Trail Mix: Cacao, the Currency of Sex

Hey, plant lovers and plant killers. I'm Jonathan.

And I'm Jeanette.

We're two old high school friends, current geriatric millennials.

This is Plant Sluts, the podcast where plants meet pop culture, sex, gossip, and

all the dirt in between.

Coming to you from a backyard in

Salem, Oregon, and a rooftop in Montreal,

Quebec, where Plant Sluts.

We're Plant Sluts.

Oh, my God.

Hey, Sluts. Welcome to our trail mix series, the

series where we unpack the weird history hiding in your fanny pack.

Today, we're cracking the truffle and spilling the salted caramel.

But first, let's share our garden status updates. Jonathan, what have you been up to in the garden?

Not so much the garden as just kind of like, picking and prodding at my seed trays and preening, talking to them, and, like, being excited that they're, like, poking their heads up. The things that I cold stratified came up, so. So it means that I did something right. Because it's been a couple years that, like, I've cold stratified things, but they didn't really come out.

Yeah.

This year it seems like I'm on a good roll. What about you?

I have fallen prey to some of those, like, Instagram reel TikTok ideas.

No.

Yes. And this one I saw a while back, and it was a lady who got these huge planters, filled them halfway with cement, put poles in them, and use the poles maybe for climbing things, and then would just put, like, annual flowers in the dirt. I have the idea of using the poles to string lights around my garden in the back, kind of in a circle. So at the end of last season, I bought five huge planters, which is, like, a lot of investment financially.

Yeah. Like, planters are so expensive.

Yeah. And they're, like, pretty ceramic ones. And so I've had those just, like, sitting out, and I'm like, oh, my God, I have to do this. And then I'm like, oh, my God, I don't really want to do this. And I have the wood and I have the cement mix. And so I've just been like, I have to do this, and now I don't even know if it's gonna look good.

Yeah.

When I showed you yesterday, you had the great idea of instead of cement, using gravel.

Yeah, that sounds. That sounds really smart.

Well, that's why it's like, why do I, like, get into, like, these Instagram, like, ideas and not even, like, second guess? Like, of course gravel's such a better idea for, like, the plants that could grow in There because I'm thinking of transplanting my passion flower and so then it could really like, you know, do well. Also put rebarb because of course Nathan's doing most of it so it doesn't tip over in the wind.

Like rebarb. That attaches it into the soil.

Yeah. And there's also drainage. And Nathan had glued some like PVC pipe around the drainage for when the cement was gonna go up. So now he has to go out and like pull it all off. So really Nathan fell victim to me watching a TikTok or Instagram reel. Yeah. But it'll be exciting. I'm kind of excited to see how it will look when it's done and I feel like it would give me a lot more opportunities for some vining plants and places to put maybe peas.

Yeah.

And some annual flowers because I have so many seeds going.

I mean, it seems better too that you'd put gravel because in case you change your mind then you don't have this really heavy ass container filled with, you know, garden cement.

Yeah. Because we could take the poles out and just use them as planters.

So I think it's good. I think like this is much better because you can change your mind and not have wasted all that money.

Yeah. It's exciting to be at the beginning of the season and planning everything out.

Yeah.

Time to grab a mug, pick some herbs and spill the tea. Jonathan, do you have some garden tea?

I have a garden tea gripe kind of thing. A lot of you will know that I'm in grad school right now for landscape architecture. I'm turning 41 this month to give some context. And so I'm in school with a lot of people who are like 22 to 25. It's been a lot of like, what the fuck moments, to be honest. Like I don't understand how people function nowadays. What is that generation called? Like if you're 22 and 25, what are you considered?

I think they're Gen Z because they're like born in. Are they born in like 2002?

Yeah, like early 2000s.

Yeah. Gen Z is like 1997 to like 2012.

2012. Wow. Okay. I think we're all pretty fucked because these are the people that are going to be running our pension plans, the government, I don't know, designing our parks and our cities.

That's the part you know, the most of.

