Tag Archive: mayans
The Story of Chocolate – Infographic
October 17, 2014
Chocolate has fascinated people all over the world for thousands of years. Today, forty to fifty million people depend on cocoa for their livelihoods. Here's an interesting infographic with more details.
More Chocolate In Maya History
August 23, 2012
Anything you serve me, as long as it has a touch of chocolate in it, will one hundred percent put a glow on my face. It has that strong effect on me being I am a sucker for it and all...
A piece of moist chocolate cake, a bar of milk chocolate, a hot cup of chocolate drink, name it and by all means I will shove it in my mouth. To have the chocolate per se is one thing, but to mix it in with some history interests me even more.
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Chocolates, Drugs Of The Past
July 19, 2012
Do not let the "drug" word fool you because there is actually more to that than meets the eye. In our current society, we often use drug to refer to illegal chemicals that will cause you a lot of jail time. However, the kind of drug we are about to discuss entails not only benefits to the body but also sweetness to the taste buds from then until now.
Dating back to the days when Mayans, Aztecs, and Early Europeans roamed the earth, chocolates were already within their midst. As opposed to the many variety of chocolates we have nowadays, the most popular for these earlier civilizations was chocolate in the form of a drink.
For the Aztecs, the cacao beans were brewed and drank in the belief that it was an elixir of life. It strengthened their warriors, cured the sick and awakened those who were weak and asleep.
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Authentic Mexican Hot Chocolate
February 2, 2012
Chocolate, a native to Mexico, has been a staple there for centuries already. Initially, they enjoyed chocolate as a drink. They made variations og chocolate by incorporating different flavors and ingredients such as honey, spices, and nuts, among many others. The chocolate beverages they made did not have a sweet taste to them. Nevertheless, it was well-loved by the Aztec and Mayan royalty.
The Aztecs were whipping up and enjoying their hot chocolate drinks when the Spaniards arrived. They took the cacao beans along with them as they headed home, and started enhancing the flavors by adding milk and sugar. You can trace the roots of the hot chocolate drink recipe back to that. Shortly thereafter, chocolate became all the rage in European royal places. Special china pots and cups were produced, intended only for drinking hot chocolate. Nowadays, such kitchenware are considered as collectors’ items and can sell for a fortune if they come in a complete set.
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Day of the Dead
October 6, 2011
Did you know that in Mexico, chocolate is used to make offerings during the Day of the Dead festival? This particular fiesta acts as a commemoration to pay tribute and honor all the deceased members of the family. Chocolate and sweets are important components of the festival. People give each other skulls made of chocolate or sugar. The Day of the Dead fete is celebrated throughout the country on the 1st and 2nd of November.
As morose as it may sound, it is in fact a cheerful occasion where departed loved ones are reminisced. Some families even construct altars dedicated to the dead relatives. The altars are filled with flowers, candles, wooden skulls and photos of the dead. The families celebrate and bring to mind the deceased members by eating the favorite foods of those passed. The specific foods that are specially eaten in this celebration are pan de muerto which is a skull-shaped bread and Calabaza en Tacha which is a dessert made with sweet pumpkin, cinnamon, and piloncillo, dark sugar cones.
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The Beginning of Chocolate
August 25, 2011
Chocolate has been around for millennia now, and the history is extremely long and diverse. The earliest references of chocolate were over fifteen hundred years ago in the Central American Rain Forest, an ideal environment for the cultivation of the Cacao Tree because of the mix of high rain fall, temperature and humidity.
The Mayan culture worshiped the Cacao tree as they believed it was of divine origin and it symbolized life and fertility. Cacao is actually a Mayan word which meant “God Food”, modernly coined as “Food of the Gods”. The Mayans were believed to be brewing and drinking this spicy bittersweet beverage by roasting, grinding and fermenting the seeds of the Cacao Tree. This was intended for the wealthy and elite.
The Aztecs, like Mayans, also have their own version of the fermented drink and they called it Xocolatl, meaning “bitter water”. Their Emperor, Montezuma, allegedly believed that this was an aphrodisiac, and drank almost 50 cups a day. The beans were even used as currency and considered as treasure that when Spaniards came and searched for gold and silver, they found no more than the beans.
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Fact or Fiction: Chocolate as Aphrodisiac
October 28, 2010
Is chocolate an aphrodisiac? Everything I’ve read about cacao says that chocolate as an aphrodisiac is a myth.
Well, not everything I read says that, just the scientific stuff...
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Chocolate as a Cure For Everything
November 3, 2009
Before modern science began discovering the much talked about health benefits of chocolate, the Mayans (central America) and Aztecs (ancient Mexico) considered it a powerful remedy to many ailments.
Theobroma cacao, or the “chocolate tree,” has been used in folk medicine as an anticeptic, diurectic, and parasiticide. It has been used to heal burns, cough, dry lips, fever, listlessness, malaria, nephrosis, rheumatism, snakebites, and small wounds.
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