We prepared our Christmas message by writing the words with chile chocolate on top of a bed of cacao beans. We bought these in the Q'eqchi' Mayan markets of Coban, Alta Verapaz, last weekend.
Chile chocolate is a special chile used to flavor Maya cacao drinks. The cacao beans from Theobroma cacao trees are the source of cocoa, used to make chocolate.
Both the Maya, Aztec, Zapotec, Mixtec and everyone else in Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, Honduras, etc. all grew and drank liquids made with cacao. Several dozen plants were used as flavorings. We have worked for many years to find each plant. We did this because the last time I spoke with Yale University professor Michael Coe, he said that if he had time to rewrite his cacao book he would do much more research on all the flavorings. So I accepted this as an inspirational challenge.
Posted Dec 10, 2019
