BS: First Chocoholics in US?

Subject: BS: First Chocoholics in US?
From: Sandra in Sydney
Date: 17 Mar 09 - 09:19 AM

Cocoa traded 1000 years ago!

Subject: RE: BS: First Chocoholics in US?
From: Mrrzy
Date: 17 Mar 09 - 12:51 PM

Cool! I knew the mesoamericans were trading it that early, but it's nice to see that trade had spread that far!

Ah, what gratitude for the human discoverers of what was named theobromine, the food of the gods!

Subject: RE: BS: First Chocoholics in US?
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 17 Mar 09 - 01:08 PM

There was two-way trade between the Central American-central Mexico region and the settlements of the American southwest at the time.
Analysis of turquoise used in central Mexico by the Aztecs showed that large quantities came from mines near Santa Fe in present day New Mexico. Macaw feathers and Pacific coast shells reached the New Mexico-Arizona region.
Obsidian, used for knives and projectiles also was traded; even some from the Pacific northwest reached the Arizona-New Mexico region and farther south.

The chocolate connection thus is not unexpected. The traders probably were from central Mexico. There is evidence of a pre-Columbian trader 'tribe' that had a route extending from the Pacific Northwest to the Texas Gulf coast, but no connection with the Central American-American Southwest trade axis has been shown to my knowledge.

Subject: RE: BS: First Chocoholics in US?
From: Riginslinger
Date: 17 Mar 09 - 09:53 PM

I wonder if they exported cocaine?

Subject: RE: BS: First Chocoholics in US?
From: Liz the Squeak
Date: 18 Mar 09 - 04:39 AM

They might have done, but I understand that the two plants are not related.

Author JoAnne Carl writes the 'Chocoholic Mystery' series (and damned well written they are too... brilliant stories and great characterisations, if a trifle disconcerting if one plans to visit a small Michigan lakeside town...) and puts little interesting snippets of chocolore in her books. She mentioned this fact in either the one with the chocolate labrador, or the one with the mice.... I just read both of them and consequently cannot find them.













Of course it might have been the one with the frog....


LTS

Subject: RE: BS: First Chocoholics in US?
From: Sandra in Sydney
Date: 18 Mar 09 - 05:42 AM

chocolate labrador

Chocolate mouse?

chocolate frog

Subject: RE: BS: First Chocoholics in US?
From: GUEST,lynnT
Date: 18 Mar 09 - 03:19 PM

I couldn't let this one go by!

Actual Chocolate Mice

Fancy English chocolate mice

Chocolate Tans


(Mary Lamarca will remember that I raised Fancy English Show Mice for years, and was a Show judge for them -- she had me in to the NIH labs at one point to identify phenotype/genotype of some of her mice)

Lynn

Subject: RE: BS: First Chocoholics in US?
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 18 Mar 09 - 04:34 PM

More digression-
Mice- takes me back to grade school. One of the pupils was selling white mice for a nickel. So many kids bought them that parents complained to the principal.
The mouse entrepreneur was told to stop or face suspension.

Subject: RE: BS: First Chocoholics in US?
From: Sandra in Sydney
Date: 18 Mar 09 - 06:55 PM

they are definitely chocolate mice, Lynn!

Subject: RE: BS: First Chocoholics in US?
From: GUEST,LynnT
Date: 18 Mar 09 - 10:57 PM

We used to cross Chocolate into many of our lines of mice -- first because the chocolate gene confers size on the offspring, whether or not they are of that color themselves, so the youngsters show better, and also because chocolate undertones enrich most colors in the gold range. One of my favorite colors in mice is Champagne -- it's a pink-eyed chocolate mouse, so the brown is diluted to a warm beige, like raw silk or coffee ice cream, or the color of an old-style telephone. I think there was a Champagne mouse on one of the links I sent earlier.

I still miss the mice a bit, but not all the work of cleaning 100+ cages twice a week. When I shut the colony down back in 2003, I traded the biomass in for one six-foot-six New Englander. Good deal; I never managed to teach the mice how to mow the lawn or take out the trash, much less contradance or paddle a canoe...

And yes, I too am a chocoholic. Aldi's grocery stores sell lovely five-packs of good dark German chocolate in small bars -- one of those will keep me smiling for a whole evening.

LynnT