I live in a cocoa farming village in Ghana, which means almost everyone here is a cocoa farmer. There are about 500 people, including kids, and during cocoa season, you can smell chocolate everywhere you walk! Cocoa trees grow tall with big green leaves, and their colorful pods are filled with seeds covered in sweet, sticky pulp. I had the chance to help harvest the pods and taste the pulp myself, and it was juicy, fruity and delicious. Here’s what it was like to try chocolate straight from the tree and see how it’s grown in Ghana.
Did you know that chocolate is made from fruit? This fruit is a cocoa pod, which looks like a big, colorful football. Inside the pod are slimy, sticky bunches of white clumps called pulp. Underneath the sweet pulp is a hard brown seed which eventually becomes chocolate!
This week I tried eating the cocoa pulp. To eat cocoa pulp, you just suck or slurp it off the seeds. It tastes a little fruity, kind of like a mix between mango and pineapple. I had to be careful not to bite the seeds. Those taste bitter and earthy like a mix of coffee and dirt. Yuck! You can only eat cocoa pulp when it is fresh, right after you cut the pod open. If you wait too long, it goes bad and tastes sour.
