Hot cocoa

If, while walking through the forrest you come across this, a cocoa pod (fruit)…

and cut it open, you will find the cocoa beans. If the fruit was at the correct stage of ripeness, you can suck on the beans, enjoying the sweet pulp surrounding them. They’re tasty!

If you were to take a whole bunch of the beans, dry them out, grind them up and compress them, you’d end up with real cocoa, just like what is pictured below. We purchased this cocoa at the Saturday morning market here in Portsmouth. Now we can make some fresh hot cocoa!