Kind Organics Mystical Mint Chocolate Bar – Toronto – Get it at West End Food Co-op.

Recently on a trip to the West-End Food Co-op, there were two different kinds of Kind Green Organic’s Chocolate Bars conveniently located right at the check out. And it was a happy impulse buy, I’ll admit to it completely.

I have seen Kind Organics selling salad blends, spouts, herbs and other greens at Farmers’ Markets around the city, but never chocolate (or at least I had never noticed it) so it caught my attention. Plus – it’s chocolate… so yum.

Kind Organics is a farm located 40 minutes north of Toronto in Holland Marsh, and they sound like they employ veganic or mostly veganic farming techniques (as in, they don’t use chemicals, synthetic fertilizers, manures, or animal by-products in their farming). You can read more about them on their website.

The source of chocolate in this bar was a company I’ve got a long standing love for –  Chocosol Chocolate. My first warm memory of Chocosol is when we encountered them on a very cold winter evening in David Pecaut Square (Juno After Party event.) Their hot drinking chocolate was vegan, delicious, and warmed up my very cold hands.

We were reintroduced to their awesome products at the 2012 FoodShare Recipe for Change event, and I’ve been happily (and actively) following along with their company ever since. They are on the Food Empowerment Projects ethical chocolate list. They use organic, forest garden shade grown cocoa sourced directly from indigenous communities in Southern Mexico, and follow horizontal trade practices.

I’d really like to see more and more of this. Ethically sourced chocolate, local organic farm, local producers working together to make products, and then of course, selling it at a nearby co-op or farmers market is an added plus. And obviously, also have these collaborative products & projects be entirely vegan.

This bar of chocolate was delicious, minty, made with Chocosol chocolate and a blend of locally produced organic herbs. What’s not to love?

They also had a lavender bar in purple, that I wouldn’t mind trying very very soon!

Edit: as it turns out, we went back to West End Food Co-op yesterday, and found out that they don’t just have 2 varieties of chocolate bars, there are 5!

List of varieties and ingredients based on Lot #001

– Flower Power Chocolate – Raw Mexican cocoa beans, raw cane sugar, cocoa butter, with super amazing herbs grown locally, herb blend includes marigolds, wild sunflowers, sunflowers, nasturtiums, bachelor buttons, dianthus, lemon and tangerine, marigolds, calendula, borage.

– Root Energy Chocolate – Raw Mexican cocoa beans, raw cane sugar, cocoa butter, with super amazing herbs grown locally, herb blend includes burdock root, dandelion root, licorice root, ginseng root.

– Lemon Lavender Chocolate – Raw Mexican cocoa beans, raw cane sugar, cocoa butter, with super amazing herbs grown locally, herb blend includes lavender, lemon balm and lemon verbena.

– Cosmic Chocolate – Raw Mexican cocoa beans, raw cane sugar, cocoa butter, with super amazing herbs grown locally, herb blend includes spearmint, Apple mint, peppermint, pineapple mint, variegated mint, lemon balm, cat mint, cat nip, lemon verbena, anise hyssop, hint of lavender, echinacea, calendula, dianthus, cosmos, nasturtiums, bachelor buttons, lemon/orange marigold.

– Mystical Mint Chocolate – Raw Mexican cocoa beans, raw cane sugar, cocoa butter, with super amazing herbs grown locally, herb blend includes spearmint, apple mint, peppermint, pineapple mint, variegated mint, cat mint.