Om Travelers

When I started exploring the possibilities of making small batches of chocolate, I thought I was onto something. I had not heard of the world of bean to bar or craft or artisan chocolate. I was soon to realize that there had been a bean to bar industry long before me and I soon learned to truly appreciate the craft that the pioneers before me created.

The bean to bar chocolate world at its root is created to make lives better- here at home, at the place of origin and for all the places in between. I had the opportunity to do an apprenticeship with Mackenzie Rivers from Map Chocolate and now the Next Batch School in the summer of 2018. I had been on a quest to search deeper into my soul and figure out what the next chapter of my life was going to mean. 5 years later I am still very much trying to figure that out but the two weeks I spent with Mackenzie in Eugene Oregon were 2 of the most transformative of my adult life.

During the weekdays we worked hard together. She graciously answered my zillions of questions, let me polish molds, start batches of chocolate and soak in all her secrets. She is generous beyond belief. She has a deep desire to lift everyone up around her. She shares information freely. She lives her life and creates her chocolate with grace and respect for others and for the craft, but she also shares her opinions freely to start conversations that pertain to all levels of the chocolate industry.

In the last few years she created the Next Batch School. Here makers from around the world can come to learn the basics of selecting beans, chocolate shop setup all the way up to the secrets are crafting complicated chocolate bars with multiple ingredients and different kinds of chocolate. She is not making many chocolate bars anymore but if you ever do find a Map Chocolate bar in a store or on her website, I cannot recommend highly enough that you snatch it quickly.

Mackenzie is not only my mentor, but she has become a very close friend of mine. She is always there to bounce questions off and when life in general is a struggle she has also just quietly listened to my complaining. I hope that you enjoy this episode. It goes a little longer than normal and we could have kept talking far longer than we did. Its not all chocolate. There are some life stories in there as well.

Grab your favorite bar of chocolate and enjoy this episode with Mackenzie Rivers of Map Chocolate and the Next Batch School.

Map Chocolate

Next Batch School

@mapchocolate

@theNextBatchSchool

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I will be the first to admit I am a sucker for a good lifestyle brand. You give me some dreams, some great photos and a cool Instagram account and I’ll be pulled in. The cherry on top is when the lifestyle has been lived by the visionary and whatever they are selling kicks ass.

Mike Johansen was basically born on a beach. He spent time growing up on Nantucket and went to college in California. On top of all of that, he has a golden retriever and a yellow jeep sweatshirt that perfectly matches my Wrangler. So, yes, I am now hooked on living the Tuck Life.

It’s Jeep days and powder days,

dawn patrols and swimming holes.

From Mountain tops to surf spots,

if you dream about it, odds are we do too.

If that mission statement doesn’t say it then I do not know what else does. On top of making me daydream, I am also always fascinated by people who start their own brands. As I have learned through the development of Nostalgia Chocolates, creating a brand, not to mention a lifestyle, is extremely difficult.

Mike is very open and honest throughout this episode. It was a fascinating conversation for me, and I hope that you find it the same. Make sure to visit his website www.tucklife.com and grab a sweatshirt or whatever else you need, or don’t need. I can tell you that the clothing is amazing. I wear my sweatshirt for days at a time without taking it off.

Sit back, grab some chocolate, and enjoy this episode with Mike Johansen from Tuck Life.

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Often, the biggest champions of an area are the ones who grew up there. It is not typically the case that someone who has lived all over the world makes a career out of trying to boost the success of a small city and change the way it is viewed by people on the outside looking in.

Laura Thorn is a champion of all. As I learned more about her story, she has a made a life based around helping others. Most recently Laura has teamed up with Aldea Gerard to create the pilot episodes of Off the Wall and Up Close- an arts, culture, and travel show.

The show is starting here in Syracuse but has plans to highlight the scenes on cities just like Syracuse across the country. I had no idea what a massive undertaking it is to create a new TV show. After many rounds of fundraising, they created an initial episode and presented it at the Seattle Film Festival.

Laura and Aldea teamed up with Willow Rock Brewing in the fall of 2022 and that is how we met. Laura is an inspiration with her drive and determination to help others and lift the people around her up. She describes herself as a doer and that is 100% what she is. Not only is she a doer, but she is a creator and a finisher. We have a lot of people with ideas, and a lot of people who can take those ideas and run with them, and finally we have a lot of people who can bring the idea and the process to a conclusion. Rarely however do we have people that embody all those traits.

Make sure to visit their YouTube page Off the Wall & Up Close and follow along with all the work they are doing.

I hope you enjoy hearing her story as much as I did.

Instagram: @laura.thorn.me & @heyalecproductions

YouTube: Off the Wall & Up Close

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Yes, this episode starts off with another Costa Rica connection. While sitting around the breakfast table at Blue Spirit in Nosara Costa Rica one morning on a retreat in December of 2021 my friend Tom turned to me and quietly said

“Hey, you know Leslie?”

