I Found Heaven's Food Today! Chocolate without Sugar! Low Cal!

 

After a delightful walking tour of Antigua today, Megan and I were walking back to the place where we would meet our ride back to Ciudad Viaja, when we passed a building with the sign above and the delightful smell of chocolate. We stepped inside the open doors and saw bars of chocolate on stands and counters, then stepped into another room serving as a "museum" about cacao trees and how chocolate is made. Here's what greeted us inside the room:

A man was fixing a small wooden box, so I asked him to clarify that chocolate comes from cacao beans - that there are cacao beans, not chocolate beans. Since he didn't speak any English, this was a challenging conversation. He took me to a large bin, reached in with his hands - which weren't all that clean - and scooped out some cacao nibs and offered them to me. They were like the crushed beans in the picture above. My addiction for chocolate was the only reason I took the nibs from his unwashed hands and ate them. I was hooked! Delicious! I have discovered my favorite food is just as satisfying for me without sugar as with!

Apparently, not everyone shares my delight for the sugarless nibs because there were only three half-pound bags for sale in the store, and this particular store doesn't sell them in larger packages. I bought the three bags, along with three bags of "shells" which are sold to make tea. My delight became ecstasy when I eagerly attempted to make my first cup of chocolate tea by placing two tablespoons of the shells in water and boiling it in John Mann's microwave. Hallelujah! The shells soften and are edible. My brain neurons must be craving this "fix" because the tea, which was more like a soup, was delicious to me! So now I can satisfy my craving for chocolate without the calories!

I just googled "chocolate as brain food." There's several reports on a medical research report released April 12,1013 about the effects of chocolate on brain neurons. 

   

                        Here's a photograph of a cacao tree.                      This is a fake tree in the store.

This is a model of the dried pod with the cacao beans inside.











This is a crate with actual pods.

And this is info from the various displays and video in the "museum":

To make chocolate you first need to ferment the cacao beans and their pulp.

Subsequently you need to dry the cacao beans. Then you need to roast the dried cacao beans. Then you need to remove the husk of the cacao beans. You grind the cacao nibs to get cacao paste. Finally, you mix the cacao paste with sugar and milk, and pour it into molds.

The armed forces helped spread the love of chocolate worldwide. The trend first began in the late 19^th century, when Queen Victoria got her soldiers hooked on chocolate by sending them gifts of this nourishing and delicious candy for Christmas. But the popularity of candy bars skyrocketed after World War I, when chocolate was part of every United States soldier’s rations.

Although chocolate is now more affordable, not everybody chooses to consume it.  Many Asian cultures have never really developed a taste for this sweet. In fact, the Chinese eat only one bar of chocolate for every 1,000 consumed by the British! And in countries like Ghana and Ivory Coast, people rarely eat chocolate because it is worth more to them as a trade product than as a food.

Now about the cacao tree that fathers chocolate.  When cacao leaves fall to the forest floor, they mix with the leaves of other plants and decay. Fungi and other organisms decompose this debris, which feeds the soil with essential nutrients, thus fertilizing the tree. In addition, decaying leaves provide the perfect breeding ground for midges, the tiny insects that pollinate cacao flowers.

“Cherelles” are small pods that die on the tree before they mature. Even though fewer than five percent of flowers are pollinated, the tree will still produce more fruit than it can healthfully support. In consequence, the tree naturally “weeds out” some of these energy-draining youngsters, which blacken and shrivel during their early stages of growth. These sticky cherelles contribute to leaf litter and provide nice, juicy homes for the midge population.

Once they reach maturity, cacao trees flower continuously during the entire year. The flowers of the cacao tree are tiny pink and/or white five-petaled blossoms. They are found on the trunks and lower branches of the tree, while in general, trees produce their flowers and fruit only on the smallest branches. Botanists refer to this phenomenon as cauliflory.  The flowers can only be pollinated by small gnat-like midges that can work their way through a cacao blossom’ complicated parts.

After two to five years the cacao tree will bear fruits. After harvest, the cacao pods are cut open. They are set in wooden boxes covered with banana leaves. Seeds are then sun-dried in a patio, and sometimes traditional dances are performed. Cacao beans are hand peeled. Wind is used to remove the remaining shells. At this stage one obtains the “cacao nibs,” which is what chocolate is directly made from. Cacao nibs are ground in a mortar. That is, unless I get them first!