Dye Eggs Naturally — with Coffee!

 

 

It’s easy to make Easter egg dyes with foods – including our favorite, fair trade organic coffee! This year, we decorated our natural eggs using a wax-resistance method and then colored them sky blue and warm, earthy brown. These dyes are non-toxic and use ingredients you probably already have at home. 

 

What you’ll need:

 

  • White eggs
  • A crayon. (Use white to skip the wax-removal step. Use another color if you want to be able to see what you drew!)
  • 2 tablespoons white vinegar for each pot of dye
  • For brown dye: ¾ cup ground coffee
  • For blue dye: half a purple cabbage, finely chopped

 

 

Instructions for Natural Easter Eggs:

 

First, hard boil your eggs. Place them in a single layer at the bottom of your pot, cover with two inches of hot water and bring it to a rolling boil. Then turn off the heat and let the eggs cook in the water for twelve minutes.

Once the eggs have cooled enough for you to handle them comfortably, draw a pattern or design on each one with crayon, making the lines as thick and solid as you can. The dye won’t stick to any area of shell that’s covered by the wax of the crayon. (If you use a colored crayon, it’s possible to remove the colored wax later! See final step.)

For brown dye, bring twelve cups of water to a boil and add the ground coffee and vinegar. Simmer for fifteen minutes. For blue dye, boil twelve cups of water and then add chopped cabbage and vinegar. Allow to boil again, then simmer for half an hour.

Turn off the heat and gently add the crayon-decorated eggs to your dye baths.  The longer you allow the eggs to soak, the deeper their color will become. For the brightest blues and richest browns, leave them overnight.

Once you’ve achieved the color you want, remove the eggs and let them dry fully.

If you don’t like how the crayon-marks look, you’ll want to remove the wax. Place your eggs of a foil-lined baking sheet in an oven you’ve preheated to 250 degrees. After about ten minutes, the crayon-marks will become shiny and you can wipe off the wax with a soft cloth or paper towel.

 

Five natural dyed eggs for Easter in brown and blue sit in an oversized coffee cup.

Ta-dah! Beautiful, natural eggs for Easter!

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Lessons in Alternative Trade

By Danielle Robidoux, Action Forum Organizer

As consumers, as people, we are pretty disconnected from most of our products. We may believe a label brings us closer to the real story, but at the end of the day, labels don’t tell stories, people do.

Last week, on an Action Forum webinar with Pushpika Freitas of Marketplace: Handwork of India, I was pretty floored. I felt proud to have her as an ally in this work and was moved, not only by how she told the story of Marketplace, but by how she truly honored the stories of the women she worked with. Marketplace is a nonprofit Alternative Trade and Development Organization that grew out of a small-scale venture in 1980 to help three low-income women in Mumbai, India. Today, Marketplace has grown into a flourishing ATO working with 400 artisans that are organized into 11 independent cooperatives. Marketplace seeks to provide opportunities for women to participate in all aspects of running the cooperatives while producing high-quality women’s apparel and home decor.

Photo credit MarketPlace: Handwork of India

From the work Pushpika has done with Marketplace she shared with us two important lessons that resonated with me. The first lesson she shared was that we are outsiders. While we may have read countless articles, traveled on delegations abroad, had conversations entering the wee hours of the morning, these are not our stories. We are on the outside of them. No one can truly encapsulate all of the complexities of someone’s story, except them. Real stories are gritty, they include details that would probably make most people uncomfortable. As conscious consumers, as activists, as people, do we want the label or do we want the real story?

As alternative traders we have never claimed to be perfect. We mess up, we make mistakes, but we are learning. We are sharing with you, our story.

The second lesson Pushpika learned pretty early on was how important it was to listen, and that the direction of Marketplace would come from the women she worked with. She was able to adapt her business based on the needs of the women, they were at the center.

Photo credit MarketPlace: Handwork of India

Pushpika shared a story with us from the early days of Marketplace, as they were gaining success, she wanted to go beyond providing employment. She was brainstorming what could be beneficial, and suggested a nutrition program. She was quickly met with laughter, in part because the women knew she couldn’t cook. The women then identified their needs, which were not as expected. They wanted to learn how to sign their names, and to learn numbers 1-20. The women would need to sign permission slips for their children with a thumbprint if they could not sign their names, they found this humiliating. Similarly, when asked on the street about the numbers of the bus routes, they wanted to have an answer.