“Yes” I replied

“Did you know she was an X Games snowboard athlete and had videos of her snowboarding on the internet?”

“No way man. Little Leslie?”

“Yeah dude, for sure.”

Leslie Glenn may not be 6 feet tall but she is a vibrant and incredible human to be around. Her smile is infectious, her warmth and kindness are felt by everyone around her without her saying a word and she is a person who seeks to surround herself with people that provide good energy and strive for a beautiful life for themselves and for the world around them.

It is always amazing to me what we do not know about people just by looking at their cover. She began her snowy life on ski’s but transitioned to snowboarding to learn something new. While in college at University of Vermont, she took a yoga class for credit and from that point forward yoga became a staple in her life. Initially using the practice to help her professionally with strength and flexibility, she soon found that the deeper layers of her body were also being terraformed.

She is now a certified yoga instructor and leads various teacher trainings, retreats and other amazing events to help the people around her find balance, calm and peace in their daily lives. She has focused her recent yoga teachings around helping all of us to find ways to slow the pace of our lives down, lessen the worry and stress we carry in our bodies and find ways to see more joy around us.

I am so excited to have Leslie on this episode. I cannot wait to talk travel, yoga and wellness. Make sure to follow her on Instagram @leslieglenn and give her website a visit at www.leslieglennyoga.com. You can get more information on her teaching, retreats and also sign up for her newsletter there.

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We often measure our happiness based on events that happen to us. Vacation, birthdays, our animals, sunny days and so on. We are on a high while surfing or swimming in the ocean or skiing down a giant mountain but then when we return to life we hit a wall and yearn for the next time we can escape. It is easy to pay for experiences that provide us happiness. What we rarely think about is how our health can affect our day-to-day wellbeing.

In full disclosure, I am absolutely not the definition of good eating habits but since I met my wife 10 years ago, I have been trying little by little to clean my act up.

When Tiffany and I met she was in a good place with her health. Over the course of ten years, she has found herself in some very challenging places where most of us would have thrown our hands up and just said whatever and given up. She has battled, she has researched, she has been sick, then healthy, she has had all sorts of random symptoms manifest over time and after all of this she has inspired so many of us that are close to her to take a deeper look at how we treat our body and what we put into it.

Most recently she has completed her course of study to become a Functional Diagnostic Nutrition Practitioner. Her work to help others learn from her experience and gain a much deeper understanding of the inner workings of our body has become a passion for her. She has inspired me constantly (maybe not as much as she would like) to be a better human being all around.

Her love for health, travel, the vibrancy of our spirits and the world around us will all come up in this episode I am sure. I hope you enjoy hearing Tiffany’s story. I am sure you will end the episode with a greater desire to do some explorations of ways you can better your life just like I have mine and hopefully you will also find some new desire to explore more of the world around you at the same time.

Instagram: @tiffcagwin

Website: www.tiffanycagwin.com

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Traveling for a yoga retreat is sort of like going to a friend’s birthday party with a pinata. When the pinata breaks open there is all sorts of stuff that comes out. Most likely though, you are bound to walk away from the pinata, or the scramble on the ground to get the goods, with some things you like.

Yoga retreats bring many different types of people together. We all attend for various reasons. Maybe it is our teacher who is leading the retreat, maybe we need a change in our lives so we travel some place hoping for a spark of inspiration. No matter what your reason is, you meet all sorts of people. I have been extremely lucky in my yoga travels to have met some incredible people. If you are lucky enough you leave with some amazing new friendships.

Danielle Begg lives in Mosman, New South Wales Australia. Mosman sits just inside the entrance to Sydney Harbor. Australia in general has always captivated my attention. I did numerous dioramas on geography or animals throughout elementary school. Danielle was the first real life thing I had met from Australia though.

Danielle is immediately friendly and seemed to always be laughing, smiling, and talking to everyone the whole time we were in Costa Rica in 2019. It is no surprise that she is making a huge impact on the world through yoga and more specifically through her co- creation of The Yoga Impact Charity. I am a true believer in the impact that a proper yoga practice can have on one’s life so as I have, learned more about Danielle’s work, she has continued to inspire me.

Website: www.yogaimpactcharity.com

Instagram: @daniellebegg & @yogaimpactcharity

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Sometimes you just happen to be in the right place and eaves dropping at the right time and you end up meeting an awesome human being.

While in a coffee shop in Stonington Maine in the summer of 2021, I was standing behind Walker and heard another gentleman ask him how his tours had been going. When their conversation ended, I of course inquired about the tours because, well who doesn’t love a good tour!

As it turns out, Walker had recently purchased an old lobster boat and was running tours around the area of Stonington. I of course love being out on the water so the next day we drove back and met him for a couple hour or so boat ride. We learned about his childhood growing up in the area, some of the history of the local islands, saw a couple dolphins and just generally had an amazing time with him.

