Chocolate leads Sarah Hart in unexpected directions

By Olivia Johnson
The Portland Upside
March 2010

Photo by Rob Bednark

Sarah Hart’s appreciation for the art of chocolate led her to start Alma Chocolates, where she creates interesting chocolate-spice blends and designs custom molds.

Sarah Hart has always had a passion for food. She treasures memories of visiting her grandparents’ house as a little girl. They had grown up as rural farmers during the depression and were still very poor when Sarah and her family stayed with them.

“Making food was her way of expressing love,” Sarah says of her grandmother Alma. “When we would visit, she was up before everyone else in the morning, making everyone’s favorite pies.”

Sarah inherited what she calls Alma’s “spirit and generosity of expressing love through food.” But instead of pies, Sarah found her niche in chocolates.

Sarah owns Alma Chocolates in Northeast Portland. Not only is the name significant because of her grandmother, Sarah has also discovered that alma means “soul” in Spanish and “to nourish” in Latin.

“Food is the basic way of nurturing people,” according to Sarah.

But man cannot live on chocolate alone. Alma Chocolates also doubles as a café, serving espresso, tea, and homemade baked goods.

The tiny shop is cozy, decorated with handcrafted and antique displays featuring the work of a new local artist each month. Sarah proudly arranges a unique medley of caramels, sauces, toffees, barks, bars, bonbons, and of course chocolates, at the front counter, on worn wooden shelves, and wherever else they can fit. The unmistakable scent of melted chocolate blended with exotic spices wafts from the kitchen, which peeks from behind thick brown curtains.

To Sarah, making chocolate is an art.

“I always said that I wanted to be an artist, but it took me a while to find my form,” she smiles.
Sarah uses only high-quality ingredients for her creations, all made in the compact kitchen in the back of her store. Coming up with new recipes is her favorite part of the job.

“I read cook books in bed like they’re novels. I can picture how things will taste.”

One particular challenge that thrills Sarah is to find the best way to pair uncommon spices with chocolate.

“It’s like pairing food and wine…finding what is complimentary and what is contrasting.”
She recalls reading about how a fellow chocolatier couldn’t figure out how to use cumin with a chocolate recipe.

“So, I said, ‘I want to figure that out!’”

At other times, Sarah’s friends can play her muse.

“One of my friends really likes ginger so I invented a toffee with ginger in it.”

But Sarah’s most exclusive items are the gilded icon chocolates she began creating five years ago in her own kitchen. Made of solid dark chocolate, she sets the icons in custom-designed molds before gilding them with 23-karat edible gold leaf. There are jolly-looking buddhas, serene Virgin Marys, and half-human, half-elephant Ganesha gods from Hindu mythology.

Since chocolate is such an amazing ingredient, she believes that its presentation should match its importance.

“So much of what you could get was cheesy…just googly-eyed rabbits,” Sarah explains, clearly tired of the monotonous way companies choose to market their chocolate.

Despite her love of food, Sarah never imagined becoming a chocolatier. The youngest of five children, she grew up in Springfield, Missouri. She attended Beloit College in Wisconsin for two years before moving to Eugene in 1986, where she received both Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in English from the University of Oregon. She landed a teaching job at Eastern Michigan University and moved to Ypsilanti, Michigan, but returned to Portland in 1994.

She got a job at Papa Haydn restaurant and loved it.

“I come from a very academic family—everyone had gone to college—and working in the food industry was not viewed as a ‘real’ job,” Sarah explains.

Nevertheless, she went on to work at L’Auberge Restaurant. But the idea to open a chocolate shop wouldn’t leave Sarah alone.

“I listened to this voice inside asserting itself. It was like a string that was dangling in front of me, and I started pulling, and it kept going, doors kept opening.”

Instead of enrolling in a culinary school she opted to have a seasoned chocolatier, Ian Titteron, teach her everything he knew abut chocolate in the comfort of her own home. After many tests and experiments, Sarah began selling her chocolates at the Portland Farmer’s Market.

She opened Alma Chocolates in 2006. Since then, Sarah has taken her business online and opened two mini locations at the Cork Wine Shops in Northeast and Northwest Portland. She also continues to sell her treats at the Portland Farmer’s Market.