Yeah. The project right now that we're working on is a Montreal like city park. And we are doing an analysis of the vegetation that exists and then we have to kind of put together a strategy for, like, different plants and design. We're working on, like, different maps. We're working on putting together plant communities and that kind of thing, and working on some of the strategies to prevent, like, erosion and that kind of thing. They don't seem to know how to use tools. I don't know how many times I've had to explain how a cloud drive works.

Oh, it's very interesting. I also went to grad school as an older person and had that same kind of generation of younger people. And, yeah, I'm sitting there like the oldest person in the world, writing notes on paper, of course, while I can see them scrolling Instagram during the lectures. And I'm like, how could you pay for this education and scroll Instagram? Our minds were at totally different places. And then the technology gap. I think our generation growing up with computers, like, we understand, like, how they work because we were, like, defragmenting our hard drives when we were 13.

Right.

When I teach now, I tell people it's like teaching your great grandparent how to use a computer. They can use an iPad, but they don't know what right clicking is. Young people aren't masters of technology.

Yes.

I say right click, and they just stare at me.

You say Instagram, but you know what I'm seeing sitting at the back is they're all on Facebook.

What the fuck?

Like, what a regression. Like, they communicate on Facebook. I see them scrolling their Facebook wall pages or whatever the feed is. It's like, I don't understand. Why did we go back to Facebook? How is that a thing? You know? Like, I only go to Facebook if I want to, like, see what my mom's up to.

See which relative died.

Yeah.

Is it, like, retro? So it's, like, cool?

I have no idea. But they don't even know how to use, like, teams or Google Meet or Zoom.

Yeah.

I have to wait while they download it onto their. Whatever. They're using their iPad and then instruct them how to follow the link and to open up a zoom session.

Oh, my God.

They don't have earbuds. They're just, like, speaking into their iPad, into their laptop. They're in the middle of, like, another, like, a cafe, and they're just, like, talking, and I can't hear anything. And I'm like, do you have any earbuds? Like, can you please? And they're like, oh, I don't know. They're like. They're Apple EarPods. They don't connect to the laptop, I think I don't know how to connect them to the laptop because the laptop's not a Mac.

And then they think you're, like, a very controlling, mean old man.

Oh, my God, I am. They use Canva for everything. So they use Canva as a word processor?

No.

It doesn't even have a spell check.

What the.

The paragraphs are not, like, connected. So basically, you have text boxes.

Do they center al paragraphs?

I don't even know, because I refuse. I'm like, please do not use Canva. I will be writing my thing in. In a word processor, and if you want, you can copy and paste it in, but I will not work out of the Canva document.

Oh, my God. I didn't even know that was a thing.

It's pretty frustrating.

Well, I know when I had group projects in grad school, I waited and waited for a younger teammate to do her part of the project. She didn't do it until the last night. I went back to check, and I had done a lot. Other people had done a lot, and her part was not correct. It was just objectively incorrect how she did it. So I just went in there last minute. I was like, fine, I'll just take. I'll just fix it before we turn it in. She then confronted me with classmates the next day to say how, like, hurtful and disrespectful it was that I deleted her work and put the correct, totally opposite information, like, oh, you did the wrong thing. Here's the right thing. I was reprimanded for doing that when she could have, like, done it on time and prevented any. Any of that from happening.

I mean, to be fair, that's how I feel in a way, in some of these group projects where I'm working on the Google Slides. And then I'm under the impression that they haven't done any of their work. And then I find out that they have both been working on, like, a Canva document and that they're pretty much done, and they've already written things that, like, I was supposed to have written.

Oh.

And I'm just, like. I feel totally left out. I'm struggling with, like, whether or not I'm a control freak or, you know, I don't know. I feel like I'm pretty flexible. The first thing that I would say is, okay, how does everyone like to work? Do we want to use, like, a Google Drive? Do we Want to use OneDrive? How do we want to communicate? And it kind of goes over their head. Like, they don't even understand what I'm trying to do. Like, they don't understand that I'm trying to set, like, the way we operate.

