The Key Ingredient Read Online Free PDF

her nose with a tissue. “It’s just . . . is he okay? He seems like he might be kind of . . . simple.”
    I burst out laughing. My brother? Simple? He’s run the entire operation since he graduated high school and our dad took off. Yet his discomfort on camera is extreme and makes him seem like a country bumpkin.
    â€œNo,” I tell Melissa. “Kyle is anything but simple. Just not fond of being in the limelight. He knows everything there is to know about maple syrup, though.”
    She nods, then turns away to let out a sneeze. Anton, the director of the shoot, is having a whispered conversation with Martin. I’m not catching everything that’s being said, but I’m pretty sure I hear the dreaded I told you so.
    When I was a kid, eavesdropping on my parents’ arguments, I honed my listening-­in to a fine art. I could hear them quarreling from three rooms away. Huddled in the stairwell or under a window, I overheard them talking about broken dreams and family responsibilities, about the deep ache of unfulfillment, something I didn’t understand until I was much older.
    Listening to my parents making each other miserable, I vowed that once I married, it would be forever. I would never get a divorce. It’s just too hard on the family.
    My parents’ “forever” lasted until Kyle was eighteen and I was ten. Dad went all the way to Costa Rica and built a surf camp on a crescent-­shaped curve of white sand, fringed by palm and coconut trees, zopilote birds circling overhead. The camp consisted of palm-­thatched huts and an outdoor kitchen.
    You would think it would be awesome to have a beach in Costa Rica to visit when you went to see your dad. The reality wasn’t awesome.
    It was hot and there were mosquitos. Sure, I went crazy over the fresh fruit and produce—­papaya and plantains, mamones and marañón, starfruit, zapote and coconut, most of it simply plucked from the gardens. But when it rained a lot, horrid-­looking alligators would congregate at the mouth of the river where it flows into the ocean, and surfing would be called off for that day.
    Worst of all, Dad had a girlfriend. Imelda. It seemed totally weird to me, hearing him speak Spanish to a woman who was a complete stranger. She had waist-­length hair and big boobs and absolutely no interest in discovering who I was. At night when they would go off together to the room they shared, and I would be left with the loneliest, most left-­out feeling in the world.
    Even now, years later, when I see my father, I struggle to keep my resentment at bay. He and Mom drifted apart. It happens, especially when you marry young the way they did.
    The one thing I loved unequivocally about my time in Costa Rica was the day I visited a cacao-­bean grove. I’m determined to film a Key Ingredient episode there one day. During a day tour, I chatted up one of the cacao growers, with Dad serving as our interpreter. The grower had never left his village, because everything he needed was right there—­food, family, security. He’d never been to school; his education consisted of working alongside his elders, gathering, fermenting and drying the cacao beans in an endless cycle of nature and labor.
    I still remember the sense of shock I felt when I discovered that not only had he never tasted chocolate, he wasn’t even sure what was being made from his beans. When I gave him a bar of single-­origin dark chocolate, made with nothing but cacao, sugar and cocoa butter, he peeled back the wrapper and held it in his hand for a long time. Then he broke off a piece and tasted the chocolate, and his face lit with wonder. He had no idea that the beans he grew and fermented under heaps of banana leaves could be transformed into something so rich, complex and delicious. The smile on his face was unforgettable, completely genuine and filled with joy.
    It was one of those rewarding