Their sister site offers a sustainable sourced, fair trade, medium roast Ethiopian coffee for manticores.

My Internet connection has been intermittent all week for no discernible reason, and tonight it was down for almost an hour. It started to get to the point where it didn’t seem like there would even be any possibility of uploading a comic at all tonight. Also, I had a headache. So I almost didn’t draw it. But it all worked out in the end.

I am a fan of sustainably sourced, fair trade, dark chocolate, and I don’t mind paying more for it. Chocolate is one of those things that we really shouldn’t take for granted. It’s worth it to get the highest quality you can, and to make it economically feasible for the people who farm it to continue farming it. People who grow cocoa should be able to live a good life in exchange for their crop, and cocoa should be grown in such a way that humans can continue to grow cocoa indefinitely.

Usually I wouldn’t eat a whole bar, or even half of one, in a day. Typically, about 20% of a good dark (72% cocoa) bar satisfies me. Sometimes (like yesterday) it takes about 75%. But even as I gave myself license to eat as much chocolate as I wanted while drawing this comic, I only wanted 20%.

When I was little, a Hershey’s Bar was one of my favorite things. I can’t eat any of that type of candy now. If you can get it at the mini mart, it doesn’t do anything for me. Last Halloween I couldn’t even finish a single miniature. It doesn’t satisfy anything. You can’t even get the really good kind of candy at a regular grocery store. You have to go somewhere a little bit upscale. Elitist chocolate. Call me a snob, but the older I get, the less I want to consume low quality anything. My pants are probably from Goodwill, but if it’s going inside me, there are standards.

My favorite chocolate, right now, is Endangered Species Chocolate. I like the hazelnut toffee, the almond sea salt, and a couple others (all 72% cocoa). It’s totally fair trade and sustainable and also vegan and organic and gluten free and, if that doesn’t grab you, kosher. I eat between 1 and 3 of them a week, usually, at night, after everyone else has gone to bed, by myself. I almost never share.