Having watched many seasons of Survivor, the person who tries to organize how they build the shelter gets voted out first. They get blamed for everything. So being the person that's like, hey, how should we do this? Has automatically put a target on your back and you're getting voted out.

Okay, that's fair. I'm getting voted out. But I swear to God, in the real world, when we're working in an office, I am the one that's going to get promoted. Chocolate covered peanuts, Chocolate covered raisins, M&M's, Smarties, what have you. Today we're talking about cocoa, the main ingredient in the chocolate that we eat every day. Jeanette, what's your favorite way to eat chocolate?

My favorite way is kind of weird. I love buying dark chocolate chips and just, like, pouring out a little bowl of them and eating the tiny chocolate chips. Sometimes I'm mix them with peanuts.

That sounds like when you have nothing else but, like, a bag of, like, baking, baking chips, and you're just like, okay, I guess that'll be good enough.

I wonder if I just got so used to it by trying not to have, like, a lot of candy and chocolate in the house, and now I just eat those. Have you ever made chocolates?

I've made chocolate as part of a online workshop for Christmas for, you know, like one of those Covid years. And I realize it's a lot more difficult. You know, it's like not just necessarily melting chocolate. You kind of. You have to temper it, which is that you. It has to reach a certain temperature, and that makes it kind of glossy and not what they call bloomed. When chocolate has that kind of white, powdery look, it's like, it's called a bloom, I think, and it's from, like, bad temperature fluctuations or something like that.

Yeah, yeah.

But it's funny that you mentioned the wafers because that totally reminds me of that Trend in the 90s where you would get those colored chocolate wafers and you'd kind of melt them in the microwave and paint the colors inside of one of those clear plastic mold trays.

Yeah.

And then you. You'd fill them up and then tap them out, and it would be like this kind of like, be quality chocolate, but kind of cute.

That reminds me of when I was living in Japan. The students would make chocolates, especially on white day, which is March 14th. It's the month after Valentine's Day.

We don't have White Day in North America. Right.

We try to avoid it. We'll probably have it here in the US Soon. So on Valentine's Day, boys make girls chocolate or give them gifts, and then on White Day, girls are supposed to return the favor. And so they would make little, like, home, you know, melted chocolates and, like, truffles and. And bring them in.

Cute. Have you ever made chocolate?

Yeah, I've made chocolates. When we were kids, my mom would make peanut butter balls for Christmas, so we would temper chocolate and dip them in there. And then I've made some since I've made my own Reese's Cup.

That's my favorite.

But I've definitely melted chocolate to temper and fucked it up when, like, water splashed in and it ruins, like, the whole batch. When you have the double boilers going, right? It makes it, like, chalky and grimy, and then you can't use it.

So today we're talking about the ultimate devo of the plant kingdom. He's demanding. He's historically been used as literal currency for sex, and he's the reason you have a stash of emergency chocolate in your desk. We're talking about the cacao tree.

Wait, did you say devo?

I did, yes. It's the male version of diva.

Okay, I'm so ready for this, so give me the dirt on chocolate.

Okay, so the botanical name of chocolate is theobroma cacao, and it is part of the Malvaceae family. But the Malvaceae family is actually the mallow family. So it includes okra, marshmallow hibiscus, and the like.

Yeah, I actually remember it from that Metaflora game we play where we try to match the plant to the family. And okra and chocolate pods kind of look similar. So that makes sense.

Yeah, it's true with the ribs. Maybe like, a fatter, shorter kind of okra pod.

It's true they don't taste similar, but maybe I can make, like, an okra chocolate marshmallow hibiscus treat and call it malva chi. How do you say it?

Malvace.

And I'll call it malvasi.

Do you know what the difference between cocoa and cacao is?

I'm not sure. I feel like it's something to do with, like, processing maybe.

Cacao and cocoa are exactly the same plant. So cocoa is literally just a spelling error by English traders who couldn't handle the word cacao.

I can't handle the word cacao.

