Mothering With Chocolate

In 2012 consumers in the United States spent an average of $152 dollars for Mother's Day gifts. A good portion of that was spent on slathering our mammas with chocolate treats. Earlier generations of women, some of the them childless due to their religious callings, have concocted and savored chocolate; they have contributed to the bountiful chocolate appetite evident in the current celebrations of our moms.

Aztec women received godly instructions to produce the first chocolate by beating cocoa bean paste with water in gourds. According to those earliest of chocolate sources in Aztec traditions, the beloved god, Quetzalcoatl, was said to have planted a cacao tree, collected its pods, roasted the cocoa beans, and then showed only the women how to process the beans into a spicy chocolate drink. Women guarded and transmitted those techniques.