Bean There, Done That

By Alli Sinclair

As a writer, I take research very seriously. I’ve invested years sampling this particular invention so I can present today’s post with good authority—chocolate.

Three thousand years ago, the people of Central and South America, and in particular, Mexico, cultivated theobroma cacao, the original cacao bean, and used it in religious ceremonies and for medicinal purposes. They found the bean could combat fatigue, not unlike the effects of coffee. For intestinal and stomach problems, a chocolate drink was mixed with the bark of the silk cotton tree. If fever and fainting were the problem, then patients consumed eight to ten cacao beans mixed with dried maize kernels.

Archaeologists in Puerto Escondido, Honduras, discovered the cacao had been cultivated as far back as 1100 to 1400 B.C. when they found a white pulp from the cacao bean in a vessel and, later, discovered the ancient Hondurans used cacao pulp as a sugar fermented to create a type of alcoholic drink. 

The Aztecs didn’t use chocolate in cooking, even though many people think they did. According to food historians, the Aztecs prepared their chocolate drink by grinding roasted cacao beans and mixing them with water and adding chili, maize, or honey. Sometimes they added flowers, and consumed the drink cool, not hot. Coriander, sage, and vanilla (extracted from the pods of orchids) were also favorite additional flavorings.

The Mayans of the Yucután drank their chocolate hot, a precursor to today’s popular drink. In 1556 A.D., a conquistador published only as the Anonymous Conqueror documented how Mayans prepared the drink. They mixed the powder with water and transferred the liquid from one basin to another so the foam rose to the top of the vessel. They stirred the drink with gold, silver, or wooden spoons and kept their mouths open wide to let as much foam as possible pass between their lips. The conquistador witnessed people drinking this concoction in the morning then walking for miles for the remainder of the day, not stopping for more food. (Probably trying to burn off those calories, methinks.)

Conquistador Francisco Hernandez sampled a variety of chocolate drinks on his travels—green cacao pods, honeyed chocolate, flowered chocolate, and a bright red chocolate made from the huitztexcolli flower. And according to accounts by the Spanish officers who dined with Montezuma in 1520 at Tenochtitlan, the king enjoyed drinking chocolate from cups made of pure gold.

After the Spanish conquistadors made their mark in the Americas, they imported chocolate to Europe. Only the wealthy could afford it, and to keep up with demand, the Spanish fleets enslaved the Mesoamericans (people of Aztec and Mayan descent) to get them to produce more cacao. Eventually, the Spanish grew their own beans and used African slaves as labor.

By 1657, a Frenchman opened London’s first chocolate house. And in 1689, Dr. Hans Sloane discovered a drink made from chocolate in Jamaica. The bitter taste didn’t appeal to him, though, so he mixed it with milk. He sold the powdered chocolate in tins to the Cadbury brothers in 1897 and, in my humble opinion, the world changed for the better. The Dutch van Houten family created what is known as “dutched chocolate”—a method that squeezes out cocoa butter, enabling the chocolate to be set hard in molds. Yes, history’s very first chocolate bars! But it wasn’t until the Industrial Revolution that these little bars of joy saw mass production and became available to the general populace.

In 1899, Jean Tobler opened up a chocolate factor in Berne, Switzerland, changing the course of chocolate once again. He invented the modern Toblerone by combining almonds and a unique blend of cocoa. My mouth thanks you, Mr. Tobler, but my waistline doesn’t!

A Mr. Rudolfe Lindt thought adding cocoa butter back into the cocoa mass of crushed and ground beans might be a good idea. He did this, lengthened the kneading process, and a velvety smooth and very shiny type of chocolate was born. Mr. Lindt, you are to blame for those extra hours I should be pounding the pavement!

So next time you wander into Starbucks for a hot chocolate or a mochaccino, perhaps pause and give thanks to the clever Mesoamericans for discovering a little thing that has brought joy to many over the centuries.

Feria de Sevilla (the Seville Fair)

By Edith McClintock

Photo by Ed Tarwinski 

I’ll start with a simple opinion: the greatest festival in the world—a bacchanal of eat, drink, dance, ride a horse, kill a bull, and be merry—is the Feria de abril de Sevilla (Feria for short, or the Seville Fair in English). Feria, which was originally created in 1847 as a livestock fair, lasts nearly a week (sometimes more) and follows quickly after the Spanish holy holidays of Semana Santa and Easter.