Well, when English traders started getting their hands on it, in the 17th and 18th centuries, they didn't seem to get the spelling right, so they swapped the vowels in cacao and it officially morphed into coco or kokoa in the English dictionary. So for a long time it was basically just a bad translation that became official.

So a dyslexic spelling mistake changed. Chocolate as we know it.

Yeah, but actually today it's a marketing word. So like you, like you kind of alluded to, cacao in marketing speak means it's raw, cold, pressed and bitter. And as a by consequence packed with antioxidants. It's naked cocoa. And cocoa itself, when we use the term, it refers to the powder that is often treated with an alkaline agent to remove the bitterness. What's called, like Dutch process. This is what we use when we bake.

So cacao is a bitter bitch and cocoa is a cozy winter cuddlebud.

So most fruit trees let it all hang out in the open, right? Like, think apples, cherries that dangle their fruit at the tips of their branches.

Gross.

Cacao is what botanists call cauliflorus.

What the fuck is cauliflorus?

It sounds like the way my grandmother pronounces cauliflower. Cauliflore. Cauliflorus is when the fruit hugs the trunk or the large branch of the tree. So think of. I don't, I don't know if you know what jackfruit or durian trees look like, but basically they hang directly out of the older kind of trunk and not on the tips of the branches.

Are durian. Jackfruit and cacao all original from the same region?

Yeah, well, caulifloweris is actually much more common in tropical species than they are in temperate species. And I think that. Ooh, now I'm like, not too sure about durian, but jackfruit is in the malvace family, I believe.

Oh, okay.

It's an adaptation to large fruit size. For instance, the cacao pod is like a ribbed football and it weighs over a pound. If it was hanging from the tips of the branches, they'd snap. So the, the cocoa tree prefers to keep the heavy assets close to the body.

Oh, like Nathan's new underwear. They have a little pocket.

Yeah, exactly. I actually have. I actually have that kind of underwear too.

Oh.

Anyways, so the cacao flower points downward and it's really, really hard to pollinate. So we've talked a lot about bees and how important they are, but they're basically useless here. The true Hero of the 50 billion dollar chocolate industry is the chocolate midge, which is a tiny biting fly the size of a pinhead.

Oh, so all bugs are important.

Yeah, all bugs matter. And midges hate bright, sunny, manicured plantations. They prefer dark, damp, and messy understory that's typical of the rainforest. So to keep midges happy, farmers actually leave rotting leaf litter, banana stems, and old cacao husks on the ground to keep the dampness so that the midges have a place to breed. So it's messy, humid, and shady is basically how you get chocolate. I don't know if you know what I'm talking about, but it reminds me of those nude photos, those naked photos that you see. But you can't help but notice the messy background and not paying attention to the actual, like, object of the photo.

How do you see these naked photos you speak of?

I've just heard of people talking about it.

So bees get all the social media attention, but chocolate was brought to you by a tiny biting fly that takes messy nudes.

Exactly. Okay, so imagine checking your bank account and it's just a pile of chocolate shit. Because for the Aztecs, cacao is literal cash. So, Jeanette, guess how many cacao pods it costs to hire a sex worker in the Aztec Empire?

Hmm. Sex worker in Aztec Empire cacao pods. I would guess I have no context. 3.

Cheap. You're underpaying. So according to historical records, the services of sex workers would cost around 8 to 10 cacao beans.

I wonder what quality I would get for three. No, eight to ten sounds like a really good deal. I wonder what strip club would be like. Like throwing the beans. Throwing the pods. And now I'm thinking if I should bring some cacao pods to the. To the club this weekend and be like, eight pods is actually a really good tip.

How many pods are in a bar of lint chocolate? How about that? I'll just start throwing lint.

Those little lint truffles.

Yeah. Do you go to sex clubs a lot? Do you go to strip clubs a lot?

No, but there's a lot in Portland. So I've often brought friends that are visiting because it's. It's full nude, and it's, like, very known for, like, certain strip clubs. So I've. I have brought friends.

