Life of Wry

I brought a lotta stuff home from Guatemala, as I mentioned yesterday. Chocolate is one of those many souvenirs. Chocolate is a distinctly Guatemalan product and a source of national pride. I just found this statement online:

Guatemala is considered to be the birth place of chocolate! History says the first chocolate bar was created by the Mayans before it became an industrialized good in Britain and other countries. The Mayans believed chocolate was a ‘food of the gods’.

Rufino arranged a demonstration for us of chocolate-making on one of the days we visited his town of San Antonio Palopo. Here’s Rufino and the fellow from the chocolate shop from whom I’d purchased [quite a bit of] chocolate a few days before when we first visited San Antonio Palopo. I remember asking him in particular how the milk chocolate was, since that’s what I’d be getting for Jim. Excellent, of course, was his response.

On this day, he holds up a nice cacao specimen and talks about the steps from cacao to the more familiar consumable chocolate.

Here, he’s grinding the beans…

If you look closely, you see the bars that are sold in the chocolate shop. You also see some varieties of chocolate liqueur I wish I’d purchased! I was worried about carrying it back safely, so forwent the glass bottles..

Today, Jim tried his souvenir Guatemalan milk chocolate!

He liked it! (No surprise.) Gorgeous, isn’t it?