Pushpika Freitas pictured above, Founder and President of MarketPlace: Handwork of India. 

By engaging in deep listening we can increase our understanding, we can help to facilitate change that is actually needed. By listening we can connect ourselves to real stories that bring about real change.

If you would like to stay connected to monthly webinars, deeper conversations, and in-person events discussing some of the issues that plague our food system click here to join the Equal Exchange Action Forum.

The above photo is from a social media campaign by Marketplace in which women were asked what they were thankful for.

 

Raise a Cup to Women!

International Women’s Day is March 8th. We hope you’ll join us by raising a cup of your favorite brew to women producers, leaders and advocates all over the world!

Women in the Supply Chain

Coffee farming is hard work, and women face special challenges. A 2015 report issued by the Coffee Quality Institute found that even when women growers do more than their share, “coffee is often considered to be a ‘man’s crop.’” Female producers don’t have equal access to land or resources. Moreover, they often balance their duties on the farm with family expectations at home.  But women in the industry persevere! And the report, entitled “The Way Forward: Accelerating Gender Equity in Coffee Value Chains,” found reason for hope that conditions can improve. The CQI report shows that systemic changes, like training and support, empower women.

At the end of February, Equal Exchange’s Quality Control Manager, Beth Ann Caspersen, will visit Nicaragua for a two day Gender Equity workshop sponsored by CQI. Over the last three years, the Gender Equity Project has worked with various actors — from farmer households to producer organizations and end-market companies — by researching and creating tools to better include women and families. Women’s involvement in coffee doesn’t stop after the harvest, The Nicaragua workshop will focus on importers and roasters. The goal is to provide clear methodologies that are inclusive and collaborative.

At Equal Exchange, we advocate for increased gender equality at every stage of the supply chain. We salute our sisters around the world who work as agronomists and cuppers. We cheer those who take on leadership roles in their coops, despite the challenges of sexism. And we appreciate our women coworkers in the U.S. — successful buyers, roasters and baristas — as well as the women who lift up Fair Trade within their churches and community groups.

Watch the video:

Solidarity with Women

It’s time to take action about gender-based inequality! People are speaking up about sexual harassment, bias in the workplace, and violence against women and girls. We’re sharing our stories and standing up for each other. And we show our solidarity through ventures like the Congo Coffee Project.

Young women wearing bright Aftican print fabrics sit together after a music therapy session at the Panzi Hospital in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

At the Panzi Hospital in the Democratic Republic of Congo, a country that has struggled with sexual violence for generations, survivors find a safe place to heal. Equal Exchange began a partnership with the Panzi Foundation in 2011. EE donates $1-2 to the project for every bag of Congo coffee sold. We source the coffee from Congolese co-op farmers at SOPACDI. And the money raised – over $60,000 since 2011 — goes to vocational skills training for women recovering at the Maison Dorcas aftercare center.

In 2016, Panzi Hospital constructed a small clinic known as a One Stop Center in the Eastern Congo town of Bulenga to provide basic medical services to the community and to provide survivors of sexual violence with treatment.  Bulenga is located along the shores of Lake Kivu. It’s home to our coffee producer partners at SOPACDI. Although the town is located next to an important water source, transporting and storing clean water for the clinic has been challenging. In 2017, Equal Exchange contributed the $11,000 raised through the sale of Congo Coffee to the construction of a water pump and collection system. “Fresh and clean water are basic human rights,” Beth Ann notes. “The vision for the future will be to construct additional water stations to bring these benefits to the rest of the community as well.”

Thank you for championing Fair Trade. Happy International Women’s Day!

 

Fair Trade without Fair Traders

 

Last year, Deepak Khandelwal wrote critically about fair trade certification and the contradictions of its apparent success. would like to dive deeper into that conversation below. 

On the one hand, fair trade food (less so handicrafts) is more widely known, with greater sales and distribution than ever before. At the same time, the pioneering Alternative Trade Organizations (ATO’s) who built the model of more just trade terms in the chocolate, coffee, tea, banana, handicraft, and clothing industries are under extreme duress. In the last decade Equal Exchange has saved three of these Alternative Trade Organizations (Oke USA, Equal Exchange UK, and La Siembra (Canada) while watching others falter and even close.