A friend just actually told me that they went to a vegetarian strip club in Portland. Do you. Have you heard of that?

I have, yeah. I've been to the vegan strip club in Portland, and I went.

You have?

I went on, like, a Wednesday afternoon with a friend who was visiting from out of town. And that was, like, the first mistake. Don't go to a strip club on a Wednesday afternoon that you have to take the bus to.

No, no, no, no, no.

Yeah, we were just having a good time because, you know, on vacation kind of thing and not thinking about the time of day and being excited for kind of like a. A vegan vibe. But really, when we got there, it was pretty gross. And the stripper in front of me, like, showed me her butthole and, like, tapped it with her finger. But then she, like, moved my cup out of the way when she was gonna, like, swing her shoes around, so.

And she touched her cup after she tapped her butt?

Yeah, she touched. First I had to see the butthole, and then she touched my cup, so. And I wasn't drinking. It was just, like, a Coke. So it was a pretty. Pretty awkward thing. And we were the only ones in the. In the club as well, so that didn't really help. We were getting all the attention, which.

All the attention was on you from

the Wednesday afternoon strippers.

Yeah. I mean, I guess it's better to be alone than to see, you know, the kind of crowd that shows up at a strip club in the middle of the day.

I mean, we were the kind of crowd, I guess.

But, yeah, like, I just have in my head, like, the butthole and, like, a cacao bean, you know, like, just

could have just, like, stuck a little cacao bean inside.

Just, like. Just, like, swish the cacao bean a bit in your mouth and, like, pull it out. And then just, like.

Speaking of chocolate, here's my butthole.

Okay, now let's talk about chocolate itself. First of all, the name chocolate comes from the Aztec name for a drink that cacao was used in. Emperor Montezuma ii supposedly drank 50 cups of chocolatl a day. Not the first time that we talked about Aztec origin of foods. Right. Because in the last episode, we talked about peanuts.

Yeah.

So Chocolatl is a bitter, spicy, frothy drink that was used as an ancient Viagra by this emperor before visiting his harem. And today, chocolate is a result of taking a fermented, roasted cocoa bean and grinding it up to get a thick paste that's called chocolate liqueur. And if you press that paste, it separates into two distinct things. The first is cocoa solids, which is the dark, bitter, powdery brown stuff that basically gives the chocolate fruit flavor and the caffeine and the antioxidants. And the second is cocoa butter, a pure, pale, creamy, extracted fat of the seed.

So the fermented, roasted Bean gets ground up and turns into chocolate liqueur.

Right.

And then they separate it from there into solids and butter.

Exactly.

Okay.

How do you feel about white chocolate?

White chocolate and I have an interesting backstory in my Easter baskets. Being a middle child, I got a white chocolate bunny. I think I might have liked it and said I liked the white chocolate one. So my mom would always give me a white chocolate bunny. She might probably, to this day, maybe even hearing it right now on this podcast, find out that I don't like white chocolate or Easter bunnies at all

or like, little duck figurines.

Yeah, I feel like white chocolate's too sweet. How do you feel about it?

I would agree to that. My brother really likes white chocolate. And so, you know, the loudest person always gets what they want, which means that in a lot of stuff, we would always get have, like, white chocolate flavored things. Oh, cakes. You know, like, white chocolate raspberry, which is actually a really good mix, to be honest.

Oh, that is good.

Yeah. White chocolate is just too sweet. And people like to argue, like, is white chocolate actually chocolate? Is it not chocolate? But there's actually a legal loophole. So for a long time, chocolate purists basically said it is not real chocolate. But the FDA stepped in, thank God, and said legally, as long as the bar contains at least 20% cocoa butter, it is allowed to call itself chocolate. So big chocolate. I don't know if that's. Yeah, that's obviously a thing. Like Nestle Big Hershey, Big Chocolate manipulated the legal system to keep his title. Yeah, Hershey's right. Hershey's is a big American brand.

So if I put, like, 20% cocoa butter in my soup, it would be

considered chocolate in the FDA rule. Possibly. Although it might have to be a solid. I don't actually know.

