At Holy Cacao, we love telling the story of chocolate.  It’s why we do this in the first place.  WE are the chocolate zombies that Diane Ackerman talks about in her book.  Believe me, Ellen and I can relate.  So the story continues.  We left off, with my favorite part, having Montezuma send runners up the mountain for snow to pour his chocolate over.  My kind of guy!  More of “A Natural History of the Senses”:

“Impressed by the opulence and restorative powers of chocolate, Cortes introduced it to Spain in the sixteenth century.  It hit the consciousness of Europe like a drug cult.  Charles V decided to mix it with sugar, and those who could afford it drank it thick and cold;  they, too, occasionally added orange, vanilla, or various spices.  Brillat-Savarin reports that “The Spanish ladies of the New World are madly addicted to chocolate, to such a point that, not content to drink it several times each day, they even have it served to them in church.”  Today, chocolate-zombies haunt the streets of every city, dreaming all day of that small plunge of chocolate waiting for them on the way home from work.”