We now exist in an environment where multinationals deliver some version (sometimes weak,sometimes real, and sometimes fake) of fair trade through being endorsed by various certification schemes which in fact live off the revenues gained by that endorsement. This circular system has commodified fair trade, lowered standards, and confused consumers with a morass of schemes, standards, and logos. Perhaps the greatest negative impact of certification/commodification/corporatization of fair trade has been to present the market as a solution to poverty, unfair trade, and exploitation. At the same time, certification/commodification/corporatization has put activists to pasture and asked consumers to simply consume.

Lost in this process, has been the work of alternative trade organizations. What do organizations like Equal Exchange, SERRV, Ten Thousand Villages, Marketplace, or Oke USA do?  How much do their operations really differ from what Dole or Hershey’s or JAB do when they add fair trade products or buy companies that use fair trade as a marketing attribute?

Alternative Trade Organizations, like economic alternative organizations in healthcare or housing, do several things differently and ultimately create completely different economic and social relations due to their mission, structure, management, and culture.

On a broad level, like their cousins in the housing or health care area, Alternative Trade Organizations:

a.            Break the rules of the market

b.           Show up with money or services and change the terms of trade

c.            Involve producers and citizens in new forms of ownership and control

d.           Change social relations

A multinational or a recently purchased new pet of a multinational can rarely do the market intervention of breaking rules and changing terms of trade.They often claim this accomplishment but don’t deliver. Corporations are opposed to and incapable of involving producers or citizens in new models and likewise, they are not capable of changing social relations.

In the next couple of months, we are going to host two fair trade friends we admire (MarketPlace, Ten Thousand Villages) on our webinars. Our goal is to learn more about what they do, how they do it, and how it differs from what the market in general or even more responsible corporations end up doing. These same issues resonate for Equal Exchange.  We look at these questions all the time and evaluate how effectively we are doing on breaking market rules or creating new producer or citizen-consumer models.  Often we grade ourselves harshly.  In that process, we have perhaps not done enough to communicate the importance of everything we do to those of you who so strongly support us.

Intervening in the market and “playing” in the market is really challenging.Doing that for the benefit of those who are the most exploited and have the least control over the market is a contradiction.Equal Exchange and other ATO’s are built to do this.It is our mission. It is in our core DNA.Breaking the rules of the market while being in the market requires commitment, culture, and dedication. Ultimately none of us can succeed without you as citizens, supporters, consumers and advocates. Supporting real fair trade organizations is infinitely more powerful and effective than buying passive fairish trade products from the main market system. We believe by taking the time to look at how alternative trade organizations operate we will make your involvement in the Action Forum more effective and fulfilling.

We hope you can join us on Tuesday, February 13th at 7 pm EST for a webinar with Pushpika Freitas, President of MarketPlace: Handwork of India.

Here’s how:

If you’re not already an Action Forum member, fill out the application here. (It’s a simple process!) As a member, you’ll get access to our online discussion forum, future webinars, and other exclusive content.

Once you’re a member, you’ll receive an email invitation to register.

We Love Our Co-op Partners

We’re pretty sure that chocolate made under fair conditions tastes the best! That’s why we only buy cacao and sugar from democratically-organized farmer collectives whose members have a say in business decisions. A new tool — Co-op Profiles — now makes it easier than ever to get to know the individuals whose hard work comes together in Equal Exchange’s tantalizing bars, chips and cocoas.

Equal Exchange is an employee-owned co-op. And we’re proud to partner with farmer groups around the world who operate the same way we do – sharing rights and responsibilities, and taking part in collective decision-making. We purchase Fair Trade cacao from AGOPAGRO and Oro Verde in Peru, Fortaleza del Valle in Ecuador, and CONACADO in the Dominican Republic. The Fair Trade sugar in our bars comes from Manduvirá, in Paraguay. Our Chocolate Team compiled profiles on these co-ops.

Read them all:

Two sugar co-op members hold up a chocolate bar in front of stacks of sugarcane.
Manduvirá members Emilce Garcete and Gilberto Martinez at the San Cayetano Collection Center in Paraguay.

