#(*the gods discovered cacao beans which is why it is called food of the gods) | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

lowcarbnutrients · 4 years

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13 Protective Benefits Of Cocoa Powder + Best Ways To Eat It

What are the health and wellness benefits of cocoa powder?

You probably use cocoa powder for all your chocolate-flavored keto dessert recipes, smoothies, and fat bombs, however you most likely do not know the number of incredible health benefits each tbsp recipes up.

Full of anti-oxidants, healthy fats, and fiber, consuming cocoa might assist lower high blood stress, aid weight-loss, improve your state of mind, and also so much more.

In this overview, learn why chocolate powder is among the healthiest staples in reduced carb living by figuring out:

Where cocoa powder comes from

What's in cocoa powder

13 benefits of cocoa

How to add even more cocoa powder to your keto diet

Trust us, chocolate powder may be the tastiest active ingredient you add to your diet plan for much better health and wellness - as well as it's a secret people have actually known for hundreds of years.

Where Does Cacao Powder Come From?

Once thought about a "food of the gods", ancient Maya and also Aztec people first made use of the advantages of cacao to treat everything from improving their food digestion to enhancing their energy levels.

Cocoa originates from fermented cacao beans harvested off the cacao tree (aka Theobroma cacao), which is belonging to tropical climates like central and also South America.

The cacao beans or seeds are cleansed and also roasted to highlight their deep taste. Then the beans are eliminated from their shells and you have cocoa nibs.

Cocoa nibs can be consumed by themselves as a low carb snack.

But they can likewise be ground approximately develop cacao alcohol, which is a combination of cocoa as well as cacao butter. Pushing this additionally, you can then divide pure cocoa solids from cocoa butter.

Cocoa butter can be used as a dairy-free fat replacement for grass-fed butter, but it's usually made use of to make delicious chocolate. It's additionally included in elegance items as a skin moisturizer referred to as cocoa butter.

When you get rid of cocoa butter, you're entrusted to a strong block of pressed chocolate. This after that gets grated into a great powder to create what we recognize as chocolate powder.

So what's the nutritional top quality like in chocolate powder?

Cocoa Powder Nutrition

The macronutrient break down for one tablespoon of chocolate powder is:

Calories: 12

Protein: 1g

Carbs: 3g

Fiber: 2g

Net carbs: 1g

As you can see, 3g of carbs per one tablespoon does not seem too keto-friendly until you consider the nutritional fiber. That's what makes cacao powder just 1g of low-carb wonderful.

Cocoa powder is likewise rich in remarkable micronutrients like:

Magnesium

Potassium

Copper

Manganese

Plus, that very same tablespoon of cocoa powder also has 12.42 mg of caffeine. To put that in point of view, one mug of coffee has around 95mg of caffeine.

So what do all these private components provide for your body when they're combined?

13 Advantages of Cocoa Powder Hiding In All that Delicious

Science says chocolate and also chocolate powder might help you:

# 1. Stop Cancer Cells (Many Thanks to the Antioxidants)

Cancer is the second leading reason of fatality in the world.

When free radicals from ecological contaminants as well as your diet regimen damages cells, they can trigger dangerous mutations causing cancer.

But there's one point scientists understand battles totally free radical damages to lower your oxidative stress as well as cancer cells dangers: antioxidants.

These powerful plant compounds are found in dark-colored fruits and veggies like raspberries, blueberries, kale, and also remarkably sufficient, cacao beans.

Cocoa actually boasts more anti-oxidants than other antioxidant-rich foods per offering - including eco-friendly tea, black tea, and red wine.

Cocoa is specifically abundant in anti-oxidants called polyphenols as well as flavonoids, which professionals state can:

Protect your cells from damage and also bacteria

Stop cancer cells from growing

Prevent existing cancer cells from spreading

Encourage cancerous cells to die

In pet research studies, diet regimens with cacao or cacao removes revealed positive connections with reduced rates of cancer cells, especially colon cancer.

One study showed researchers cocoa could quit the growth and recreation of prostate cancer cells without affecting the development and also performance of healthy and balanced cells too.

But here's the disadvantage: like most anti-oxidants, processing as well as heating cocoa may result in much of the antioxidant advantages damaging. This suggests a conventional sweet bar isn't your best source for antioxidants, but unprocessed cocoa powder might be.

These antioxidants may additionally be why cocoa powder decreases cardiovascular condition rates as well.

# 2. Reduced Your Threat of Cardiovascular Disease

Cardiovascular disease is one of the most usual reason of death for both guys and females in the world.

But along with eliminating free extreme damages as well as warding off cancer, the polyphenols as well as flavanols in cacao powder are likewise anti-inflammatory so they might improve your heart health.

Flavonoids in cocoa might have the ability to specifically stop embolism and also accumulation from obstructing blood flow in your vessels as well as arteries.

And since cacao is a mix of healthy monounsaturated fats (like oleic acid, the exact same fat in olive oil) as well as saturated fats (like coconut oil), these fats may also result in better cardio health.

Scientists from one evaluation discovered chocolate can decrease the threat of cardiovascular disease by not only protecting against high blood pressure however likewise lowering blood pressure.

#3. Reduce Blood Pressure

Cocoa as well as cacao powder might have the ability to lower blood pressure.

A meta-analysis of 35 trials revealed those taking in the greatest amounts of flavanol-rich cacao or chocolate powder reduced their high blood pressure around 2 mmHg in the temporary, which was even more than those eating the least cocoa.

