Homemade Nutella

Ali and I are doing some Nutella making. Leila is out of the house for school camp, so it's just the chocolate-loving-boys and me. (Though she loves Chocolate, too. However, you've never seen anyone use Nutella as sparingly as she does on her whole grain toast.)
Why homemade when the store bought is so delicious? At the end of last year I read something about cocoa production that made me lose my taste for certain sources. Apparently, there is a lot of forced labor, child labor, and slavery. The idea of 8-year-old kids (Ali's age!) being sold and sent to another country to harvest cocoa was too much. Here's a link that talks about this. While some large companies are working toward using slave free chocolate, most of them aim for a date pretty far away- like 2020! Meanwhile, I want my chocolate! Since this is literally putting my money where my mouth is, (or my chocolate where my mouth is) I'm doing my best to find fair trade* sources.  Costco says that it's chocolate is from sustainable, slave free farms, so I buy their brand of chocolate chips. At Trader Joe's I found single source cocoa from Colombia, which, while perhaps not free trade, is not where the abusive slavery practices have been documented. (Also, I love to buy products from Colombia and support growers there. Most of my coffee is from there, partly because of that, but also because I just like the taste. Sometimes my dad brings me coffee from Guatemala, too, which I drink with gusto.) I then ordered hazelnuts online from Amazon- that was probably unethical, but right now I'm not focusing on boycotting businesses that are putting other businesses out of business, so maybe that's okay.(?)
If you are trying to go fair trade, too, there are lots of companies that make an effort to buy from sustainable farms where the labor force is well paid. One that I like is Divine Chocolates, which sell through Serrv, and also at Whole Foods. UnReal candy also says that they use fair trade chocolate. Another option is organic chocolate, because apparently farms with an organic label have more oversight. Nestle says that it's KitKat bars are fair trade chocolate (maybe just available in Europe?) but when I googled this, their track record on other things kind of makes that a suspect marketing ploy.
*I'm using the term "fair trade" to cover a multitude of non-sins- slave free being the primary one.
The Nutella is good- not too sweet, but Ali says he likes it. The hazelnut flavor comes through well. It's a bit grainy, especially because I used regular sugar instead of powdered- Ali okayed it. There's a hint of cocoa, but a whole lot of chocolate chips in this. Not as healthy as the Nutella commercial wants us to think. It's quite thin so I'm keeping it in the fridge instead of outside. I think it will work well on toast, but I hope it doesn't get too firm in the fridge.

Ali kept calling it NUT-ella yesterday. So that's what I wrote here.

Paleoish

I guess it was okay that I thought about the Whole30 diet for a bit, because I did start it when I planned, which was the Monday of my spring break. I knew I would have some detox symptoms, and I didn't want to be teaching full on and making my students suffer. (Better just my children and husband.)
Since my birthday fell in the middle of spring break, we had a celebration the Saturday before, with a surprisingly Paleo friendly dinner of Salmon and veggies, though it also had rice, cheese, and bread. And of course, we finished up with cake - probably the best carrot cake I've ever had. I made sure to have another 2 pieces on Sunday, since I was going cold turkey on Monday.
And that's what I did. Monday morning I woke up and ate eggs and bacon. That worked pretty well, and I felt great on Monday. Tuesday I didn't feel so well, and by evening I had a headache. Someone said sweet potatoes, which are permitted, would help, so I had one of those for lunch. I had oatmeal for breakfast on Wednesday which is verboten, but since it's still gluten free I decided it was an okay cheat. I also put milk on it (again, not allowed) but only sweetened it with raisins.
Dinners haven't been too bad. I've also put the new blender to good use with spinach, frozen mango, and orange juice smoothies. I tossed almonds in one day. Thursday through Saturday I went downtown for a conference every day. Thursday I took my smoothie and some boiled eggs with me. Friday I had lunch before I went, but then did a major cheat by attending a wine and cheese party on teh 17th floor of the Omni- great views of the city and fun people and delicious cheeses. Oops. But I resisted the crackers!
Saturday I bought the protein plate for lunch- turkey slices, cheese, olives, and boiled eggs.
Today I'm going to make up some egg muffins with broc and veggies for breakfasts next week. Lunches might be tough, but I'll figure it out.
I got a grill for my birthday, so that's nice for cooking up lots of chicken and having it on hand for salads, which were my lunches most days last week.
I'm starting to feel better on this. I think modifying it a bit is okay. I'm going to try to avoid cheese, but I think yogurt should be okay, and a little milk with my oatmeal.