The Co-op Profiles make facts about our partners easy-to-see. Sidebars show the groups’ certifications, as well as  volume produced and income earned. And Cristina Liberati, EE’s Grants Projects Manager, points out that the profiles will be updated regularly. That means they’ll serve as a tool to look at changes with our partners over time. She says, “We might answer questions such as — How much are they producing now versus three years ago? What amount of their product were we purchasing then versus now?” Through the profiles, Cristina says, we’ll “highlight the stories of particular farmers and staff and the great work that they do to provide us with quality ingredients for our chocolate and cocoa products.”

And we have our own Co-op Profile! Using a similar format, the Chocolate Team created a Spanish-language overview of Equal Exchange, so partners can learn about us, too!

We’re delighted to share these co-ops’ stories – and their fantastic chocolate – with you.

 

Two delicious chocolate bars unwrapped on a table with a cacao pod.

Small Farmer Fund Project Updates

Did you know that your purchases support projects that help level the playing field for small-scale farmers?

Equal Exchange allocates a portion of sales from over 7,000 participating congregations to the relief, development and human rights organizations that make up our Interfaith Partner groups.

Here are just a few projects that some of our Partners worked on in 2017 that were funded in part by your purchases.

 

United Church of Christ, Justice and Witness Ministries

Photo courtesy of the Franklinton Center at Bricks

UCC Fair Trade Project Small Farmer Fund contributions supported the Just Food Project at the UCC Franklinton Center at Bricks. A former slave plantation in Whitakers, North Carolina, today, it is a conference, retreat, and educational facility focusing on justice advocacy and leadership development.This project supports a farmers market held at FCAB where local small farmers sell their produce and local residents purchase affordable fresh vegetables and fruits. FCAB is located in eastern North Carolina in an area where many people are in poor health, experience food insecurity, and have poor access to healthy foods. The Small Farm Project is part of a comprehensive approach to community economic development, environmental education, social justice, and health.”

More information about the project can be found here

 

Unitarian Universalist Service Committee

Photo courtesy of UUSC

“Small Farmer Funds from the UUSC Fair Trade Project benefit Fundación Entre Mujeres (Foundation Amongst Women) or “FEM”, a women’s NGO and social movement that was founded in 1995 in Estelí, Nicaragua. The organization’s members are feminist women leaders from rural communities. FEM’s mission is to promote the empowerment of rural women through a variety of projects, such as advancing economic independence through land rights and food sovereignty, preventing violence against women, and promoting literacy. The project is designed to support FEM’s efforts to advance the economic independence of rural women through economic assistance and technical assistance for agroecology projects. Through the agroecology projects, the rural women grow basic grains, coffee, Rose of Jamaica, and will engage in beekeeping.”

 For more information about projects UUSC is working on, visit The Good Buy blog

Presbyterian Hunger Program, Enough for Everyone

Photo courtesy of Presbyterian Church USA, Hunger Program

“The project at the Amrita Bhoomi Center in India was funded in part by PCUSA Coffee Project Small Farmer Fund contributions. The project carries out various training programs on agroecology, including practical farming techniques, seed saving, value addition of produce for improved income and plants to grow to combat malnutrition. It is focused especially on farmer-to-farmer training where successful farmers will share their experiences and resolve problems of new trainee farmers. This methodology is important to build the capacity of farmers themselves — for farmers, seeing is believing. This is also important because farmers need training on agro-ecological techniques to implement them on their farms in a viable manner. The project built a seed savers network linking up existing seed expert seed savers and collecting and conserving their seeds both in situ (on farms) as well as ex situ (in a seed bank) for distribution to farmers. This is important to make farmer saved seeds accessible to all and future generations. The project will also construct a peasant’s seed bank for the conservation of native seeds, which will be distributed to farmers.”