Walker headed back to the west coast and Hawaii for the winter and is slowly making his way back east for another summer season. He is a poet, a tour guide, a tea expert, a musician and if you were to judge someone by their Instagram, he is also the 1 person you would choose to take an adventure with.

I am very excited to catch up with Walker on this week’s episode. I have no clue at all where this one may go so hang on and enjoy. Make sure to give him a follow-on Instagram @dubb_sea. and @goodtidetours

The coffee shop in Stonington is called @44northcoffee

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We spend a lot of our lives thinking about what has happened in the past and what we plan to have happen, or worry will happen in the future. I find myself caught in this spiral frequently. As a yogi and a yoga instructor I try hard to be patient with my thoughts and understand the patterns that develop from my past and ultimately influence my present and my future. In yoga, these thought blocks are commonly called Samskaras.

I first found out about Teddy Droseros in 2018. Teddy has created an unbelievable project to help adults and children have an outlet to express what they are grateful for in the present. In 2018 Teddy along with a few local business A’Pizza Regionale, Original Grain and O Yoga (now Sky Yoga Studios) came up with an idea to raise money through various promotions to donate gratitude journals to all the students at a local elementary school here in Syracuse. I would encourage you to go back and listen to episode 12 with the principal of that school LaJuan White to hear more about the ultimate impact these journals had on the children.

As a result of this we had journals at the front desks of both of our yoga studios for students attending classes to take a moment and put into the world what they are grateful for. It is becoming more and more well known the positive effects that taking a few moments a day to journal or express gratitude for what we have in our lives can have a transformative effect on our over all well-being.

Teddy has continued to follow his dream of getting Gratitude Journals in as many places as possible and recently came out with a new book that is a collection of peoples entries. Teddy says about the book “I was curious what would happen if I left a communal copy of the Grateful Peoples Gratitude Journal in my neighborhood coffee shop. This is the story of what happened next…”

I am extremely excited to finally have Teddy on the podcast. Make sure to check him out in Instagram @gratefulpeoples and visit his website https://gratefulpeoples.com/ to get your own gratitude journal.

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I met David through my mentor and great friend Mackenzie Rivers of Map Chocolate. David has his own podcast called Bean to Barstool and it is all about craft beer and craft chocolate. These are truly two of my favorite things in the world.

I love to daydream. Listening to Davis podcasts bring the same type of inspiration I try to put into my chocolate bars. I want people to take some time, slow down and let their mind travel to the places where the cacao is grown. When I listen to David speak of hops, malt, barley and yeast my senses get filled with the smells of the brewery or the first smell of a beer when you open the can or the bottle. I often try to picture the setting of the brewery or the chocolate shop and imagine what it is like.

I have listened to all of David’s podcasts, and I am entertained with each episode. More than being entertained, I learn something new each time. David is an Advanced Cicerone which is the beer equivalent of a sommelier. I love learning from people who are willing to share their knowledge and David is one of those people.

With so many styles of beers and types of chocolate it is very refreshing to have someone in the world who is willing to dive into all of this, be open and honest with his thoughts and opinions and help to spread the word of craft beer and craft chocolate to whoever will listen.

David hosts beer events both in person and virtually so make sure to check out his website www.davidnilsenbeer.com You can also find him @davidnilsenbeer and @beantobarstool on Instagram. Also, make sure to find his podcast Bean to Barstool on all the streaming platforms. My favorite is episode 30 wink wink.

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“Osito exists to champion coffees of the single growers and grower associations throughout all of Colombia. They work to cultivate long standing relationships between roasters and farmers all built on a basis of fair pricing and unparalleled quality.”

I have been following Osito Coffee for a while on social media when one day I stumbled across a post announcing that they were about to import their first ever work with cacao from Colombia. I just had a feeling there was something about this cacao that was special and had a story to be. I quickly reached out to Kyle and just as quickly had a reply back. They asked how much I wanted for a sample as this was their first foray into chocolate. A few days later it arrived on my doorstep.

The absolute most important thing for me when thinking about a new origin is the relationship I will have with the importer and equally as important is their relationship with the farmers where the cacao is grown. I have seen the efforts they put in to helping their coffee producers, so I just knew that if they were bringing this cacao in, there had to be something special about it.

The beans are truly beautiful. Barely any need to be sorted out and even after my very first test roast, fireworks were going off. Currently I make a 70% bar and sipping chocolate with this origin but soon a few restaurants will be using it in their desserts, and I have many other plans for news bars, hot chocolates and who knows what else.

I recently purchased some coffee from them as well to learn more about roasting. Both Kyle and David have been over the top helpful. I am so excited for this episode not only to hear about why they have decided to start with cacao, but also to hear more about the amazing country of Colombia.

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