What was even much better is this blood pressure-lowering effect was biggest in people that already had hypertension, confirming chocolate may be an effective natural treatment for hypertension.

Another review revealed people that take in cacao everyday have higher nitric oxide circulation in their blood.

Since nitric oxide relaxes your arteries and blood vessels, which then makes them wider to enable simpler as well as raised blood circulation, these participants additionally had better heart as well as artery function.

Scientists in another study compared the impact of flavonoid-rich dark delicious chocolate with a cocoa-free control group.

They collected 22 heart transplant recipients and also took dimensions prior to and also two hours after consuming their snack. Researchers then discovered the cocoa-eating participants:

Opened their blood vessels to allow much better blood flow

Kept platelets in their blood from sticking together

Significantly minimized oxidative tension

But these blood pressure-reducing results were only considerable when individuals consumed higher focus of flavonols.

So dark delicious chocolate is much more advantageous than milk or white delicious chocolate, which have much less and also no flavonols, respectively.

Cacao has actually even helped individuals lower their cholesterol levels.

#4. Improve Cholesterol

In one testimonial of 19 trials with over 1,000 participants, consuming cocoa flavanols aided people improve their cholesterol.

Scientists learned both people with regular to slightly high cholesterol levels and also those most in danger for heart problem saw boosted blood lipid profiles when eating chocolate powder on a normal basis.

Experts believe chocolate increases HDL cholesterol concentrations, which may normally assist lower LDL cholesterol oxidation.

So currently cacao might have the ability to reduced blood pressure, reduce cholesterol, as well as avoid heart disease.

Lowering these threat aspects, it's most likely not a surprise cacao might likewise decrease your opportunities of having a cardiac arrest or stroke after that too.

# 5. Minimize Your Risks for Heart Strike and Stroke

Evidence from a total of 20,951 guys and also ladies from 9 studies suggests higher delicious chocolate consumption associates with a lower chance of future cardiovascular events.

Researchers involved this final thought as they observed individuals consuming the most cacao additionally had the least incidences of cardiovascular disease as well as strokes.

And in two friend researches, one with 31,823 ladies aged 48 to 83-years old and one more with 31,917 males between 45-79 years, moderate-but-regular chocolate intake was connected with a lower price of heart failure hospitalization and also death.

However, this safety nature was not observed when individuals ate greater than one offering of cocoa per day.

The anti-oxidants located in cacao not just lower inflammation for better heart health and wellness, yet may also have a role to play in insulin resistance and obesity as well.

# 6. Decline Insulin Resistance

The cacao flavanols discovered in dark delicious chocolate may be able to assist people with type 2 diabetes:

Lower inflammation

Improve blood sugar control

Significantly improve insulin sensitivity

Lower fasting insulin

That's since cacao polyphenols slow the digestion and absorption of carbs as well as sugar.

And they likewise aid damage down sugar so it's simpler handled by your body. This after that equilibriums blood glucose degrees and also assists boost insulin resistance.

In one research, researchers contrasted the impacts of dark and white chocolate bars on sugar as well as insulin feedback in 15 healthy and balanced topics.

Each individual arbitrarily obtained either dark delicious chocolate bars having about 500 mg polyphenols, or white chocolate bars including absolutely no polyphenols (given that they lack cocoa), for 15 days.

The data showed dark yet not white delicious chocolate boosted insulin sensitivity.

These very same chocolate flavanols additionally do wonders for your mental health and wellness.

# 7. Protect Against and Perhaps Reverse Cognitive Decline

Experts think chocolate flavanols can stop or decrease many signs of age-related cognitive decline.

Polyphenols and also cocoa flavonoids have been revealed to boost mind function, rise blood flow to your mind, and also stop neurodegenerative conditions like mental deterioration as well as Alzheimer's as you age.

That might be since flavanols can actually go across the blood-brain obstacle so they reach function their magic directly on nerve cell production and healthy mind cell functioning directly.

Catechin as well as epicatechin, 2 particular flavonoids in cacao, likewise tend to hang out in the locations of your mind where memory and also discovering take place. These areas are typically where neurodegeneration initially occurs, so it's one of the best locations for them to be.

The catechins and also epicatechins in chocolate stopped mind cells from coming to be toxiic and in one research study done on rats. And they may be the reason cacao enhanced functioning memory in healthy grownups in an additional study.

Scientists likewise showed that on a regular basis eating chocolate flavanols might be effective for enhancing cognitive function in elderly grownups that are already struggling with mild cognitive impairment.

And they may also be able to turn around damages done to neurons brought on by Alzheimer's and Parkinson's conditions too.

All these mind health-boosting impacts might likewise lug over to your mind-set as well as moods.

# 8. Better Moods, Less Exhaustion, as well as Lower Clinical depression

It's no coincidence consuming delicious chocolate makes you rejoice.

Even though you probably connected those cozy as well as blurry feels to the sugar located in delicious chocolate, chocolate itself can additionally boost your mood for the better.

Cocoa as well as cocoa powder has actually been shown to:

Promote sensations of contentment

Lower symptoms of depression

Provide aphrodisiac-like effects

Do you ever feel absolutely worn down, eliminated, and also stuck in a mind fog?

When you're experiencing psychological fatigue and also persistent tiredness, cocoa powder may be able to assist by launching calming neurotransmitters like serotonin.

