the leap and try the DeLaEstancia. Just bring it to boil and let it cook one minute. You'll never look back.

Christian Science Monitor profiled the CONACADO cocoa cooperative in the Dominican Republic. Equal Exchange purchases cocoa from this cooperative. The Fair Trade premium helps pay for basic needs in their community, including schools and plumbing. We sell lots of Equal Exchange Fair Trade organic chocolate bars in Aisle 7A.

Life by Chocolate

We've added some new chocolates from Life by Chocolate in Greenville, New York in time for Easter. The bunnies are hopping out of here very fast. (More are coming Thursday afternoon.) We've also added bars with unusual flavors (choc covered smoked peanut butter, anyone?) Some of the chocolate is fair trade and some of the bars are vegan. One of their best selling bars is Bee's Knees, made with honey.

Help Fair Trade Banana Farmers Affected by Floods in Equador!

The following is a message from Jonathan Rosenthal,
Managing Director, Oké USA:
Dear banana eaters, sellers and concerned persons,
As many of you know, our organic Oké USA fair trade bananas come from El Guabo, a cooperative of 500 family farmers in coastal Ecuador. Since late January, the region has experienced devastating flooding. One co-op member's son was killed, roads and houses were damaged and several farmers have lost all of their plantings.
The Oké USA staff and I are asking you to join us in supporting the farmers of El Guabo by raising $20,000 to buy a Bobcat Excavator that the co-op will use to drain the flooded farms and do preventative maintenance to mitigate the impact of future floods.
All contributions are tax deductible, courtesy of Oké co-owner Red Tomato, a tax-exempt non-profit, and will go directly to fund the purchase of the Bobcat. The Bobcat fund has been seeded by another Oké co-owner, Equal Exchange. We are already more than 10% funded!
Finally, please remember that fair trade is a powerful part of sustainable development, the key to minimizing the impact of natural disasters.
Thank you for your concern, your contributions and your solidarity with the farmers of El Guabo.
-Click here for more info and to make a donation.-

Banana News

We don’t know all of the market forces that are driving banana prices to unprecedented levels, but they certainly include social unrest in Ecuador and flooding in Peru.

Several weeks ago the conventional price started to climb, until last week when a 40 pound box of conventional bananas actually cost $5.00 more than the organic. Now the organic price is climbing and availability is becoming problematic.

It is becoming harder to find the bananas that we like, the Fair Trade, and we are forced to buy whatever we can get, including bagged and Dole.

Our price has been about $.69 per pound for so long. So long to that. The organic banana price will approach $1.00 per pound by March 10th and we don’t know where it is going.
—Allen Zimmerman

New flavored Equal Exchange Coffees

Look for Equal Exchange French Vanilla and Hazelnut Creme, in Aisle 5B on the shelves below the packaged tea. We are only carrying this coffee ground in vacuum sealed packages. When we sold the flavored beans, members would grind it in our one coffee grinder, inevitably leaving behind aromatic traces that 99% of our members do not like. These are Fair Trade, but not organic, coffees.

Coffee grinding tips:
1) Select the type of grind before you add the beans. Very important.
2) Put the tabbed side of the bag at the back and make sure it raises the lever.
3) When it stops grinding, gently tap the machine so that all of your beans go through and all of the grounds are in your bag. This is also important. No one wants to buy someone else's choice and a lot of coffee is wasted and goes into the tray below.
4) And thanks for putting up with our pesky coffee grinder--it is overburdened by the volume we grind each day, especially by users who do not know how to properly use the machine. We've been told that a more heavy duty grinder than the one we already have does not exist.