Semana Santa, which dates from medieval times, is religious and somber when celebrated in Seville. During the holy week leading up to Easter, brotherhoods of men carry pasos (giant wooden floats of “Passion scenes” or the Virgin Mary) from their year-round homes in neighborhood churches to the main Cathedral. The parades are both gorgeous and unnerving because the Ku Klux Klan from the American South based their own tunics and pointed hats with tiny eyeholes on the Semana Santa garments and it’s hard to separate the images.

After Semana Santa and Easter, if you’re a student, comes spring break, followed by the greatest festival of them all: Feria, which is neither religious nor somber. All together, it’s basically a month-long holiday, which also makes Seville an excellent city to spend a semester abroad in college—as I did.

Feria is a week with little sleep. The party starts in the morning at the fairgrounds with parades of Andalusian men and women in their flamenco finery riding decorative carriages and horses past rows of bright casetas (tents) and on to the Plaza de Toros and the bullfighting. The next stage of the fiesta doesn’t begin until ten or eleven at night and ends well past sunrise. The crowds, who gather in casetas organized by families, businesses, and various associations, party past dawn drinking small glasses of local sherry, eating tapas, and dancing Sevillanas (a flamenco style dance for the common man). I was nineteen and I went every night.

Pimientos de Padrón

Many years later…I still love to dance Sevillana, although it’s not so popular in the United States, even in Miami, so that’s a rare event. Sherry? Eh. I never did take to sherry of any kind. But Spanish tapas? Tapas I can eat everyday. Certain friends have even complained that I serve little else at parties. Truthfully, I’ll happily take Spanish olives, Spanish tortilla, fried calamares, gazpacho, Manchego cheese, pimientos de padrón (deep fried hot peppers), patatas bravas (fried potatoes with a spicy aioli sauce) and ensalada Rusa (Russian salad) over traditional Thanksgiving fare—although I’m very appreciative of my relatives cooking the grand meal today while I travel cross-county to join in the festivities this afternoon. Thank you.

And since it’s a holiday and I’m off to spend some time with family, I’ll close with a Happy Thanksgiving to all our American readers. To everyone else, I wish you a wonderful feast of your own. And I’m happy to take recommendations on the best festivals in the world, although I’ll never be nineteen and in Spain again, so Feria will likely remain the greatest of them all. For me anyway.

Entrance to Feria

For more, visit my author website and/or personal blog, A Wandering Tale. Even better, order a copy of Monkey Love & Murder on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or the Book Depository (free shipping nearly anywhere in the world).

Las Meninas – Diego Velázquez’s The Maids of Honor

By Edith McClintock

Las Meninas (1656), Diego Velázquez

Have you ever been fascinated, entranced—even spellbound—by a work of art? I’ve experienced it many times with dance, music, theater, even architecture. With literature, it’s too frequent to count. But it’s only happened a few times with a painting. Perhaps it’s the setting that works against paintings. Museums or galleries can be overstimulating, with too many pieces, one after another.

When rushed, as one often is when visiting a museum—either because your partner is impatient, or your schedule is tight, or the crowds are pressing you forward—the colors and textures and feelings can blend. I’ll often leave a museum or art show with a sense of enjoyment or disappointment but have little remembrance or feeling for individual pieces. (It’s especially bad when the exhibit has free mojitos sponsored by Bacardi, as is all too frequent at Art Basel Miami. Alas, those days are gone for awhile.)

There is, however, one painting I’ll never forget. I was thirteen and I’d been anticipating seeing it, but only because I’d given a presentation on Diego Velázquez in my art class the preceding year, and generally had a crush on all things Spanish. Despite that, I didn’t love the reproductions of his 1656 masterpiece I’d seen in art books. They were too dark, and I was drawn to the pretty French impressionists.

Close up of the
Infanta Margarita

I finally saw Las Meninas in 1986 during a summer trip to Madrid with my family. The atmosphere at the Prado helped. It was alone in its room and had been since 1899, in recognition of its growing acclaim as a masterwork of western painting—so important, that it has never been loaned out. It was imposing, monumental really, dominating an entire room. The figure of the Infanta (the Princess) Margarita glowed in the darkly lit space. The entire piece was luminescent and much more beautiful than I’d expected—probably because of its then-recent restoration.