Several testimonials reveal cocoa polyphenols not only put you in a better state of mind, yet even aid minimize psychological tension as well as chronic tiredness syndrome.

Plus, that little caffeine in cacao might additionally shake you in the direction of a productive second wind.

When senior guys in one research consumed delicious chocolate, they reported far better general wellness and better emotional well-being. An additional revealed individuals drinking high-polyphenol chocolate ended up being extra tranquil and also content afterwards.

And there's even study showing girls that regularly consumed chocolate during their maternity had babies with reduced anxiety and also much better moods!

While chocolate powder may turn your frown upside-down, it also does a world of helpful for your digestion.

# 9. Healthy Fiber that Does Not Taste Gross

Americans are meant to obtain between 25g as well as 30g of nutritional fiber every day.

But possibilities are you're not getting adequate - especially if you're not tracking what you're eating.

This is a bad step since fiber not just aids you feel fuller so you don't consume as much throughout the day or during dishes, it's also necessary for healthy and balanced digestive tract activities and also appropriate digestion functioning.

Many people struggle with constipation when they initially switch over to a reduced carbohydrate diet.

But when 44 healthy participants taken in 2 servings of cocoa items daily, they reported:

An rise in the variety of daily bowel movements

Having a bowel motion daily became much more frequent

The time to have a digestive tract activity decreased

The feeling of irregularity vanished

When you remain in keto, you can not pack up on chocolate powder, however you can add it to various other foods like chia dessert to mass up your fiber intake and also aid you shed even more weight.

#10. Help With Weight Loss

Would you ever before think individuals that eat chocolate extra frequently also have lower BMIs than those that hardly ever indulge?

It's real, as long as you're not obtaining your cocoa entirely from candy bars, you might have the ability to make use of chocolate powder as part of a fat burning plan.

Cocoa has been shown to:

Lower obesity-related inflammation

Suppress your appetite

Help you feel fuller longer

Prevent fat storage

Increase fat burning

Rats eating cacao in one research study had much less natural fat, or the kind that collects around your waistline and enhances your dangers for heart disease, type 2 diabetes, and weight problems.

This assisted scientists end cocoa may have the ability to avoid or reduce this unsafe fat to reduce the rates of these conditions.

And individuals adhering to a reduced carb diet in one more experiment were allowed to eat 1.5 ounces of chocolate made with 81% chocolate (i.e., very dark delicious chocolate with little sugar or milk solids) on a daily basis. They dropped weight quicker than those dieters not permitted to eat chocolate.

As you can expect, dark chocolate showed one of the most promising results for fat burning while white and milk chocolate does not have those same waist-shrinking impacts thanks to the additional included sugars.

Dark delicious chocolate is likewise an excellent source of magnesium.

# 11. Excellent Source of Magnesium to Balance Electrolytes

It's very simple for keto dieters to forget their electrolyte balance as they're chugging a gallon of water every day.

But this is a huge mistake.

When you don't have adequate sodium, magnesium, and potassium in your body, you'll experience signs and symptoms like the dreaded keto flu and:

Headaches

Fatigue and sluggishness

Irregular heartbeat

Muscle spasms

Nausea

Diarrhea or constipation

Cocoa may help you fulfill your magnesium need as one tbsp has 6% of your recommended everyday intake.

Rats in one study were able to raise their magnesium degrees so much with cacao they boosted their symptoms of magnesium deficiency.

Healthy cocoa flavonoids as well as polyphenols not only recover your body from the within out, they might also help your skin emit your great health.

#12. Healthy, Hydrated Skin

Cocoa polyphenols as well as flavanols may assist your skin appearance much healthier due to the fact that those outstanding anti-oxidants increase blood circulation as well as blood circulation, and rise oxygen. All these add to more even complexion and a much more vibrant look.

Additionally, those antioxidants likewise help secure your skin from the sunlight's damaging and destructive UV rays. In studies, those who added even more chocolate to their diets additionally had softer skin and much less skin dryness.

So chocolate might help you obtain the acne-free skin of your dreams and also a healthy smile to match.

#13. Better Dental Health

Can cacao truly secure your teeth from dental caries and periodontal disease?

Since chocolate contains anti-oxidants with anti-bacterial and also immunity-enhancing impacts, they may bring about much better dental health and wellness and ward off gingivitis.

One testimonial showed theobromine, which you'll find in cacao, might secure your tooth enamel to enhance your teeth.

But you'll just rack up these advantages when you adhere to bitter chocolate powder rather than those consisting of sugar, which directly brings about cavities.

So let's speak about how to purchase the appropriate sort of cocoa powder as well as include it to all your keto menu planning next.

How to Add Even More Cocoa Powder to Your Diet

When acquiring cocoa powder, keep away from sweetened alternatives utilized to make hot chocolate unless you wish to kick on your own out of ketosis.

Look for bitter cacao powder with as couple of active ingredients as possible. Ideally, your bitter cacao powder ought to simply include pure, neglected, ground cacao beans.

Though chocolate does consist of trace quantities of caffeine, it's generally well-tolerated by lots of people as well as has few side results.

While there's no set day-to-day consumption quantity, you can't go also crazy if you're sticking to less than 25g of net carbohydrates a day because each tablespoon counts as 1g of carbs.

