![]() (I said unique, so I can’t compare it to anything else, but it was excellent.) Funny thing, too, the cacao beans seem to neutralize the heat of the cayenne, so not too spicy hot. Overall: 10-Most Excellent!Īztec style: Starting with the coffeemaker drink, added a dash of chile (cayenne powder) and the chocolatey taste completely disappeared … blending with the chile to create its own unique flavor -8.5. Added a dab of agave nectar … better-8.5. And no, I did not harvest the seeds from the 30 year old dried cacao fruits … I reckon they make better maracas than food.īrewed in coffeemaker, the drink was very light in color (lighter than tea), but full of good chocolatey flavor-8. Of course, by the time you process and pump it full of sugar … it’s not.Ĭacao seeds, fresh out of the coffee bean grinder. (Rather than do another 700 words on cacao history here, I figure you can just Google it yourself.)īelieve it or not, fresh cacao fruit is stunningly nutritious in fact, it’s considered a superfood. Mine came from the next biggest producer, Ecuador (7%). Most of the world’s cacao (60%) is grown in West Africa (Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana). He had a neighbor by the name of Henri Nestlè … and you can guess the rest. ![]() In 1875, a Swiss guy named Daniel Peter created the first milk chocolate bar. Sure, Europeans brought cacao back to their home countries, but it took them another 350 years to figure out how to make the first tasty chocolate bar (Geez, Louise, folks … sugar and butter). (Let’s all say it together…”But it’s on the Internet, so it must be true.” Ugh…) Interesting to note that many Internet sites touting “ancient Mayan” cacao recipes also include cinnamon, an Old World plant that was obviously unavailable to anyone in the New World at that time. They made a spicy concoction of cacao and chiles, then added vanilla, magnolia, honey, and maize to taste, then colored it red with annatto seeds. But these pre-Columbian connoisseurs didn’t make chocolate. The Mayans followed suit, as did the Aztecs … and eventually everyone on Earth. The Olmecs were among the first to prepare drinks and gruels by fermenting, roasting, and grinding cacao beans (seeds). All of the children in the room were quiet little angels, but I had that one chatty lady … and I didn’t have the heart to make her stand in the corner.) And so I give you … uninterrupted this time … a few highlights of cacao history.īotanically known as Theobroma cacao, the cacao tree is native to roughly the northern third of South America and up into Mesoamerica. The acquisition of fresh cacao fruit was an essential element to the Longview Arboretum’s recent “Chocolate Day.” We piled a bunch of folks into a room, and I spoke a minute or two on the history of cacao. You have the treasure! You are actually holding the sacred Cacao fruits, source of the world’s favorite food: chocolate! Half an hour later, you emerge … completely slimed and bleeding, but triumphant! Holding the sack of sacred fruits over your head, you howl like a wild beast back into the jungle. A deep growl nearby - wild hog?…tapir?…jaguar?… any of which could leave you wounded or dead – and you go into a blind panic and scramble like a madman through the jungle. Minutes later, collection sack full of the sacred fruit, you try to remember the way back. You reach out and take a firm fruit in hand before chopping it off the tree with a machete. Soaked with sweat, slathered in mud, and peppered with blood-laced bites, you have arrived. Your panicked dash ends quickly, as you run out of the fog and slide down a muddy embankment into a bizarre forest of small trees loaded with yellow, football-shaped fruits hanging right off the trunks. Just overhead, an invisible rustle and a shower of wet leaves cascades down over you … and only then do you notice the serpents coiled at your feet. ![]() Twigs snap all around … falling from a tree or underfoot of a beast? The hot air is thick, dense, almost foamy … leaving the taste of rotten peaches on the back of your tongue. Bees cling to the foliage, as the air is too fat for them to fly. Birds and monkeys cry out from the boiling mist, never seen. Dense fog slithers slowly through the steaming jungle, swallowing the sunlight and submerging the entire forest in a deep sweat of droplets.
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