Like the Magic School Bus

Sorry I called Elijah a punk the other day. He's really not. :) But sometimes I have hard mommy days. One thing I love about Elijah is how inquisitive he is.... he's always wanting to figure out how things work and asking tons of questions. Some days it drives me crazy, but most days I'm thankful he's got a sharp mind. Lately he's gotten into The Magic School Bus books.... he LOVES them. (In case you're not familiar with them, they're hilarious science books about a teacher who takes her class on field trips... into the human body, into a hurricane, into a bee hive... all on The Magic School Bus.... our library at the MK school has a huge stock of them and it's Elijah's favorite section.)

One of the Magic School Bus books that we recently checked out was about the Rain Forest and the class's study of cocoa plants. I'm not quite sure that we live in a technical "Rain Forest" but with all the exotic critters and plants around, I'm sure it's close. And yesterday it came closer... Elijah was outside playing with the neighborhood kids with these little black seed things and it turns out they were cocoa seeds from our very own cocoa tree in our yard! Who knew?

I had our yard guy cut a pod down from the tree and it looked just like the pods in the book. :)

He cut it open.... did not look at all what I thought it would look like inside....


Nor did it taste like what I thought it would.... the kids (mine and the neighbor kids) were clamoring to "eat" the seeds... Not quite sure why - I tasted one and it was similar to raw nasty tasting pizza dough. You just chewed on it and then spit it out.... the cocoa seed on the inside was purple and didn't have any semblance of taste to a chocolate bar.

Caleb was so funny... he didn't want to try the seeds outside with the other kids. He wanted to come inside, sit at the table, and then try the seeds.... then he loved them.

Now if I can only figure out how to turn the cocoa beans into something edible and yummy. :)