CHOCOLATE!

Wednesday we went on a school excursion to visit the "palacio" of the first Catholic bishop from Spain, who arrived in Guatemala in1527. We enjoyed the tour of the palace grounds, but we MOST enjoyed what happened next! We followed our guide across the street. She knocked on a gate and we waited. Some time later, a woman appeared and invited us in to see how they make chocolate. It was a little family operation and we found it fascinating. So here is your lesson in making chocolate, one small batch at a time. 1) Here is Grace holding a cacao bean. 2) The women have roasted the beans on an open fire and are now blackening their hands by crumbling up the cacao beans. 3) The man sends the roasted, crumbled beans through this mill, which turns them into a sticky paste, then mixes it with sugar. I tasted it at this point, and while the flavor was amazingly rich, the texture was quite gritty from the sugar. 4) They send it through the mill once more, which grinds it up fine and dry. 5) The man weighs the chocolate, then forms each piece by hand. It's like stiff clay, at this point. (And the small concrete room smells wonderful!) 6) The chocolate wafers are wrapped in one-pound packages for sale.
7) Finally, here is Marco, my Spanish teacher, with fellow student Kieran from Kentucky, and Gloria with their little pink bags full of chocolate. Grace and Gloria pooled their money to buy a pound of cinnamon chocolate and Stephen and I bought a pound of almond chocolate. Each pound cost $1.50. It is so rich that we can't eat much at one time. Tonight we are going to try using it to make hot chocolate. Seriously, you've never tasted anything like this. Pure cocoa, with just enough sugar to make it delicioso. Hurray for chocolate!