Happy Thanksgiving!
Happy fuck Columbus day everyone(fuck all colonizers actually but this is specifically pertaining to the Americas for the holiday and he’s the most glorified sob), in celebration I’ll give some fun information I researched. Credit to @fuckyeahfoodfantasy for the edits of tequila, margarita, brownie, and chocolate, thank you for making these characters more accurate to their birthplaces and/or not grey. Chocolate: The word “chocolate” comes from the Nahuatl word chocolātl and the food/drink is made from the bean/seed from the fruit of Cacao tree native to southern Mexico and Central America. Chocolate was recorded to be important to the Aztec culture, they were said to believe cacao beans were the gift of Quetzalcoatl and they had so much value that they were a form of currency.
Originally prepared as a drink, chocolate was served as a bitter liquid, mixed with spices or corn puree. It was believed to be an aphrodisiac and to give the drinker strength. Today, such drinks are also known as “Chilate” and are still made by locals in the South of Mexico. Only after it was imported to Europe did people start adding sugar and milk to chocolate.
Cacao was also used by other Mesoamerican cultures such as the Olmecs and the Maya people, and each culture had its own preparation and occasions for it that are certainly worth looking into further. Tequila: Tequila is a distilled beverage made from the blue agave plant, primarily in the area surrounding the city of Tequila and in the Jaliscan Highlands (Los Altos de Jalisco) of the central-western Mexican state of Jalisco. It is the most popular type of mezcal(distilled alcoholic drinks made from agave). Mexican laws state that tequila can only be produced in the state of Jalisco and limited municipalities in the states of Guanajuato, Michoacán, Nayarit, and Tamaulipas. Tequila was first produced in the 1500s near the location of the city of Tequila, which was not officially established until 1666.
A predecessor to tequila is a fermented beverage from the agave plant called pulque. When conquistadors ran out of brandy, agave began to be distilled to create mezcal and tequila. Planting, tending, and harvesting the agave plant remains a manual effort, largely unchanged by modern farm machinery and relying on centuries-old know-how passed down through generations of farmers called jimadores.
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