Pea travels to a remote mountain village to visit Nana Dory, a 65-year-old widow who makes chocolate from scratch using traditional methods. The video walks through the entire cacao-to-chocolate process step by step while capturing the simplicity of rural Philippine life — baby chicks, a roasted iguana, jackfruit trees, and a barter economy where cash barely exists. It's part food documentary, part love letter to province life and Pea's own childhood memories.
The village atmosphere on the way to Nana Dory's house
- Pea encounters day-old chicks and gets nostalgic — she raised one as a kid using an improvised incubator made from a can and an oil lamp
- A man is scaling a roasted iguana he trapped from the jungle; he's cooking it adobo-style as a drinking snack (pulutan)
- It apparently "tastes like chicken" — Pea has eaten iguana before but didn't do the killing herself
- He finds eggs inside the iguana (it's female); Pea apologizes: "Sorry, Mama Guana"
- They pass jackfruit trees and encounter village dogs along the walk
Meeting Nana Dory ("the Explorer")
- Nana Dory is 65 years old, born and raised in this remote village her entire life
- She's a widow who lives with her child
- When Pea asks if she's looking for new love, Nana Dory says "too late" — Pea pushes back: "There's no such thing as too late"
- Despite her age, Pea says she doesn't look 65
Step-by-step chocolate-making process
- Locating the cacao tree: they hike up a steep, rocky slope to reach Nana Dory's cacao trees — Pea comments "no wonder chocolates are expensive"
- Cacao trees take 5 years to grow; each tree produces 5–10 golden cacao fruits; the trees bear fruit about 3 times per year
- Harvesting: Pea twists a ripe golden fruit off the tree by hand
- Opening the fruit: Nana Dory cracks it open with a machete ("Filipinas and their machete skills — Nana is a pro"); reveals the white cacao seeds inside
- Pea recalls sucking the juice from fresh seeds as a kid — Nana Dory did the same thing. Pea demonstrates
- Drying the seeds: spread outside for 3 days to dry. Pea reminds viewers not to drive over seeds drying in the road — farmers dry cacao and rice on the road, and running them over destroys their livelihood
- Roasting: seeds go directly into a big iron pot (kawa) over a wood fire, stirred constantly for 30 minutes with no oil; they change color, darken, and start popping
- Pea notes that Filipinos always cook with one hand behind their back — her mom does it while sweeping too, and now Pea catches herself doing it unconsciously
- Shelling: once cooled, the outer shells are removed by hand; they blow on the seeds to separate the chaff (tahap) — same technique used with rice
- Grinding: a wooden mortar and pestle pulverizes the roasted seeds into a paste
- Pressing: the paste is pressed and scraped, collected into a tub, and left in a dark room for a day
- The final product: solid chocolate blocks formed into shapes — not bars, but chunks. A piece has been bitten off Pea's sample; she teases Nana Dory about it
- It's 100% unsweetened dark chocolate — not meant to be eaten as-is
How the chocolate is used
- Chip off a piece, dissolve in boiling water with sugar for hot cocoa
- Mix a chip into cooking rice with sugar to make chocolate rice porridge (champorado)
Nana Dory's chocolate economy
- She makes about 2 kilos of chocolate per month
- Sells it for approximately 2,000 pesos (~$40 USD) per month
- But since mountain villagers often don't have cash, she mostly barters: chocolate for corn, chocolate for chickens, chocolate for rice
- The entire process is free — she plants, harvests, roasts, and processes everything herself with zero input costs
- Pea calls it organic and "made with love" and credits it as Nana Dory's secret to health and longevity
Pea's personal connection
Nana Dory reminds Pea of her own grandmother, who did the same thing when she was alive
Hot cocoa in a cup brings back strong childhood memories; Pea gets openly nostalgic
She takes a block of chocolate "on credit" as she leaves
Closing bit: Pea compares herself to "the farmer's daughter" — "ready to make you laugh while helping you grow your plans for the Philippines" and can help you find a good Filipina "so you don't end up with a hoe." A joke about a traveling salesman who "promised to plow my field" closes the episode.