Boston Flora

Tag: cacao

  • Saturday, October 14, 10:30 am – 12:30 pm – Cacao at the Garden

    Join The New England Botanic Garden at Tower Hill for a special program on October 14 from 10:30 – 12:30 that will highlight the ceremonial aspects of cacao.  During this program, you will participate in guided meditation and reflection, sample ceremonial cacao, and learn more about its spiritual and scientific properties.

    Instructor: Rachel Goldberg

    As a Certified Professional Coach (CPC) and Energy Leadership Index Master Practitioner (ELI-MP), Rachel integrates her devotion to energetic health with intuitive pattern recognition skills and iPEC coaching tools to facilitate attitudinal awareness for her clients. Creating a safe space for her clients to withdraw from external pressures and witness their patterns without judgment, Rachel’s coaching practice empowers her clients to radically accept what currently is, while making clear focused decisions for moving forward. Working as a team, Rachel supports her clients in designing and achieving goals born from their authentic spirits.

    Rachel’s greatest passion is cultivating intimate connections through ceremony. Connection between self and spirit, humanity, and nature, and most of all, unconditionally loving and accepting connection between people. She believes the art of ceremony is one of the most potent ways to create a sacred space in which each soul feels seen, heard, and witnessed. A space in which to surrender to vulnerability and expression. After having developed a ceremonial practice over the past five years with cacao as her guide, Rachel is honored to spread this heart-opening medicine to the western world. To foster and nurture intimacy among those called to take the journey. To hold space as we drop from the busy and guarded head space into the raw and open-heart space.

    $45 Member Adult; $60 Adult (includes admission to the Garden)

  • Tuesday, February 21, 6:00 pm – The New World of Coffee and Cacao

    The Pepin Lecture Series in Food Studies and Gastronomy, cosponsored by Jacques Pepin and Boston University’s Master of Liberal Arts program in gastronomy, will present The New World of Coffee and Cacao, with Matthew Block, on Tuesday, February 21 at 6 pm at 808 Commonwealth Avenue, Room 117, Boston.  Ever wonder about the mysterious journey that coffee and cacao beans take from their origins to their transformation into delicious specialty products?  Join importer Matthew Block, founder of Campesino Mateo, for a free talk that will cover the histories of coffee and cacao, their roles in Western culture, and the beans’ step-by-step journey from cultivation to finished product.  Block partners with traditional family  farmers from the most remote regions of Peru’s “eyebrow of the jungle” to help improve growing, harvesting, and processing practices.  Attendees will learn about – an  taste – the dramatic impact on aroma and flavor that different farming, processing, and production techniques impart.  Additionally, they will virtually meet some farmers on their lands, see how the plants and fruits grow in their raw form, and experience the various terroir factors that play so large a role in the finished products.  Register online at http://bu.edu/foodandwine.  Image from marinersmuseum.org.

  • Wednesday, November 5, 1:30 pm – Food of the Gods: Chocolate Production from Bean to Bar

    This Wednesday, November 5 talk by Wellesley College Botanic Garden fellow Katie Goodall will explore the journey of chocolate from tropical landscapes to consumers all over the world.  Focusing on Latin America, she will discuss cacao’s botanical origins, cultural history, cultivation methods, and their ecological impacts.  And what’s a chocolate talk without a tasting?  Be sure to come (1:30 pm at the Visitor’s Center of the Botanic Garden) ready to savor the flavors of local specialty chocolates. Image from www.neroandbianco.com.  WCBG Friends free, nonmembers $10.  Register by calling 781-283-3094 or email wcbgfriends@wellesley.edu.