The best and also simplest means to add cacao powder to your low carbohydrate diet regimen is by utilizing it to make:

Hot or cold cocoa by blending cocoa powder with non-dairy milk

Smoothies and also mocha keto coffees for a healthy, tasty treat

Keto desserts like brownies, cookies, as well as chocolate mousse

Chia pudding recipes

Keto fat bombs

You recognize what else has cacao and calls for zero effort on your end?

A Perfect Keto Bar, the power bar developed to satisfy snack yearnings and increase power levels while you get on a ketogenic diet.

You'll only find healthy ingredients in a Perfect Keto Bar - no added sugars, sugar alcohols, or affordable binders and fillers.

For only 3g of web carbs, you'll rack up 19g of excellent quality fat from cacao butter as well as coconut oil and 10g of collagen healthy protein from grass-fed cows.

While this nutrient-dense, on-the-go keto treat isn't the only way you can appreciate all 13 benefits of cacao powder, it's one of the simplest ways to include even more cacao to your keto life.

#carb diet #diet #fruit diet #health and wellness #help with weight loss #low carb #low carbohydrate diet #nutrition #weight loss #wellness

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lilian-joy-space · 6 years

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Cacao Ceremony Research

Jenny :

Cacao “ Food of the Gods”

Cacao has been used for centuries as a ceremonial medicine and health elixir by the indigenous tribes of Central America. Cacao was valued highly by these tribes that it was used as currency and the Mayans associated the Cacao spirit as the most powerful deity in Mayan Cosmology. Mayans believed that their gods discovered Cacao, hence why it was called “Food of the Gods”. “Ek Chuah”, Commonly referred to as the Cacao God is shown in the image below, along side Maize God who was also an important deity necessary to sustain life itself. The Maize God is seen to be the authoritative figure in the discussion between these two deities, where Ek chuah is acknowledging the Maize God of life.

Both these deities are often portrayed with or as the Cacao tree which illustrates the importance of Cacao in Mayan rituals and religion and also reveals the origins of Cacao’s luxurious nature in today's society. Cacao was used for many different ceremonies in Mayan society, such as baptisms, banquets, weddings, funerals and was even used for tomb burials of the elite as only high class consumed chocolate/cacao. The purpose of cacao being used for the elite tomb burials was because they believed that it assisted the souls travel to death, which they believed the elite only deserved. This class difference between the wealthy and the poor associated with cacao is still seen today as many Cocoa farmers are struggling to survive from being underpaid when the revenue of chocolate is still growing rapidly. The use of chocolate in cacao ceremonies today are portrayed to have healing powers partly due to its divine origins where the Mayans believed and used cacao for medicinal was adopted into different cultures and societies with the same belief of the substance being mystical and powerful for healing.

Kayla:

Process of Cacao ceremony:

The Cacao ceremony is quite personal so the process tends to be fluid, to allow each individual to adapt for their liking. Traditionally the ceremony involves setting an intention, creating a sacred environment, and allowing a process to unfold around that intention.

Setting an intention is the base of the ceremony, the intention allows you to express yourself within the ceremony. In identifying your intention you can be as vague or specific as you please, some people intend to relieve tension or stress in their lives, while others want to call in love and support, there is no definition on what your intention can/can’t be, its purely personal desire.

Once you have identified your intention then you must create a safe and intimate place where you are comfortable, this is where the ceremony will take place. Unless you are a guest where others have already prepared the space. When creating the sacred environment it is important that you create a safe atmosphere, some people like to clear residual energy, and/or increase the vibration of the room with music, humming or chanting, however you create the sacred environment it is important to stunt your intuition and be creative. Preparing the ceremonial Cacao happens next and will be explained further below. Before drinking the Cacao it is important to give gratitude to the hands who prepared it and the soil which allowed it to grow, this is a simple form of respect for what the cacao is giving you. Then proceed to reaffirm intention by speaking to the cacao, the cacao is a connection facilitator and will aid you the transformational shift you may experience. Then continue to drink the Cacao, some people like to dance to music and create body movements for the rest of the ceremony however you can simply sit with the cacao and meditate. After the ceremony is over you may disassemble the sacred environment, to allow the space to return to its original function.

Harriet:

Introduction to the ceremony:

The ingredient cocoa is associated with universal love due to certain active ingredients that help release good emotions, cacao is considered a heart opener. It creates feelings of emotional intimacy and pleasure, it has been considered a luxurious delicacy, especially with the addition of sugar and spices. A cacao ceremony is an opportunity to connect to yourself, others, and to open your heart. A cacao ceremony is a very safe and intimate space. Traditionally when doing a cacao ceremony, the cacao is served with chilli and honey, but can also be combined it with other herbs or spices. You start off with mixing chilli with hot water and then adding in the cacao then honey, followed by your choice of herbs and spices. The ceremony usually ends with a dance, during which the cacao activates within the body and the heart. By attending a cacao ceremony, the cacao is meant to help relieve stress and depression. Alongside these, the high amount of nutrients in the cacao support and nourish the body, whilst also inducing a detoxifying effect on the liver and kidneys. The emotional impact that the cacao has on you is that your body can become flooded with the many emotions stored in the heart, either good or bad emotions.

Lilian:

Cacao (Theobroma cacao) is a sacred fruit tree that grows in the understory of mesoamerican rainforests. Cacao has a perpetual fruiting cycle, meaning it flowers and produces fruits continuously through the year resulting in a supply of cacao that is easily accessible to humans. They sprout from the trunks of trees as they grow they merge through a rainbow of colours greens, yellows and oranges, deep red and purple depending on the variety.

