Chocolatl: The Food of the Gods

"¿Quieres chocolatl?" "¡No, güey!"

Well hello there. I didn't see you come in. Take a seat, please. Today I'm talking about chocolate, or as the Mayans called it, choclatl. I learned a lot about chocolate today, and really it's a fascinating product. I mean, who comes up with this stuff. It's interesting being born this late in the history of mankind and being caught up to date on the past several thousand years of recorded history. In a way we are very fortunate. Man has made many advances in the fields of science and art, including inventing science and art to begin with. And today they caught me up to speed with chocolate development, or at least up to speed up until the 80's, because that video we watched was pretty retro-looking.

A cacao tree with cocoa ripe pods.

The video began with a brief history of chocolate making and how it was done way back in the day. The narrator switched between Mayan and Aztec civilizations, but all that stuff is the same, right? Chocolate consumption started as a drink. Apparently, the emperor would guzzle down 50 cups of the chocolate drink a day. Guy likes his chocolate. Eventually, technology allowed us to solidify chocolate, and then we started eating. It all comes from the cacao tree. You take the cocoa pods when they're yellow. That's when you know they're ripe. The seeds are what you use, but they're covered in a sweet, sugary pulp. The pulp is actually delicious if you ever get the chance to taste it. Which is juxtaposed by the horrific bitterness of the seeds used. These days, after you ferment them and dry them, you remove the skins and grind it, I think. Then it goes through a million other processes, which involve extracting the butter, making it into a solid cake, melting it and mixing it, drizzling it over nougat or nuts (optional), or putting it in a mold. The Swiss added some milk to the mix, and there's where milk chocolate came from. Thank goodness for that. The factory procedures involved with producing chocolate are actually pretty ingenious. Skin removal was done by slamming chocolate against a wall and having a vacuum suck the skin up, but not too strong as to suck the seed with it. And now we get to eat it all the time if we want! I wouldn't want to live in a world without chocolate, although if I never knew about it I guess I wouldn't really mind, since I wouldn't know what I'm missing.

So I tried a few varieties in class. One of my three favorites was the Reese's, although it wasn't so much the quality of the chocolate itself, but rather the combination of the peanut butter and the chocolate. The chocolate was probably subpar, but what a delicious duo. It's salty, melts quickly (a little too quickly at times), and the composition and consistency is great. I happened to be a little partial to Reese's, but that's life.
The next highest ranked was the Symphony chocolate made by Herseys. It had a rich texture that melted just at the right time. By the way, I watched a video of a piece of chocolate melting on some kid's tongue while he didn't swallow it. He just sat there and let his mouth dry up and I bet he nearly gagged just trying to keep that chocolate on his tongue. It was Pavlovian even, just without the bells but with the drooling. I digress. That was one good piece of chocolate.
The last came from the Rasinets, one of my favorite treats. Luckily for me, somebody brought them (me). Also, luckily for me, not many people ate them, so I returned to a nearly full plate of my raisin things, which I dumped in my mouth promptly. Again, like the Reese's, it wasn't so much the chocolate that I enjoyed so much, but the duality of this fruit and chocolate. In the same way that chocolate goes well with strawberries, it goes very well with raisins. The chocolate itself was pretty shallow and there wasn't much of it, but it worked just fine for its duty in this case. Raisinets rule!
There was also a part of our day devoted to seeing where the money went in a two dollar piece of chocolate. As it turns it in the UK, 20 cents goes to the cocoa farmers. This makes sense since it's cheap labor and there are lots of farmers willing to work for very little, just as long as they are making something. 20 more cents go to the government of the exporting country. I think the rest was split 96 and 64 between the producer and retail seller, respectively. While it seems unfair that the hard working farmers only get 10% of their chocolate they're helping make, it's life. I think in an ideal world they might be making a little more and the government and producer might be making a little less.