You can find out more about PHP’s work here

Catholic Relief Services 

Photo Courtesy of Catholic Relief Services

“Catholic Relief Services uses donations from partners to invest in cooperatives around the world. Recently funded projects include: Improving soil, water and production practices for members of CEPCO, a fair trade coffee cooperative in Oaxaca Mexico, which is a long time Equal Exchange trading partner. Through the creation of 5 demonstration plots and farmer field schools farmers are learning how to protect local watersheds from coffee waste water and increase soil fertility to increase yields. Additionally 40 vulnerable cooperative members not eligible for government funds for coffee leaf rust renovation were provided rust resistant varieties in order to replace plants lost to coffee leaf rust. Partner funds have also been used for: investing in raw materials for women members of a basket weaving cooperative in Ghana; providing technical assistance to Holy Land Handicraft Cooperative Society; assistance to a delegation of organic fair trade cotton farmers from Burkina Faso to attend an international textile conference; assistance for labor rights delegates for a gathering of representatives from El Salvador, Guatemala, Mexico, the US, and Canada in Mexico City.” Read more about CRS Ethical Trade programs here 

Click here to learn more about our Interfaith Partnerships and the projects associated with Small Farmer Funds

Finding Inspiration in King

By Dee Walls, Food Safety Coordinator 

Each January, against my own better judgement, I sit down and write out my resolutions for the coming year. I reflect on the previous 365 days, and resolve to be better and to do better. Often times, these aspirations involve food, so I research and plan how I might alter my methods of food consumption to effect positive change in my life. Food, which has become as much of a technical object as a cultural one, is an incredibly important part of our lives. In deciding how we nourish ourselves, we make decisions that are simultaneously nutritional and environmental, political and economic.

As time passes in January, and my motivation begins to falter, I begin the other annual tradition of abandoning those things which I was so passionately committed to achieving a few weeks earlier. This usually coincides with a long weekend, culminating with a holiday in remembrance of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. As I lay there snacking guiltily, scrolling through my timelines on various social media platforms, I am comforted by all of the quotes describing dreams, justice, and nonviolent resistance. For a moment, I consider that perhaps this year will be different.

In an essay titled “The Dangerous Road Before Martin Luther King,” James Baldwin describes two opportunities he had to meet King. During the first encounter, Baldwin attends a service at King’s church in Montgomery, Alabama. The King that Baldwin aligns with the narrative of King that we have grown so familiar with: humble, kind, and inspiring.

Baldwin and King next cross paths in Atlanta, Georgia, three years after the first encounter. King faced many personal struggles during those three years, including legal battles in Alabama and Georgia, and an attack that left him severely injured. Baldwin depicts a much different King during this meeting, a more tormented one, yet one still retaining the aforementioned compassion and resolve. Moreover, Baldwin recounts the development of the student movements of the American civil rights era. He writes that, “It is the sons and daughters of the beleaguered bourgeoisie […] who have begun a revolution in the consciousness of this country which will inexorably destroy nearly all that we now think of as concrete and indisputable.”

Opposite this nascent revolution was the existing “publicized Negro leadership,” with goals described by Baldwin as “nothing less than the total integration of Negroes in all levels of the national life.” King was affiliated with this incumbent leadership, towards which the younger revolutionaries directed criticism, bitterness, disappointment, and skepticism. Baldwin sympathizes with the older leadership, acknowledging that, “It was not easy to wring concessions from the people at the bargaining table, who had, after all, no intention of giving their power away.” Nevertheless, Baldwin discusses a “dullness” among this older leadership, “the result of its failure to examine what is really happening in the Negro world—its failure indeed, for that matter, to seize upon what is happening in the world at large.”

It is this precarious position, caught between exciting change and an increasingly impotent status quo, that King finds himself in, and the inspiration for the title of the essay. Baldwin writes that, “King has had an extraordinary effect in the Negro world, and therefore in the nation, and is now in the center of an extremely complex crossfire.” Similar to King, I believe Equal Exchange now finds itself in a similar position as we continue to seek new ways to effectively execute our mission.

Equal Exchange began in the spirit of leadership committed to the meaningful consideration and involvement of small farmers in all levels of global society through fairer trade practices. Indeed, King was “hideously struck” by the effects of this exclusion, having traveled to India in 1957 and witnessing tremendous poverty that he described to Baldwin “in great detail.”  In the 30 years that Equal Exchange has been in existence, the food system has continued to evolve in ways that perpetuate the marginalization of small farmers in the Global South.

Today, we are surrounded by food products that boast of “quality,” “safety,” and “sustainability.” These are incredibly important attributes to seek out, but we have grown accustomed to simply looking for a seal or certification associating these terms with the products we consume, and in the process their meanings have started to grow “dull.” This dullness, I believe, is similarly related to their inability to accurately reflect to consumers what it takes to produce goods that truly embody these characteristics.