Cacao pods contain a white fleshy fruit surrounding rows of the cacao beans. A process of fermentation must occur in order for the beans to become edible. This is achieved by allowing the beans to sit out in the pulp for several days.

Cacao is extremely high in antioxidants which remove toxins from the body and is also contains a lot of magnesium. Magnesium is an element that many people in the modern world are deficient in. Magnesium is essential for cell function and health. It increases energy while also calming anxiety and relieving pain. Enzymes in cacao are also responsible for producing a spike in serotonin and dopamine, giving people a feeling of bliss, love and connection.

With such wonderful and important benefits it is no surprise that cacao has rooted itself deeply within human society. In the modern world this relationship is evident through the wide scale love and consumption of chocolate. However this availability is only achieved through the exploitation of local communities and land in order to produce profit.

For this reason it is very important that ceremonial cacao is sustainably and humanely sourced so that the flow of good energy from the plant remains pure.

From a plant medicine perspective cacao is a very kind and gentle medicine. Cacao grows plentifully, meaning there is enough to go around, it will not produce hallucinations but instead a gentle feeling of love and connection. This makes it a great ceremony for connecting larger groups of people.

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krisrampersad · 7 years

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My Discoverie Columbus Lost and Found from New World To Old LettersToLizzie Sneak Preview

Dear Lizzie,

I discovered Columbus when I was about four years old and then I lost him again to rediscover him one fine sunset, his parts cut up and scattered across my world and yours, the way he cut up our continent and our peoples that became Your Majesty’s Empire.

Early explorations

I still remember the expression on his face. Pa looks baffled. So far, he is able to answer all my questions that end-of-July morning - the kind of morning that begins with sunshine warming the weathered unvarnished wooden gallery, bathing it in soft light and lending a calm cosy to the holiday feel. But every farmer’s daughter knows – if she took the time from the more pressing global inquisitionings – a day like this could brew thunder and torrential rains by mid-afternoon.

I must have agitated him, this early morn. He asks me to bring him a cigarette – his brand, named after an avenue in the city - and a box of matches.

I hand him a Three-Plumes match from its yellow box, a product of Trinidad Match Limited since 1887, it reads. I could read. Before that it was just a yellow box with red markings, and the dark red scratch sides. Reading material was scarce in rural Trinidad so I had taken to reading anything I could find and that usually was the packaging of any item. I would later learn that 1887 was the year Parisiens began to lay the foundation for the Eiffel Tower; and that Britain passed the Act to unite Trinidad with Tobago as it celebrated the golden Jubilee of Queen Victoria, just like your recent jubilee celebrations, and ours, Liz.

Pa scratches the match against the side of the box like my sister would, some years later, do a scratch lottery. It flares over the edge of the cigarette and flickers out, leaving a light stream of smoke behind it. He put it to his lips, leans back, closes his eyes and draws hard on the tobacco that has soothed many a shamanistic and other agitated spirits for millennia. It has also attracted as gold many-a-pilferer, marauder and cutthroat pirate to our parts from yours, as you well know, Dear Liz.

It is rare discovery for me as a child - Pa at home at this time of a morning. He is usually long gone by the time we are up, usually awake from 2 am. We would know from his deep coughing, caused by a head cold he caught working as a forester in his younger days which would hasten his end of days. By peek of dawn he would have already left for the vegetable garden or to the market to sell its produce that was our main source of income.

Now, facing the onslaught of curiosity, he is perhaps wishing he had kept this routine and head out early as I bounce around him in the early morning trying to get answers for these enormously challenging thoughts of universal import that collide like meteors in my child’s mind.

“So how did Columbus discover Trinidad?” The question pops into my head and pops out of my mouth as questions tend to do from near-four year olds. I am conjuring up a pale man in fancy pants, frilly shirt and embroidered waistcoat with funny wavy white hair dripping down to his shoulders as I had seen in my sisters’ history book. Reading material was often limited to their text books and I would take sneak peaks, thumbing through them to see the pictures. They open-up the windows of my imagination.

In my child’s mind, Columbus is now unfurling - from over our island and pulling onto his ship - an enormous sheet bellowing out with the wind. I had watched many times as Ma or one of my sisters made our beds, shaking out a freshly washed bed sheet. It would bellow out, before settling on the bed. The process of covering and uncovering and surely discovering too, was a normal household routine.

Though he never complained nor showed annoyance, it is the kind of question that probably made Pa, the object of my incessant questioning, wish I was in that place where all precocious youngsters are sent so someone else would answer their impossible questions about how the world works - school. I am not yet enrolled in any of the illustrious British-styled public schools – the legacy of your Governor Lord Harris and subsequent governments, Lizzie - which were sure to offer the answers to these impertinent thoughts of an infant. The closest ones are just about a mile in any direction to one of which I was destined to walk to and from, sometimes barefooted, over the next seven years – tall punishment for a few questions – talk about how curiosity kills the cat, as schools kill curiosity!

Ma calls out to me. She ladles out boiling cocoa from a big iron pot resting on the mud fireside with a metal kalchul which she bought from Mawah in Princes Town. She would go to the town just to chat with Mawah’s mother, leaving me to wander around looking at all the curiosities in this shop that seems to have everything, including the traditional wooden kulcha, and flat wooden dablas used to turn roti on the chulha, dhal ghotnis of all sizes – wooden swizzle stick with zig-zag edges on its round base and the biggest enamel basins and iron pots one could imagine.

