xocolatl and some random facts

I just got home a few hours ago. The trip was pretty good, well at least for me 'cause I fell asleep in the bus.

It's raining here in Lipa and it's so cold, so I made a pot of hot chocolate.. yum! It's just too bad that there isn't any pandesal in the house so I'll just have to make-do with a loaf.

Well, right now, there's nothing more perfect than being here at home and enjoying a cup of hot chocolate in the cold weather.

Just some random facts:

- "Hot chocolate" is a retronym and the drink was originally simply called "chocolate". The subsequent popularity of the "chocolate bar" forced the invention of the term "hot chocolate" to distinguish it from "chocolate" which now means solid chocolate.

- Cocoa was given as a dowry when members of the Spanish Royal Family married other European aristocrats. It took nearly a century for chocolate to achieve popularity throughout Europe, as the Spanish kept the delicacy secret.

- Moctezuma introduced Hernan Cortes to his favourite drink, "chocolatl", which he served in a golden goblet. "The chocolatl was a potation of chocolate flavored with vanilla and spices, and so prepared as to be reduced to a froth of the consistency of honey, which gradually dissolved in the mouth and was taken cold." Moctezuma's court reportedly drank about 2000 cups of chocolate per day, 50 of which were consumed by Montezuma himself. He supposedly drank the beverage in goblets before entering his harem, leading to the belief that it was an aphrodisiac.

- The xocolatl was said to be an acquired taste. Jose de Acosta, a Spanish Jesuit missionary who lived in Peru and then Mexico in the later 16th century wrote of it:

Loathsome to such as are not acquainted with it, having a scum or froth that is very unpleasant taste. Yet it is a drink very much esteemed among the Indians, where with they feast noble men who pass through their country. The Spaniards, both men and women, that are accustomed to the country, are very greedy of this Chocolate. They say they make diverse sorts of it, some hot, some cold, and some temperate, and put therein much of that "chili"; yea, they make paste thereof, the which they say is good for the stomach and against the catarrh.

references: Wikipedia