It is easy to solely emphasize the myriad examples of what our food system does not currently get right. I do, however, feel that we are in the midst of exciting cultural transformation. Closing his essay, Baldwin leaves us with the following:
“For everything is changing, from our notion of politics to our notion of ourselves, and we are certain, as we begin history’s strangest metamorphosis, to undergo the torment of being forced to surrender far more than we ever realized we had accepted.”

Change can be daunting, but it is not something we have to endure in isolation. Equal Exchange’s business model boldly demonstrates the possibility of more collective and cooperative forms of engagement within our societal institutions. In a food industry rife with opportunity for transformation, we must resist the urge or tendency to let our work and our message grow dull.

As I scroll through my social media feeds this year, things feel different. In between quotes from King I see articles from Black Lives Matter and The Movement for Black Lives. I see collections of photos from friends and family commemorating the one year anniversary of the Women’s March, as well as the courage to declare #MeToo and “Time’s Up”. I double tap events held by members of my community organizing for immigration and prison reform. I experience chills at the fact that in the same place where King, as Baldwin describes, “found himself accused, before all the world, of having used and betrayed the people of Montgomery,” we now celebrate a demonstration of what is possible in the era of Trump when informed, empowered individuals show up and participate in the democratic process.

How we eat matters. The recalcitrance of old, bigoted norms and values can be surmounted. We do not have to stand idly by in the midst of a system producing calorically dense, nutritionally poor products via a network of ever-consolidating firms. It is possible to create a food system where we are not just defined as workers and consumers separated from producers. We can create alternative institutions that involve more ownership, citizenship, and partnership with one another in ways that are not rooted in subjugation and exploitation. The assassination of King in 1968 demonstrates just how perilous the work of striving for justice can be, but his legacy lives on and we continue to draw upon it for inspiration each January.

I am convinced that this year can be different, and I encourage you to join Equal Exchange in exploring the ways in which we can become more meaningfully committed to doing this work. Take a moment to explore more of the information about Equal Exchange available on our website. Read through some information about our producer partners, join the Action Forum community, or browse the webstore for a gift for someone who may be unfamiliar with our organization. Together, we can resolve to continue striving to create food products that are truly safe, of high quality, and produced in ways that are socially and ecologically sustainable all throughout the supply chain.

2017 Year in Review

As we begin 2018, we’re taking a moment to reflect on the accomplishments of the last year. We’re proud to have spent another year working to build a more equitable trade model and bring small farmer-grown products to more people around the country. We couldn’t do what we do without you. Thank you for your support of small farmers and alternative trade, year after year.

Watch the video below to hear some of our 2017 highlights.

Chocolate Recipes for Valentine’s Day

This Valentine’s Day, do something extra sweet: give chocolate that supports small farmer co-ops! Our organic chocolate products (from baking cocoa to chocolate chips to decadent full-sized bars) are made with cacao sourced fairly and directly from co-ops in the Dominican Republic, Panama, Ecuador and Peru. We’re proud to partner with small-scale farmers to bring you truly special and delicious chocolate, perfect for gifting to that special someone.

Here are a few chocolate recipes that we think you’ll fall in love with!

Dark Chocolate Truffles

Ingredients
2 bars Equal Exchange Organic Ecuador Dark Chocolate bars, chopped into small pieces
½ c. heavy cream
1 tsp. vanilla extract
Equal Exchange Organic Baking Cocoa, for coating

Directions 
In a small saucepan, simmer the heavy cream over a low heat.

Place chopped chocolate in a separate bowl. Add the heavy cream and vanilla and let stand for a few minutes to melt the chocolate. Stir until smooth.
Let cool. Place bowl in the refrigerator for 2 hours.

When the chocolate mixture has solidified, use a teaspoon to roll out 1-inch balls. Roll them in your hands quickly to give them an even shape. Place rounded balls on a baking sheet lined with wax paper and let sit in the refrigerator for 8 hours (or overnight). Roll the chocolate balls in cocoa powder until evenly coated.

Keep the truffles refrigerated until ready to serve!