The utensils for its preparation might have evolved, but not centuries and several languages and cultural adaptations could alter cocoa, the pre-Ice Age plant, more than 21,000 years old, and its primordial connections as food of the gods across world cultures. Even European botanists could find no better substitute than to translate its value - Theobroma (Theo/god; broma/food) and the echo of its ancient MesoAmerican/Caribbean, pre Olmec, preMayan roots: kakaw with slight variations in inflections: Theobroma cacao. Today, its most common global identification as chocolate still echoes its ancient primordial resonance. Once Columbus helped Europe discover it, there was no turning back. Cocoa now covers some 17 million acres of global soil, with nearly 4 million tonnes produced every year. It has become the foundation of Swiss identity, and a catalyst for the centre of social interaction in kingdoms far and wide. A global strategy for the conservation and use of cacao genetic resources as the foundation for a sustainable cocoa economy now guides an International Cocoa Organisation, an international network of cocoa producers and International Cocoa Genome Sequencing Consortium who meet annually to upgrade strategy, redefine directions for the future of chocolate, its by-products and co-industries.

Though no longer a formal currency as it was used in mesoAmericans - about 100 beans could then get one a finely handwoven shawl - with increasing scientific evidence that it reduces high blood pressure and can positively impact cancer and cholesterol rates, I’m sure, Liz, that you concur with women the world over who testify that this remains one of god’s essential provisions of heaven on earth.

To the steaming cup of fresh cocoa, its oil already forming a film around the edges of the cup, Ma adds a touch of bliss. She tilts the condensed milk can into a bluey-green enamel cup, stirs it and hands it to me.

‘Careful, it hot!’ she warns, nodding in Pa’s direction. Ma is not one for much words.

I walk back to the gallery tentatively. The oil, temporarily disturbed, returns to curl around the edges of the cup. The aromatic steam of cinnamon, clove, bayleaf, nutmeg and cocoa drift out and up. You would agree, Dear Lizzie, in that moment, it is not difficult to understand why Europe turned half the world upside down, raided east and west, and went to war for the likes of this.

I hand the cup to Pa and run back into the kitchen. Ma hands me a smaller version of the same bluey-green enamel cup, with own serving of ‘cocoa tea’, though that in itself may violate indigeneous practice that reserved enjoyment of cocoa for ritual use only by men who fought nations for the privilege - the second of four Anglo-Dutch wars was fought over cocoa, in England’s favour, in the 1660s and on which the wealth of the likes of the Dutch East India Company was founded then trading its primary wealth in cocoa beans. As was most other pleasures of primitive planet-of-the-apes type cave-men, cocoa, too, was considered toxic for women and children.

Not so in our wooden dwelling. Ma had spent most of the night grinding the chulha-parched cocoa, adding cinnamon and bayleaf and grated nutmeg, Taking handfuls of the ground cocoa, moist with its own oils, between her palms, she had lovingly moulded them into oval shaped balls. They are already hardening this morning and by tomorrow, before boiling, we would have to grate it on the grater Pa made from pounding holes closely together with a nail onto a piece of galvanise, bending it into a semicircle, and nailing its edges against a short, flat piece of wood.

The still lingering aromas of last night’s cocoa production hang on the wooden floors and walls of the entire house and spill out to envelope the village in the way the porridge from The Magic Porridge Pot had crept out of the house in that Enid Blyton book I would later read.

Pa didn’t seem to think I am violating any gender taboos, either, when I reappear with my own cup of steaming cocoa, which seems to me, on hindsight, a very patriotically appropriate way to commemorate one of the last Discovery holiday days Trinidad and Tobago would know. Indigeneous to Trinidad, the Trinitario is one of the world’s three main varieties of cocoa – a unique offspring of our geo-botanical connections with the South American mainland as a more resilient, higher yielding and natural hybrid of the two others – Forastero and Criolla. For Your Majesty’s information, our cocoa might be old world Americas, but had produced another New World hybrid - the cocoa panyols, an ethnic group of intergenetic mixes between native peoples and other migrant streams who joined them here – Your Majesty’s people, Europeans, Africans, Indians and others.

On this July 31 morn both Pa and I are unaware that it would be some years yet before Apple computer technologies would name its application programme interface (API), cocoa.

The steam from his cup of hybrid cocoa is beginning to subside. Pa takes a sip, inhaling deeply its aroma. I have never seen him this relaxed.

“Why he not up yet? Wake him?” I ask Pa, nodding in the direction of my brother’s room, hoping for chance at an excursion to visit some other part of Trinidad on this holiday. As my brothers and sisters grew older, our wooden house was expanded over the years: a room added here, a corner boarded in there, and this was a new room my brothers and his friends added at the end of the gallery.

Pa’s answer triggers the steam of questions from my condensed milk-sweetened, cocoa-lubricated tongue.

As he had every Sunday afternoon, my brother had routinely polished the silver angel with its transparent plastic pink-tipped wings perched on the bonnet of his baby blue Cortina taxi the day earlier, before he also lathered the entire car, and himself, to be covered in white soap suds. Sometimes he would cover his whole face and head in suds and try to scare us. He succeeded once when he sneaked up on me. I screamed so loudly, that I stumbled over a root of the enormous chenette tree in our yard in trying to run away from him as he looked like a jab jab from a Carnival band.

