Good morning Everyone!
Cocoa pods ripening on the Cacao tree
I have the most wonderful, glorious news to share this morning – chocolate is, in fact, a vegetable!
From Print Shop Professional 2.0
How did I make this discovery? A combination of illogic, basic horticultural facts and culinary methods. The basic ingredient in chocolate is the cocoa bean! Any food based on a vegetable such as a bean must fall into the vegetable department. (Technically, the cocoa bean originates in a fruit, since it grows in a pod along with many siblings, but then, tomato is a fruit, and it is considered a vegetable when we eat it. I don’t think we should discriminate against the cocoa bean by elevating the tomato over it, do you?)
Linnaeus, who invented the means of classifying various organisms. This picture was painted just after he discovered that chocolate was a vegetable.
It takes approximately 300 to 600 cocoa beans to make 2.2 pounds of chocolate, so logic would dictate that each mouthful of the wonderful stuff is chock full of the same delicious vitamins that one receives from other beans and assorted vegetables as well.
Cocoa Beans in the Cacao pod
Exit guilt; enter chocolate….
My next question – since it contains chocolate, eggs, flour and often milk, does this make chocolate cake a super food? Just wondering!
Chocolate Cake
Have a great weekend!
Nancy
Tales from the Mom-Side 