Yields 30-40 truffles

Adapted from simplyrecipes.com 

Chocolate Sugar Cookies

Ingredients
1/2 cup butter, softened
3/4 cup sugar
1 large egg
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1 1/2 cups unbleached white pastry flour
1/3 cup Equal Exchange Organic Baking Cocoa
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
confectioners’ sugar for sprinkling

Directions
In a medium bowl, cream the butter and sugar together until smooth. Beat in the egg and vanilla until light. Sift together the flour, cocoa, baking powder, and salt. Stir the dry ingredients into the butter mixture and form into a thick dough. If the dough is soft, wrap it in plastic and chill for 1/2 hour. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees and butter a baking sheet. On a lightly floured surface, roll out the dough to about a 1/4 inch thickness and cut into shapes. Place the cookies on the prepared baking sheet, sprinkle with confectioners sugar, and bake for 15 to 20 minutes until the centers of the cookies are firm. With a spatula, transfer the cookies to a cooling rack.

These crisp chocolate wafers may be rolled out and cut into shapes suitable for any festivity. Store the cookies in a tin with a tight-fitting lid to keep them fresh. (Yields 18)

From the Moosewood Restaurant Low Fat Favorites, published by Clarkson N. Potter, Inc. 1996.

Raspberry Truffle Brownies

Ingredients

Brownies

1 cup (2 sticks) butter, melted
3/4 cup Equal Exchange Organic Baking Cocoa
1 3/4 cups sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
2/3 cup raspberry jam
1 teaspoon raspberry flavor (optional)
1 cup all-purpose flour
4 large eggs
1 cup semisweet or bittersweet chocolate chips (or chopped up Equal Exchange Organic Dark Chocolate bars)
Raspberry Fudge Glaze

1/4 cup raspberry jam
3/4 cup semisweet or bittersweet chocolate chips (or chopped up Equal Exchange Organic Dark Chocolate bars)
2 tablespoons light corn syrup
2 tablespoons butter
1/2 teaspoon raspberry flavor (optional)

Directions
In a medium bowl, whisk together melted butter, sugar, cocoa, salt, jam and flavoring. Stir in the flour, eggs, and chips. Pour batter into a lightly greased 13 X 9 inch pan, spreading till level. Bake in a pre-heated 325 degree oven for 28 to 32 minutes, until a cake tester comes out clean. (Note: It takes a few minutes longer than this in my oven!) The brownies will look slightly wobbly in the middle. Cool them for 1 hour before glazing.

Combine all the glaze ingredients, cook over low heat, or in the microwave, until the chocolate and butter are melted. Stir until smooth, and spread over the bars. Cool for several hours before cutting the brownies with a knife that you have run under hot water.

Yields 24 servings

From Laurie Flarity-White, promoter of small farmers through the UMCOR Coffee Project with First United Methodist Church in Wenatchee, Washington.

Chocolate Covered Strawberries

Ingredients
Strawberries
2 bars of Equal Exchange chocolate (any variety, but we used Organic Very Dark 71%)

Directions
1. Wash your strawberries without removing the stems.
2. Chop your chocolate.
3. Bring a saucepan of water to a simmer over medium heat.
4. Place your chocolate in a heatproof medium sized bowl and place that over the saucepan.
5. Allow the chocolate to soften and stir until melted.
6. Remove the melted chocolate from the heat. Dip strawberries in the chocolate, then lift and twist slightly to allow excess chocolate to fall back into the bowl.
7. Place the strawberries on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper and allow the chocolate to set for 30 minutes.
8. Serve or refrigerate, then share with your sweetheart.

Your Stories: How Equal Exchange Products Fuel Justice

We’re extremely proud of the work that our customers are doing to advance food justice, environmental sustainability and human rights in their communities and around the world. These highlights were shared by some of our dedicated supporters.

Patty Sanders, Hunger Action Enabler, Presbytery of the Redwoods in Northern California    “The Pedal for Protein bike ride raises funds for often-lacking protein food at local Northern California food pantries. The 4th annual September ride was a 6 day ride traversing the coast, redwoods and wine country in Northern California, concluding in Santa Rosa with a one day ride for riders of all abilities and 59 eager riders. This year we raised over $45,000, all donated to food banks for free, healthy protein for food pantries. Many of our pantries are in rural areas of Northern California and many other areas devastated by the October wildfires. We also fund a international grant through the  Presbyterian Hunger Program for a hunger justice project. Equal Exchange donated to our rider “swag bag” and provided our host churches with coffee, tea and chocolate. We also sell Equal Exchange coffee, tea and chocolate at our Pedal for Protein promotion Sundays all summer, at Presbytery meetings and Holiday Fair Trade Fairs at local churches.”

