Drinking Chocolate
$20
Taken from website:
This drinking chocolate is earthy and deep, with a malty, almost mocha-like finish that lingers for days. Look for rich notes of honey, aromatic coffee, and toasted nuts.
The single origin beans come from a remote part of north-eastern Honduras, so remote that it's only accessible by two day's journey via canoe.
From Food & Wine: “This is a very complex drinking chocolate,” shared one editor. “It tastes like if I melted a really high-quality chocolate bar. You get those sweet, nutty, banana bread notes, which is a nice surprise.”
Directions: Heat 1/2 of milk in a saucepan until steaming. Add 1/4 cup of drinking chocolate and whisk until completely dissolved and frothy. Pour into a cup and enjoy. This can also be made with non-dairy milk or use cream for an intensely decadent experience.
Voted best hot chocolate for dark chocolate lovers by Food & Wine magazine!
Tasting Notes: Banana, Honey, Toasted Walnut
Origin: Honduras Wampusirpi
Ingredients: Organic Cacao, Organic Cane Sugar
Weight: 300g / 10.5oz
Made in Northern Michigan!
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Taken from website:
Where did the name The Meadow come from?
The vision for our shop was to create a place that feels like coming home. It is a welcoming place where we can slow down and enjoy ourselves. It’s a place you dream of stumbling into, as if by magic, as you wander through town, a place filled with fresh flowers and friendly people, with strange discoveries everywhere. Where else could such a place be but The Meadow?
A note from the owner - Mark Bitterman.
When I was 19 years old, I dropped out of college...
got a job as a typesetter, bought a ‘68 VW Van to sleep in, saved up some money, sold the van, and moved to France, where I landed a job fixing up a chateau lost in the woodsy mountain range just north of the Pyrenees. When I wasn’t restoring eight-foot-tall oak shutters or building a stone wall, I’d shoot off on a motorcycle I’d picked up cheap to explore. One day, at a truck stop restaurant, I took a bite of the lunch special—steak and French fries—and that’s when everything changed for me.
A single crystal of salt...
The steak was studded with silvery chunks of coarse salt, with a minerally zing electrifying every bite. How can a steak be transcendent? I headed for the Atlantic coast where I met the salt maker, a humble but dashing man who gestured expansively over the wetlands where his salt farm lay and explained to me the simple facts of his trade: “This salt farm has been in continuous operation since Medieval monks established the system on the foundation of Roman salt works who built on Celtic salt works that go back to prehistory.” I was flabbergasted. A single crystal of salt had telescoped me through time and bound me in some intimate and unexpected ways to people and land and history itself.
Back then I would have never predicted I'd be working a retail shop.
But then again, I would never have predicted finding sushi at a county fair, or a veggie burger that bleeds, or a successful croissant-doughnut hybrid. I went back to college. I tried my hand at import/export in Paris. I sold wine. I built a database at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. I CEO-ed a dot com company. I published news on superconductivity. A son was born, then a second. All the while, I travelled more often than is normal. One day my ex-wife and I decided to do the logical thing and open a flower shop. “And we can put all your salts in there too…. Get them out of the basement,” she said.
There was not a single molecule of my being that understood what I was getting myself into.
But there was a motive lurking deep down inside. All the years I’d travelled, all the joys and worries raising kids, all the sorrows and triumphs of an unsettled professional, had left me with a feeling that was only growing, taking on clarity, and quietly insisting on finding form. Bound up in this discovery of salt many years before was the realization that life is unspeakably beautiful, but you have to put yourself out there to see it. You have to give things a try, give people a try, risk yourself. What makes our lives meaningful and a joy are our connections to one another, to our history, and to our planet.
Bound up in this discovery of salt many years before was the realization that life is unspeakably beautiful...
... but you have to put yourself out there to see it. You have to give things a try, give people a try, risk yourself. What makes our lives meaningful and a joy are our connections to one another, to our history, and to our planet.
The Meadow was founded to give life to these shared connections. Salt, chocolate, bitters, flowers. Craft made salt for the delight of cooking and sharing a meal. Artisan chocolate bars for fun and sensual pleasure. Cocktail bitters for the drinks that bring friends together. Fresh cut flowers for the beauty of nature brought home. It was perfect!
The only problem was, I had zero idea how to run a retail shop.
Worse, I actually shied away from selling things. I just wanted to welcome people into the shop and then, once I had them cornered, tell stories about the people, places, and history salt, chocolate, bitters, and flowers. Looking back, this was a weird way to be. Yet to this day the underlying sentiment of each of our team members remains the same. Every day is like an impromptu cocktail party, a welcoming place for creating and fostering connections.
I remember our first few summers. Things were often slow back then. Sometimes I would just close the door and put a sign out saying “I’m at the brewery across the street. Come get me or call me on my cell and I’ll be right over!” We try not to do that any more, but if we do, we hope you’ll come over and join us.
With love,
Mark Bitterman
P.s. Now I'd like to think we have some idea of how to run a shop!
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Take from the website:
Like many businesses do, Crow & Moss began in a basement.
One day, driving home from work, owner Mike Davies was overcome by the desire to learn how to make craft chocolate. It was a sudden and all encompassing feeling, a life changing moment -- and one he knew he couldn't ignore. Over the next few months, he put together his initial set up (a small coffee roaster, a Champion juicer for cracking and pre-refining, a Diamond melanger, a small tempering machine and a neon pink hair dryer for winnowing that he stole from his wife) and got to work. It was a rabbit hole he never crawled back out of (his wife has since had to get a new hair dryer).
Now, Crow & Moss is making artisan chocolate in one hundred pound batches in our 2000 square foot factory in Petoskey Michigan, trying to bring out unique and true-to-bean flavor experiences to share with chocolate lovers everywhere.
Enjoy!
Mike Davies
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