Archive for November 1st, 2011

Chocolate: A Succinct History

Tuesday, November 1st, 2011

The History of Chocolate begins in Latin America, where cacao trees grow in the wild. The first people to use chocolate were probably the Olmec of what is today southeast Mexico. They lived in the area around 1000 BC, and their word,”kakawa,” gave us our word “cacao.” However, that is all we know and we don’t know if the Olmec actually used chocolate. The Maya, who inhabited the same general area a thousand years later (from about 250-900 AD), did use chocolate. At one point cacao beans were used as currency and of course, someone found a way to counterfeit them by duplicating them in clay. Sweetening of chocolate was due to the Europeans who added sugar and milk after cocoa was discovered in the Americas and brought it back to Europe. In Mexican cookery chocolate is used in savory dishes such as enchiladas and especially mole.

Cacao refers to the plant or its beans before processing, while chocolate refers to anything made from the beans and cocoa generally refers to chocolate in a powdered form.



 

The link below may be of interest:

Vanilla a Commonplace Kitchen Ingredient Becomes an Exotic Elixir

 

 

 

 

 

 

Bangkok Floods 2011

Tuesday, November 1st, 2011

Truck with speakers warning residents that flooding was imminent near Soi On Nut (all image credits: © 2011 Julian Allain and restaurant dining critiques dot com)

This is fundamentally a flood that never materialized, at least in the area in which we live, or for that matter in most parts of central Bangkok. This is not to imply that this flood was and is a very devastating disaster for Southeast Asia, and there is deep, filthy floodwater containing sewerage, garbage and dead animals  in  suburbs to the west, east and north of the central district of the city, as you can see in the video below. Water flowing from the tap has a smell of dirt. The public caused the most inconvenience,  by panic hoarding of essential goods such as: bottled water, toilet paper and prepackaged foods (instant noodles being the most popular item being bought in large quantities) and Bangkok supermarket shelves were emptied weeks before the flood was even close to emerging anywhere near the capitol. Bottled water was still available if cost was not an issue: Evian, Badoit, Vittel and other expensive imported water is still available even now. Wine and alcoholic beverages are and always were readily available as well as most beer. Asahi Beer from Japan produced in Thailand was suspended for both draft and bottle production for a period of time, even though other imported beers were not affected. The government declared public holidays from Thursday, 27 October thru Monday, 31 October to give time for people to help their families, and many businesses piled up sandbags or built concrete walls around their storefronts and shut down.

Waist deep in flood-water

Flooded klong

Trying to make it through the flood waters

Bottled water section almost empty

Instant noodle section completely empty

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HhMp8AnhDF4