SPAIN: Our Chocolate Fetish!

OK, we can confess that we both have a chocolate fetish and chocolate addiction! I think we might have been born with it as I was eating chocolate since we could remember. Whenever we smell it, taste it and see it we start to feel wonderful! I don't believe it is the sugar which makes it good and neither the cocoa butter fats as the experts want us to believe, as we are not fond of milk chocolate, and I don't like to have the chocolate in those boxes which are ubiquitous around Valentine's day. The higher percent of cocoa the better! Also bittersweet chocolate is wonderful too!

We know we are not alone in this addiction as there are chocolate pastas, chocolate syrup (which I only like the bittersweet version), chocolate pudding, pie, ice cream, almost everything or anything has something made of chocolate! Imagine having a bath in a vat of slightly warm cocoa where we could have a fun guy party in!

Again, we are not alone nor the first ones with this addiction, cacao was in rituals and in a drink long since 1900 BC!  I know there is a dark and evil side of chocolate and cacao in our history with exploitation of the farmers who grow it, the early Europeans who excluded others from enjoying it, but I am not going to get into that discussion now but might save it for another posting. 
                                             

Cacao was wonderful in the ancient times and Mayans and Aztec peoples were using it in religious ceremonies too. If I were a Mayan or Aztec person and lived during the time in history when chocolate was the norm in rituals, I would be always having a religious experience so often that I would probably be cannonised as the Holy Saint of Vagaybonds!

When I was living in Halle, Germany, where a famous chocolate factory is in, there was a day when all the museums were open using a combined bus ticket and admission fee for all of them. The chocolate factory and museum was one of the participants so you could imagine what I was doing that day!

Our latest trip to Madrid, Spain had us both on a chocolate frenzy the moment we left the airport and were in the city centre. We found a cafe and pastry shop which also served hot cocao. It was  "just what the doctor had ordered" and we instantly felt better. We also enjoyed "churros" with the hot cocoa which we also fell in love with.


You could imagine our excitement when we came to know that we could take some of this cacao home and "extend our Madrid experience". We got two different boxes of cacao. One box is not shown here as it didn't exist long enough to photograph it. This version below is for the budget conscious, but very nice too!


We ask that if there are any future chocolate eating parties or even a chocolate swimming party that we be invited to it please?







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