But it was more than just the painterly technique. I was drawn into King Philip IV’s Spanish court: the young infanta surrounded by her maids of honor, a chaperone and bodyguard, plus two dwarves. Velázquez, the artist, looking beyond the scene to me, the audience, standing in the place of King Phillip and Queen Mariana who are possibly being painted and reflected in the mirror. Or maybe Velázquez is painting Las Meninas itself on the large canvas, reflected in a mirror that is the audience.

Meninas (1957), Pablo Picasso

The work raises questions about reality and the connection between the artist, the observer, and the artwork. It didn’t feel like an intellectual concept, though, but rather a reality under Velázquez’s gaze, the infanta’s slight preen, the direct look of the German dwarf Maria-Bárbola. Even my older sister, who’d spent most of that summer inventing ways to torment me in public, stopped her leg dragging and loud clattering in English (her own performance art piece), and fell silent in awe.

Like many great works of art, the painting has been endlessly analyzed and reinterpreted over the past 356 years, from the role of the artist in Velazquez’s time, to the history and protocol of the court, and each of its members. Up until the early 1800s, the painting was known mostly within the Spanish court circles, and Goya, another famous Spanish court painter, was one of the first to be deeply influenced by it. He used aspects in several royal portraits, including The Family of Charles IV (1800) and The Family of the Infante Don Luis de Borbón (1784). Like Las Meninas, the artist is there, possibly painting the scene, although his relationship with the royal family and audience is distant and not as inviting (see photo at bottom of blog).

Velázquez Painting the Infanta Margarita
with the Lights and Shadows of His Own
Glory (1958), Salvador Dali

Pablo Picasso may have painted the most famous reinterpretation in 1957. He shut himself up for four and a half months with a photograph of Las Meninas, producing 44 canvases, some of the painting in its entirety, but some recreating single figures or small groups. And his homage, in turn, spun its own imaginings, including Velázquez Painting the Infanta Margarita with the Lights and Shadows of His Own Glory (1958) by another Spaniard, Salvador Dali. Personally, although I’m not a huge Dali fan, I prefer his reinterpretation over the Picasso series. 

By the mid-20th century, reinterpretations of Las Meninas spread in tone, technique, and geography. In Spain, painters used humor, irony, and parody to critique the sociopolitical conditions of Franco’s Spain and its appropriation of Velázquez for propaganda. Beyond Spain, the piece inspired artists as varied as the American portrait painter, John Singer Sargent (who painted my favorite reinterpretation), Edgar Degas (who painted a version without ever having seen the original in person), and the Chilean-born multimedia artist Juan Downey, whose video, Las Meninas of 1975, was inspired by seeing the painting at the age of 22, as well as a critique of 17th century Spanish colonialism. 

Artists have continued to reinterpret, recreate, and inspire new pieces based on Las Meninas, whether in sculpture (see Manolo Valdés below), print and paintings, or video, film, literature and theater, making it not a relic of an old master, locked away in a museum, but a living, breathing, dialogue between the artists and Velázquez. And for me, 25 years later after my first look, I too have not forgotten. Perhaps one day, I’ll attempt my own reinterpretation. Or more likely just hang a print on my wall. Although neither could do the original justice.

The Daughters of Edward Darley Boit (1882),
John Singer Sargent.

This is one of my least favorite interpretations, more because
I prefer Goya's later works on war and madness.
The Family of Charles IV (1800), Francisco Goya.

I love these sculptures by Spanish artist, Manolo Valdés.
Las Meninas, Bronze 2006, Düsseldorf, Hofgarten
Photo by Ralf Hüls

Reference note: You can find a more in-depth discussion, and the source material for artists who have reimagined Las Meninas over the years, on the Museu Picasso website. Click here for the influence of Las Meninas from 1656 through 1901, and here for a discussion of its influence during the 20th century and beyond.

For more, visit my author website and/or personal blog, A Wandering Tale. Even better, order a copy of Monkey Love & Murder on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or the Book Depository (free shipping nearly anywhere in the world).

