Ah, the smell of a warm chocolate cake. Grabs your nose and causes the mouth juices to start running, right?

Today is Part 3 of what I learned about chocolate.

On our trip in the West Indies, and visiting a working farm where they grow cacao and turn it into chocolate, our guide picked up one of those 8″ cacao pods, whacked it with his machete and held up what was left. (Compare the size to his hand.) Looks rather like corn kernels, right? They were whitish and a bit sticky, and he pulled them off and handed them out to us to SUCK. “Do not chew up the seed, it’s too hard and too bitter,” he counselled us. So we sucked and spat. There was a faint sweetness but no chocolate flavor.

Next week, Part 4.