Chocolate - Eat it, Gift it, Decorate With It

Chocolate is truly a gift from the Gods. You can eat it, gift it, and decorate with it. These little roasted cocoa beans are amazingly versatile, good for your health, and always make you smile. Its uses seem to be endless.

To process the beans they pick them, ferment them, roast them, and then grind them up, creating a paste (chocolate liquor). Then it is hardened into blocks of bitter chocolate (used in baking), or treated by pressing out some of the cocoa butter, dried, and smashed into a cocoa powder. To make the good stuff we love to eat, more cocoa butter is added as well as sugar, for dark chocolate, and milk solids to turn it into milk chocolate.

There are too many ways to eat it to even begin to list them all. Used in cooking it can be a mole sauce, as a dessert, dip fresh fruit in it, dried figs and apricots, or bake zillions of delicious cakes, cookies, muffins, and tortes. Drink it hot when it is chilly outside, pop marshmallows in it for fun, or drink it cold. Snack on candy bars, bonbons, or mixed chocolates that contain fruit, nuts, caramel...

Chocolate makes a wonderful gift, for people of all ages. Wrap it up with a red bow and you have proclaimed your love to a sweetheart on Valentine's Day. Molded into the shape of a bunny, a chicken, or an egg, and popped into their Easter baskets, it delights your children. Stuff it into their Christmas stockings for a treat after opening presents.

Have you been invited to dinner at a friend's house? You don't want to bring them wine, she is allergic to flowers, so what do you do? Bring a box of chocolates; perhaps those wonderful minty after dinner chocolates! You and your friends are having a get together "girlie" talk. Nothing will make the problems go away as easily as a box of good chocolates.

But that isn't all. Chocolate is full of antioxidants, which help to prevent cancer. It also releases the endorphins in the brain, easing your stress and anxiety, and making you feel happier. Yes, it is high in saturated fats, but two thirds of the fat is not the bad kind. Dark chocolate is better for you than the milk chocolate.

We really need to thank the Aztecs and the Mayans for introducing us to the versatile world of chocolate. We eat it, gift it, and yes, even decorate with it. At Christmas you hang chocolate Santas, angels, and bells from your Christmas tree. Who can entertain without a candy dish filled with chocolates artfully placed on an end table? Holiday centerpieces with molded chocolate shapes can make your theme pop...and you can eat them later!

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