Off The Beaten Track: Barcelona, Mi Amor

Yolanda in New York,
the city of her birth

Yolanda L. Comedy is a world traveler and an independent consultant who works on science and technology policy issues while chipping away at the possibility of a novel writing career. Somewhere along the way, she has learned that she has so much to say that can’t be captured in her technical papers and policy speak. However, she has had a wonderful career with opportunities that include: a Ph.D. from Indiana University in Political Science and Public Policy; an American Association for the Advancement of Science Fellowship; and working at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy and at IBM, and starting her own consulting business.

Love at first sight is one of the more inexplicable of human emotions. Why we gravitate to certain people and to certain places is perhaps a mystery, perhaps a culmination of who we are, where we’ve been, what we feel inside. I fill my life with a lot of things. I love music and art, I’m a crazy tennis fan, I surround myself with beauty and love long walks on a beautiful day. And I live to travel. I have been all over the world, sometimes for days, sometimes for over a year. Most places I visit, I’m glad I did and I return home with new memories, new experiences, the continual building of my character. But some very small number of places capture me and I come home feeling nostalgia, such a longing. When I leave these places I feel as though I’ve left my home not returned to it. Barcelona was such a place.

One of the floats ( a shooting star) at the Three Kings Parade.
The parade went right past our hotel!

Barcelona has a heart and a soul and a vibe that is just wonderful! The lifestyle that I saw included such a dedication to friends and family and food. I went to Barcelona this past New Year’s. Fortunately, they have a big Christmas celebration and parade in January as well.

I loved the dedication to food in Barcelona. A normal day in the life of food: I settled into my seat around two o’clock, my friend across from me, and a room full of people, filling the tables and bar seats or waiting for a seat anywhere. The windows were large and expansive, bringing the busy La Rambla area inside, even on a crisp January day. We ordered our carafe of sangria within minutes of sitting down. We explored the menu of tapas, looked at them through the behind-glass displays, and my friend and I negotiated carefully on our shared dinner, making certain we tried new things and felt the comfort of foods we already knew we loved. And then we dined…for hours. We laughed and talked with each other, our waiters, and people next to us. We coveted the food of others when our stomachs would allow us to eat no more.

Overlooking Barcelona from the La Sagrada Familia

And then we opted for a Barcelona favorite. We went out on to the streets and lingered at shops and stands. We watched people. We admired the women smartly dressed. We smiled at couples, young and old, strolling hand in hand. We wondered why so many people sold birds and wished we could take back some of the beautiful bouquets of flowers that we saw. We bought irresistible scarves and hats—nothing like we see at home. The energy of the crowds carried us, and we walked for much longer than we had planned, hoping to walk off some of the food we ate. We’d now barely have time to get back to the hotel to bathe and change for dinner!

Yolanda at Gaudi La Pedrera

Art and artists fill the streets of Barcelona. I would have never said that I liked the famous architect Antoni Gaudi before visiting Barcelona. What I saw in picture books looked strange and, yes, gaudy. But after my visit to Barcelona I quickly learned to love and appreciate his incredible vision, his refusal to be ordinary, and the dreams that must have inspired his art. I got tired of the word wow, which I seemed to say over and over again every time I saw his work.  

A Roman Catholic church, La Sagrada Família, a hundred-year work in progress, is worth the long lines to get inside, even on a cold day. I wanted to explore every nook and begin to understand the passion it took to design La Sagrada Família as well as the perseverance
it has taken to try to complete Gaudi’s vision. Gaudi’s apartments, La Pedrera in the center of town, are alluring and fanciful, while still livable within its extreme character.

La Pedrera, Gaudi's Apartment building

La Sagrada Familia

Barcelona is a place worth visiting for a New Year’s celebration. We spent New Year’s Eve at Port Olimpic. What energy at the marina as well! We wandered around and finally were lured into a restaurant with an expensive New Year’s Eve fixed-price menu. We opted to order off of the regular menu, but the couple and their children next to us were very kind and shared all of their New Year’s goodies, giving us the full experience. They gave us hats and whistles, champagne, and food we would have never tried otherwise. They smiled with us and laughed at us. The people all around us were dressed beautifully, such class. The musicians were only part of the entertainment. Diners would break out into song or dance at the drop of a hat. After midnight, people began to file out with their sleepy children in tow. We left and joined the younger crowd, spilling out of restaurants and bars at Port Olimpic. Dancing in the street. Packed like sardines, but festive and seductive. Our goal was to watch the sunrise on the beach – popular in Barcelona, we had read – but alas, the need for sleep overpowered us and sent us back on the one of the best subway systems in the world to our hotel.