Sara Pirtle, Student Alliance for Global Health at University of Nebraska Medical Center, Omaha, NE    “Our Student Alliance for Global Health has been selling Equal Exchange products since 2001! We use the sale proceeds to help support our annual medical service trips to Nicaragua, Jamaica, and a Native American reservation. In May we took a service trip to Nicaragua. The accompanying photo is of two of our physical therapy students working with a handicapped child at an orphanage, under the supervision of the orphanage’s physical therapist. Our students appreciate, and so do our customers, that our fundraiser helps empower small farmers and growers’ cooperatives and also supports our efforts to improve healthcare in impoverished communities while providing valuable cross-cultural training to our students. A win-win for everyone.”

Paula Rosenberg, The Women’s Club of Albany, NY    “In January, The Women’s Club of Albany was delighted to have Equal Exchange chocolates to accompany Ellen Messer’s excellent discussion of “The Culinary and Cultural History of Chocolate.” Ellen skillfully guided the audience on how to bite, savor, taste, smell, and evaluate the components of each of the chocolates provided. For many, this was their first experience in realizing the complexities of various chocolates. Ellen’s presentation was also the first time many had heard about the history, process, and socio-political consequences of chocolate production. I believe there was a good shift among many to understand what they can do to support fair and humanitarian farming and trade.”

JenJoy Roybal is an artist living in Brooklyn and does communications for Episcopal Relief & Development      “Last February I took a trip to Nicaragua with Equal Exchange ​led by​ the Unitarian Universalist  College of Social Justice.​ Our delegation met with a number of groups including the all-women’s cooperative FEM in Esteli and Palacaguina. We had a chance to do a  home stay with the Cooperativo Zacarias Padilla in the mountainous village of Quibuto, one of many small farmer groups rolling their harvest up into what becomes Equal Exchange coffee. I always look out for the fair trade label on products and make an effort to support commerce that is holistic and just, but seeing a label and believing intentions is far from actually following the winding journey it takes to embody those intentions and coming to an understanding of what it truly entails. I learned that despite the many complexities involved in pursuit of this vision, that Equal Exchange is committed to fair trade on every level.”

Amy Meredith, Clinical Professor in Speech and Hearing Sciences for Washington State University, Spokane, WA     “I’ve been selling Equal Exchange products to raise money for the speech therapy materials we brought to Guatemala to provide rehabilitation services. We raised about $3,000 selling fair trade coffee, tea, and chocolate, which has allowed us to buy Spanish children’s books, special feeding spoons and cups, Guatemalan sign language books, low tech alternative augmentative communication tools, assessment materials, and many other items that help communication, cognition, and feeding. We see children and adults with a variety of disorders, such as autism, developmental delay, aphasia, apraxia, dysphagia, traumatic brain injury, cerebral palsy, hearing loss, and cleft lip and palate. This photo is of a mom we worked with who has severe cleft lip and palate. Although the surgeons repaired her palate, she will not have good speech due to the age of repair and the inability to correct her jaw position. Hence, her speech is quiet and a lot of air comes out of her nose. Her husband is elderly with severe hearing loss. Our solution was to make her a picture communication book, since she is illiterate, and a Guatemalan sign language book, that we customized with pictures, so that reading the words for each sign would not be an issue. We love the people we serve. They feed our souls.”

Claudia Moore, West Highlands UMC, Kennewick, WA     “This year we ordered our first shipment of Equal Exchange products for our church. I chair the Missions Committee at West Highlands United Methodist Church. We were given a $5,000 gift from the death of a member. We didn’t want to just “use” the money and have it gone, so we decided to make the gift sustainable and multifaceted by supporting farmers and workers through Fair Trade and Equal Exchange, educate our church members and be able to continue that process with each item we sell and replenish. Our congregation is really enjoying the Equal Exchange products. We look forward to expanding our sharing.”