Oh, interesting.

So a lot of the cheap white chocolate doesn't even use cocoa butter, you know, because of the cost. So they often swap it for palm oil or other kinds of vegetable fat. That's why, you see, sometimes the label says white baking chips or white coating instead of white chocolate, because you're basically eating sweetened palm oil.

Barf.

In doing some of the research, I found that Montreal was actually considered a continental hub for big chocolate. So there's, like, massive factories in places like Griffin Town that was churning out these chocolates called cherry blossoms, which are actually pretty disgusting for a child. It's. It's a maraschino cherry swimming in, like, cherry creme and then enrobed in chocolate. And they were like, Always sold in paper boxes at like the grocery store checkout.

My mother in law loves those. I think here they're like Queen Anne or something like that.

Well, and there's also a big company, Barry Calbeau, which is a big multinational Belgian company that has a giant industrial plant here in most cities. Like when you see chocolate chocolatieres or like, you know, chocolate places, they're basically just melters. So they buy giant pre made blocks of chocolate from Switzerland or Belgium or even Montreal and they melt it down and then they mold it into their, you know, like they're pretty truffles. Today there's a new wave of local makers that are treating cacao like a fine wine and completely rewriting how we buy chocolate. And it's not unique to Montreal. It's, it's across the world.

Yeah, there are a few bean to bar makers in Oregon, but not Moonstruck, which is that expensive chocolate you see at like the Made in Oregon store at the airport.

Right.

Moonstruck buys ethically sourced chocolate and then melts it. They're melters. Famous bean to bar chocolate company in Oregon is woodblock.

Okay, well wait, what exactly is Bean to bar?

Bean to bar makers, they do the dirty work. They import the raw, fermented dried seeds or beans directly from the tropics and then they roast them, crack them, grind them for days in stone melangers right in front of their workshops. How would you say that?

Melanger?

Is that really the only way to say it?

I don't, I don't know.

Like they roast them, crack them and grind them for days right in their workshop. The craft movement in North America is cool, but a lot of radical things are happening in botany right now. At the equator they're really decolonizing agriculture and cutting out those corporate intermediaries. So for centuries the global south grew the cheap raw beans and Europe and North America did all the roasting, keeping the money and the glory. So there's been a lot of pressure these days for the mega conglomerate Corpse Conglo Corpse to improve the shitty conditions in their supply chains. Because there's been like child labor, dangerous working conditions and deforestation.

Yeah, it sounds really dystopian.

So there's been some improvement and you can see it in the chocolate scorecard. But a lot more work is needed.

And we'll link that in the description. Right?

Yeah. And we'll have a link to the chocolate scorecard in the show notes. That's why the tree to bar or bean to bar movement is really important. So countries of Origin are keeping beans and building the factories. In Vietnam, two guys found wild forgotten cacao trees planted by French colonists in the countryside. And they've been making award winning chocolate right in Ho Chi Minh City, proving that Asia has an incredible spicy botanical terroir. Terroir.

We'll ignore the fact that those vendors are actually French. I've actually eaten a lot of their chocolate. I used to bring them back to Canada whenever I was traveling from Vietnam back home. It's good. I'm seeing the brand here in Ecuador.

The company Pacari isn't just making chocolate at the source. They're practicing biodynamic farming. So the indigenous farmers, they work with, plant and harvest cacao pods according to the phases of the moon and use herbal witchcraft on the soil just like we do. John.

Oh yeah, I'm definitely, that's definitely my thing, not yours.

You know, the almanac does use moon phases. The old farmer's almanac uses moon phases still for planting.

I bought actually seeds in Italy and on the back of the seed pack it actually tells me when I should plant it according to the moon cycle.

And it makes sense if you think about like how the tides work in water, like moving maybe throughout the plant

and in the ground must like influence the evaporation and, and the precipitation cycles. I guess it's all hocus pocus. Witchcraft. Come on. Sorry.

How dare you?

Well, and climate change is actually really affecting the industry.