Native to our part of the world, the chenette tree, like cocoa, also predates Columbus by thousands of years, and its fruit is known in various pronunciations as genip across South Central America and the Caribbean. The more melodramatic injections into its nomenclature occurred when European botanists wrapped their tongue around its sticky pulp. Discovered for Europe in Jamaica and named by Patrick Brown as he had 103 other genera in the mid-1700s, Brown, an Irish botanist who worked as a doctor across the West Indies also produced A Civil and Natural History of Jamaica until our oh-so-inhospitable-to-Europeans clime sent him a-packing as it has a few others, like the man who invented television whom we will discover later. Brown gave chenette its botanical name, Melioccus bijugatus which was subsequently described and placed in its soapy genus group by Dutch-born Austrian, Nikolaus Joseph von Jacquin who has an orchid named after him; had Mozart teach music to his children and named a couple of his pieces after them, and in honour of whose work in the Caribbean, Austria in 2011 issued a special commemorative silver coin issue.

The Spanish dubbed it limoncillo/mamoncillo in some of their territories. Contented to translate rather than rename, the English called it Spanish lime another characteristic misnomer as it is, Liz, most unlike a lime or lemon, as an apple is from an orange. I believe this is the origin of the application of the Trini word ‘lime/liming’ as a pasttime of ‘doing nothing’ or hanging out with friends. The towering chenette tree in our yard was a village icon. A piece of wood nailed to its trunk formed a bench and under its soothing cool became the district’s social hub – for liming, all fours card games and even serious meetings; informal craft groups; Hindi, Bhajan singing and other classes, and village events planning – all right in our front yard. That might be also the original meaning of the word community leadership, until it was endowed with other connotations decades later.

I did not know any of that technical stuff, then, nor that chenette was a fairly substantive source of calcium, carotene and phosphorous, when as children we sucked the pulp or roasted the seeds, and so indelibly stained our clothes much to Ma’s displeasure. We noticed too, that its stickiness restricted our tongues, but that it also had a constipation effect, also to Ma’s displeasure. She would have to spend sleepless nights as we complained of stomach pains from having gorged too much, though she made sure she had adequate supplies of seina leaves to administer when necessary to relieve constipation. I hear on the grapevine, Liz, that roasted chenette seeds are now gaining currency as a treatment for diarrhoea.

Loved and hated, the tree contributed substantially to our chores as we had to daily sweep up masses of its constantly shedding leaves. Our water copper, used to boil sugar at one time in the once thriving sugar industries, but now serving as our fresh water reservoir, had to be protected from its droppings as it sat directly under the tree. My younger brother and I would splash around in its massive bowl on weekends before emptying it, scrubbing off any moss that had accumulated around its edges and then refilled it with fresh water and covered it with galvanise.

“Why he not up yet,” I ask again, growing impatient as the beautiful day seem to be slipping away.

I am curious as to why my brother is not stirring in the room in the gallery. He is usually up and out while it was still dark, in the predawn, to take villagers in his Cortina to their workplaces in ‘town’, Princes Town - named, Lizzie, as you know, for your grandpa George V and grand uncle Edward after they visited as princely lads. It was known as Kairi to the native peoples who find Columbuscrawling up our coast, as indeed was the entire island, when Columbus was doing his discovering, until Spanish Catholic missionaries gathered them around a church and school and renamed it Mission. At the time of your grandsire’s visit, Lizzie, it was then little more than a few scattered shacks with the church and school set up by Spanish Catholics. A later school and church, set up by missionaries from your then North American colony – Canada - will conjure up the old name, Iere, but shortly after their visit, it was proclaimed Princes Town, a name it still holds.

It must please Your Majesty to know that the two poui trees the Princes planted in the yard of the Church of England in the town also still stand, 134 years later. So far they are winning the battle to resist the giant tropical termites whose Queen, leading her colony of nymphs and soldiers, are constantly waging war, threatening to make a meal of the princely pouis.

Princes Town itself has grown into its name, and out of it too – maybe ready for city status even, if the powers that be would take note - as it is now aggressively edging off what used to be the lush tropical rain forests described by your writer-traveller, Charles Kingsley who, At Last, made it here for A Christmas in the West Indies in the latter half of the 1800s. It must have been his writings that brought your grandsires here; and certainly too, geological reports of the 1850s eruption of the mud volcano at what the Spanish had labelled Devil’s Woodyard that had also attracted Kingsley. The indigeneous people’s had long worshipped at it for its connections with the mysterious underworld that provided the trees, fruits and roots that nourished them. The boggy soil and forested district did not deter Kingsley continuing the journey to Devil’s Woodyard, but your grandsires were waylaid by the pomp of planting of the pouis, as you may know since it is part of the Royal lore.

Princes Town now continues to encroach on the once-canefields that provided the raw materials for the sugar, molasses and rum factories that augmented British waistlines and coffers. You may want to know, Lizzie, that this town, named for your grandsires, has done the empire proud, with reputedly the highest numbers of drinkers in the country – one of your Empire’s enduring legacies in these parts from the practice of paying estate workers near rumshops - but that’s for another letter, to come.

