Rachel Laudan

Of all the difficult things to turn into food (and most plants and animals are difficult to turn into food), cacao beans and their processing rank way up there. Let’s leave to one side the fermenting and cleaning and just think about the grinding of cacao. Because of the oil content, grinding cacao beans is [...]

Following up on an earlier post about turning cacao beans into chocolate, Lesley Téllez provides a timely lesson on what grinding chocolate on the metate (grindstone) is actually like. Pain shot through my knees as I attempted to get up from the floor. My legs wobbled. The backs of my knees felt slick with sweat, [...]

Now grinding seeds is always hard so it’s no wonder that Beatrice resorted to the coffee grinder, especially because she was working with a pestle and mortar, which, even if it is used to shear, is not as effective as a grindstone. Even if you have a grindstone, though, even if you know how to [...]