Yeah, we keep hearing that there's going to be a big chocolate shortage. And like enjoy your chocolate now because it's all going to be gone soon.

Same thing with coffee I've been hearing. So they're experiencing what we can call like a climate change induced shortage. And we're already seeing companies, quote unquote, adapting by replacing cocoa butter with other ingredients. Like I mentioned earlier with the white chocolate is they're adding, you know, palm oil or hydrogenated vegetable oils, that kind of thing. So you know Terry's chocolate, the orange flavored chocolate ball that you smack at Christmas time?

Oh, yeah.

So it's actually no longer considered chocolate. What? And Reese's recently swapped cocoa butter for vegetable fats and people are noticing.

Damn.

Next time you have a chocolate craving, don't forget to read the label. And you can always check out websites like the chocolate scorecard Jeanette mentioned earlier to see which companies have more ethical and better practices.

Yeah. And we try to avoid palm oil because of the deforestation it causes.

Yeah. In like Malaysia and Indonesia, there's a lot of rainforests that have been converted to Palm oil plantations.

Jonathan, it's time to break down each zodiac sign's favorite chocolate.

What? Okay, what are you going to do? What is this?

So I'm going to tell you what chocolate you like based on your zodiac sign. So if you didn't know what chocolate you like, just find your birthday and now you'll know. So Virgos prefer high quality, pure and often dark chocolates that reflect their refined, health conscious and detail oriented nature.

Okay.

Then there's Libras. Of course. They want something balanced, often combining sweet and savory, like dark chocolate with sea salt. Scorpios prefer intense, dark and complex chocolates that match their passionate and mysterious nature. They probably like it as a sex

thing and they're probably very likely to ghost you as well.

Sagittarius. They like adventurous, bold flavors. A bit of heat to match their fire sign energy. Capricorns like traditional and comforting classics like chocolate chip cookies. And then Aquarius, like unique or unconventional chocolates, like pairing chocolate with a botanical blend.

My mom is an Aquarius and she really likes mint chocolate, which is a botanical blend, right?

Oh, yeah. So this is all true.

Of course.

Pisces like dreamy, soothing chocolate, like chocolate pudding or even a white chocolate. There's no way your brother's a Pisces though.

No.

Aries like you, Jonathan. Like bold flavors.

Yes.

Such as spiced chocolate or intense dark chocolate. We're talking 79%.

I do like the bitter dark chocolate. It's true.

I knew it.

But spiced? I don't know.

You wouldn't like a spicy like chili chocolate?

I don't know. Like, I haven't really found one that I find really amazing. I do like chocolates though that have maybe like cardamom in it.

Yeah, well, that's a spice.

But I'm like really into salted caramel toffee chunks.

Well, it's interesting because my moon sign is Aries and I do occasionally like a really spicy chocolate. And your moon is Libra and that's dark chocolate with sea salt. So.

Yeah. Yeah, sea salt.

If one of the signs don't match, always just go for your moon and then you're rising.

Yeah, you're bound to find something that matches.

Taurus loves rich caramels or any earthy flavors. They're probably the first to try, like the mushroom chocolates. They're just like Earth girls and Geminis. They love unusual combinations like dark chocolate with fruit spice or nuts. Because they're a little nuts. They'll probably post a picture of them with their weird chocolate and then cancers like you. Yeah. They like comforting, nostalgic and rich chocolates that offer emotional warmth that they can't get from others.

No, no. But yes.

Sea salt caramels or classic milk chocolate. I would think they also would like soft on the inside and really hard on the outside like an M and M because of the crab. Finally. Leo's will love that. Decadent like champagne or gold dusted truffle.

High maintenance. Never happy with just the regular sea salt.

Yeah. So try some of your zodiac signs, favorite chocolates and see if you get a new obsession.

And I guess for your partner or your date's birthday you can try and match it up.

Oh yeah, that's perfect for gifting or seducing.

Just say that you heard it on Plant Sluts first.

Thanks for getting slutty with us.

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