The Bohol Bee Farm

The PCVs I got to know when I first got here gave me some good travel tips, and both Travis and Kate highly recommended Bohol, in the Visayas. So months ago, I made my plans to go there for the weekend (Christmas Eve was a holiday here, though it may not be one every year – it made for a four-day weekend, which was nice).

Travis had recommended the Bohol Bee Farm. It was a bit of a splurge for those on a PCV budget (i.e., the equivalent of $40 a night) and a wonderful place! This small organic farm has some delicious food – my favorite was the organic salad with edible flowers and honey-mustard dressing. It has some great products – I had to take home some of the pesto spread, honey spread and mango spread, plus some royal jelly moisturizer and papaya soap (they also gave me a little Christmas gift bag with some honey). And I found moscovado sugar! This makes me two-thirds of the way to the Dark, Bittersweet Chocolate recipe from Café by the Ruins, so I’m reprinting it here. I don’t have much hope for finding fresh carabao milk when I get home (in fact, I don’t think it’s that easy to get fresh cow milk!), but maybe store-bought heavy cream will do. I think tableas can be found in a Mexican grocery store. And moscovado sugar? Maybe it’s easy enough to find too! Here it is:

Dark, Bittersweet Chocolate
9 tableas unsweetened tablea chocolate
1 cup heavy carabao cream
¾ cup moscovado sugar
9-10 demitasses
Scrape chocolate into flakes
In heatproof bowl, mix with sugar
Bring cream to boiling point – that is, when it rises up and threatens to boil over
Immediately pour over powder
Tap bowl to settle the chocolate into the cream – let it sit for one minute
Using rubber spatula, slowly stir in circular motion, starting from the center and working out, until all chocolate is melted – 2 minutes
Make sure it is smooth
It can be kept for two weeks in the refrigerator or freezer
To use, warm amount needed in double boiler
As beverage, serve hot in demitasse

I had a couple of treatments at the Bohol Bee Farm, too, in their spa by the Bohol Sea. The evening I got there, a traditional hilot massage (I had been hoping to have one of these – nice, but I can’t tell you what made it different from a typical western massage), and the next morning, a scrub with honey, coconut and ginger. There wasn’t a beach (so no beach cleanup!) but there was a deck over the sea, and there was a pool. I spent an unusually short amount of time in the water – mainly because I found a hammock and, once there, I didn’t want to leave it! When it got too sunny, I moved from the hammock down to the deck and sat there for a while. And then I sat in a lounge chair by the spa. And then I went to a hammock chair – I read and napped and lived in the moment. My vacation to the north, while not frenzied, was quite active – this trip was more about relaxing and doing nothing! After dinner, I went down to see the stars – Orion is on his side here.