A restaurant at Port Olímpic on New Year's Eve

If you dare to be seduced by Barcelona’s charms, it’s worth a trip to Castell (castle or fort) de Montjuïc for the spectacular views of the Mediterranean and the city. Did I mention La Catedral de Barcelona? The city tour bus, while it screams tourist, is worth it—Barcelona has many neighborhoods and much scenery to enjoy. Lastly, don’t miss the Font Màgica or the Magic Fountain. At dusk, there is a wonderful music and light show where the fountain changes shapes and colors for around 20 minutes with the Palau National illuminated in the background. 

I want to be back in Barcelona, feeling the pulse of the city, eating good food, walking and exploring, seeing the ocean and just living life the way I think it was meant to be lived—with passion and togetherness and the heart and soul of people and history and beauty.

Off The Beaten Track: The Camino Moment

Dr. Lanice Jones is a Canadian family physician, intrepid world traveler, and adventurer in every sense of the word. Before she embarks on her next big adventure, joining Doctors Without Borders in a remote corner of Pakistan, she shares her last great adventure with us.

The reason why someone begins the ancient Pilgrimage of St. James is not the same reason why a pilgrim finishes it. Often, a pilgrim will recall the moment, the Camino moment of clarity, expansiveness or inner peace that marks the turning point of the inner journey. For me, the Camino moment happened on a cool, foggy morning five kilometres out of Finesterra, the End of the World.

I began the pilgrimage of Santiago de Compostella with two dear friends on August 28, my fifty-sixth birthday. Our plan was to walk about ten days from St. Jean Pied a Port on the French side, across the Pyrennes into Spain, then catch a train from Burgos to Sarria and walk another eight days to Santiago. We’d set the intention that this would be a spiritual journey and had each brought readings to share, along with hours of walking in meditation, prayer, or contemplation.  Our route took us through the tumbling ridges and peaks of the mountains, into rolling rich vineyards and fields of sunflowers. We averaged twenty kilometres a day, with plenty of time to explore the churches that marked the route, a living history spanning a thousand years.

Coming into Santiago was a mixed blessing. We were so happy to have accomplished our goal, to have shared such a rich experience, deepening our friendships and our spiritual practices. But here, we would go our separate ways. My friends were returning to Canada, and I was walking on alone to Finesterra, to complete another two hundred kilometres to the coast and back.

I took four days to reach Finesterra. As I crested the last range of hills, the ocean stretched forth, rimmed by white sand beaches, and I could imagine the Romans believing that they had indeed come to the end of the world. The evening of my arrival, I joined up with four other women to share a bottle of wine, bread, and cheese on the rocks below the lighthouse, where tradition demanded that we build a fire and ritually burn an item of our clothing to signify the burning away of our old lives.

The next day, I started alone in the early dawn under a heavy fog. The route wound up through two small villages into a eucalyptus and pine forest. I was tired and lonely, wondering what I was doing hiking another hundred kilometres to Muxia and back to Santiago. I felt I didn’t belong here, in the damp and the fog, struggling in Spanish to ask directions along the poorly marked trail.

As I passed an old Celtic cross, a small dark face with a pointed nose poked out past a crumbling stone fence. It was a fox! He looked at me, and I looked at him, both of us silent and still. A dog barked in the distance, and the fox glanced at the noise, back at me, then turned and trotted away, his glorious tail waving behind him. A few meters away, a chicken scratched in the dirt, oblivious to the predator, which had just passed by. Beyond the chicken, a dog sniffed the scented air. 

I stood in contemplation, wondering about it all. Who belonged here? The fox? The chicken? The dog? The woman? 

Something tight and hard broke open, like a spring releasing, or a shell cracking apart. All of us belonged here, one no more than the other. All of us were equally part of the glorious whole, and each of us reflected the whole. 

It has been a few weeks since that special moment. Life has returned to “normal” back at home, but something has shifted, something that made that 550-kilometre journey seem like nothing. And yet everything has changed.