Chocolates of Ecuador -- Arriba, Nacional, CCN51
Posted in: Opinion
Interesting, and pertinent, Samantha. Love that erudition.The marvel to me is somehow from those original cacaos somewhere near the confluence of what is today Venezuela, Colombia and Brazil; some of it travels south, some eastward that become purple, the "forastero" type. I can understand a slow spread like that.But the other trip, north and west where the first indications of its use are in Mexico, south of Tabasco, 2000 rugged miles away-- the white type, the "criollo" appears. Monkeys (they are ubiquitous in cacao country Mexico and Nicaragua) do not eat cacao, luckily for these farmers. Squirrels eat plenty but they tend to eat the pods right on site, as we see from the seeds dropped directly beneath the trees, uneaten.I find it hard to swallow that humans carried it all that way, before the year 2000 BC. [I heard from a learned doctor that pre-Olmecs used cacao.] Seeds do not remain viable very long outside the pod. Pods tend to rot pretty quickly.And Samantha-- in spite of her PhD in Chocolatology uses the word "seed", referring to the same thing the hifalutin text refers to interchangably as "cotyledon" and seed.