Although juggling her personal life and her business has been one of the biggest challenges, Sarah finds the time and resources to constantly stretch her skills as a chocolatier. This past year she traveled to France and took a bonbon-making class.

Sarah acknowledges the passion that drives her work ethic.

“I have always just loved that food is both creative and nurturing. It brings people together and creates community…it can be done with great love. I feel like we have a good reputation, and I want to keep pushing for that.”

Indeed, it’s a reputation worthy of Grandma Alma’s gilded legacy.

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Visit Alma Chocolate online at almachocolate.com or in person at 140 NE 28th Ave., Portland, Oregon, 503-517-0262.

Olivia lives in SE Portland and is working on her BA in Journalism and Theology at Multnomah University. She loves reading restaurant reviews, traveling, Frank Sinatra and Stumptown coffee.

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Sing a chorus for peace

By Olivia Johnson
The Portland Upside
November 2009

Members of the newly-formed Portland Peace Choir are dedicated to singing songs of peace.

The Portland Peace Choir is shaping a unique group of vocalists who promote equality, justice and peace through song.

The choir got off to its official start on September 9, and has been rehearsing two hours per week at Bothmer Hall in Southeast Portland. The choir meets in the donated space every Wednesday evening from 7 to 9 p.m. No auditions are required, just a passion for singing.

Janet Allison, one of the founders of the choir, was a member of the Rogue Valley Peace Choir in Ashland, Oregon. She has sung in Hiroshima, Japan at the anniversary of the dropping of the atomic bomb, and she has also performed for Martin Luther King III. Being a member of Ashland’s peace choir inspired her to help co-found a similar group here in Portland.

The Portland Peace Choir hopes to eventually share its music in similar settings. For now, the group is starting out by performing in as many different venues as possible, wherever people can be inspired by the music.

But making a positive impact on those who are listening is not the peace choir’s only mission.

They are also concerned with the well-being of each of their singers. When Janet was in the third grade, she auditioned for orchestra and was told that she had no music ability. She can relate to the many people she refers to as the “walking wounded,” who want to sing but are held back by either their own insecurities or the opinions of others.

“It’s a healthy experience for people who’ve been told they can’t sing to join this choir,” she says. “Everybody can sing, especially if they sing with lots of people!”

The choir welcomes all voices, although Janet stresses that most choirs suffer from a lack of male singers. The Portland Peace Choir is no exception. Perhaps if men were aware of how many single women there are in the choir, the statistics of an overruling soprano and alto count would change drastically, she adds humorously.

Currently the choir has about 40 members. Ages range from high-school students and young adults to middle-age adults and seniors. Janet says they hope to grow and especially to welcome young people and much-needed tenors and basses.

Marion Van Namen, a music therapist running a private practice in Southeast Portland, is the choir’s director and co-founder. Growing up in her native country of the Netherlands, Marion learned piano at a young age. She also plays the cello and the African drums. She trained in anthroposophy and music therapy for four years and has taught at various Waldorf schools in the United States. She also directs the community choir at the Portland Waldorf School in Milwaukie.

For their opening concert, Marion has selected a variety of songs ranging from The Freedom Song of South Africa to “Imagine” by John Lennon. Some of the songs are in Dutch, French, German, African and Native American languages. Sometimes a piano accompanies their voices but most of the time The Portland Peace Choir sings a capella.

“Music is universal,” Janet says. “You don’t have to know the language to understand the gesture.”

Chrystal Godleske, who was a member of the community choir at the Portland Waldorf School, heard about the peace choir from Marion and joined as soon as it started in September.

She says that the Portland Peace Choir has “more complex music than the community choir.”

She especially likes being a member because practices are “participatory entertainment, fun, and Marion makes everyone feel comfortable.”

The Portland Peace Choir will hold its first concert on November 22 at 4 p.m. at St. David’s Episcopal Church in Portland. The concert is free and open to the public.

“We want to connect with people on a heart level,” Janet says, “by bringing this music into the world.”
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For more information about the Portland Peace Choir visit www.portlandpeacechoir.org

Olivia lives in SE Portland and is working on her bachelor’s degree in Journalism and Theology at Multnomah University. She loves reading restaurant reviews, traveling, Frank Sinatra, and Stumptown coffee.

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