But it was not rum in my Pa’s cup this July morn. I’ve never known him to be excessive with the bottle, but he didn’t abstain either. He is drawing patience from the aromatic, freshly brewed cocoa in the enamel cups Ma bought from the lady in the store crammed with enamel and other household paraphernalia in Princes Town. Ma and the lady would stand for hours chatting away in Bhojpuri while I wander around the overstocked shop.

Though they never spoke the Trinidad-adapted Indian language, nor Hindi, to us, both Pa and Ma could read and write Hindi. They could both read and write only a smattering of English and by that were defined as illiterate. So this conversation on this morning about our Discovery with my Pa is in your mother tongue, Liz; which Pa and Ma had adopted for us, though it was not their mother tongue, in which, if I may humbly point out, Your Majesty, versed as you are in one of some of the European languages, might yourself be considered illiterate.

The oil from the cocoa hangs on to the top of Pa’s lips, forming an artificial moustache on his hairless face and head. It made him look funny and a laugh is trying to force its way through the many serious questions on my lips. I held it back - the laugh; it is the questions I can’t stem from pouring out.

I have never known Pa to have hair on his face, nor head either. The baldness makes him look stern at times. Villagers call him The Sheriff and sometimes I knew why. His grey eyes would blaze right through you when his lips tremble and his voice raise in anger. In those times I know not to ask the questions about how the world works that popped into my head and onto my tongue as somethings more perplexing must be troubling him. Like how he would feed his family because someone had crept into the garden that night and stole all the crops he had nurtured over the last months which he hoped to sell so we could have what household things we need. I’d bite my lip to keep the thoughts in, then.

Not now. This mild morning, sipping his home-made cocoa, he is as mellow as the Eastern spices in it.

“He not going to work because it is a holiday today,” he is answering my question about my brother’s late-sleeping, while I try to suppress my giggle over the milk-moustache over his upper lip. An unusual quiet hang over the village, serene, without the routine morning bustle of people getting ready of school, for work. Few others are stirring, taking advantage of this ‘holiday’. My mind is on high drive.

“What holiday?” I ask, perked.

“Discovery Day.” He even seems a bit happy, then, to be home to sagely field the curiosity of his youngest daughter; you will understand anew, Liz, as you have a couple lil great grand royal ones around that age now added to your household.

“What is Discovery Day?” The questions keep popping out of my head, spilling onto my tongue and out of my mouth, even before I know they are there.

“It is the day Christopher Columbus discovered Trinidad.” Pa had never gone to one of the British-type schools but he always knows all the answers, it seems. And though he could not read any of the storybooks, which are my presents on birthday and Christmas, he could talk about any topic under the sun, I thought, and he could recite the whole Ramayan in its strange Sanskrit or Hindi text and explain the strange parables in the lines as villagers often called on him to do. And he could study any Whe Whe chart with their strange Chinamen faces and letters and tell what number would play at the man they called ‘the banker’ who functions from a secret place because Whe Whe is illegal and police is always searching for the law-breakers like him.

Pa was no longer with us in the mid-90s when the post-Independent Trinidad and Government introduced a legal machine-driven version of the game which licence operator through a selective process. The traditional version, still illegal, has remained popular; the official version has the audacity to often complained that it takes about fifty million $TT (five million Great Britain Pounds) away from the State every year! Maybe if he was still around with the million-dollar jackpots we could win a million or two; or I could have won him a million or two. Here’s how.

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Pa liked to bet on my dreams. He said I had ‘straight dreams’ and would even send me to sleep in mid-afternoon so I could tell him what I dream for the evening betting session, as the Whe Whe banker ‘opened the bank’ morning and evening. As he didn’t scoff at whatever my overactive imagination churned up in my dreams, he made me confident of dreaming. I guess he neverthought I would make a career of this dreaming thing. He would ask me for a number to bet on and would always place a bet on my choice saying I gave him straight wins. That made me warm inside, like freshly boiled cocoa tea sweetened with condensed milk. When I helped him win a bet he would give me a five-cent coin; or if it was a big win, a shilling, which I popped into the wooden piggy bank that did not look much like a pig. He had made it for me with the small slit at the top to throw in the coin and a wedge at the bottom that twisted out to let the coins drop out. With those savings, I could buy myself whatever I wanted for Christmas or anytime, no questions asked. As I began to read, ‘anything’ was almost invariably story books, of course, like The Magic Porridge Pot. Even before starting school, I was already an avid listener to my sisters reading to me, and to unending epic romances Pa would roll out night after night, mostly from some secret store in his imagination that none of us can remember, though it was a childhood experience that none of us can forget.

I guess he thinks that his last answer, ‘Discovery Day’, would quell my questionings. He lights another Broadway. I know it as his favourite brand because he would send my brother or sisters, and me when he thought I was old enough to walk the road alone, to Ganesh, the village shopkeeper, to buy. On days when market sales were good he would buy a whole carton. We would know to ask for DuMaurier, instead, only when Braodway was out of stock because the sales van only came into the village once a week.

Though smoking tobacco seems now to be more identified with the Frenchman, Jean Nicot de Villemain, (hence nicotine) who took it to the French court in the mid 1500’s after Columbus introduced it to Europe following his discovering it on his first voyage in the region the natives called Haiti, but which Columbus called Hispaniola, my father was participating in a 7000-year old kingly shamanistic tradition of the Caribbean and the Americas - a tradition now practiced by nearly two billion people across the globe, despite an intensive and powerful anti-smoking lobby. One can sniff new tensions in the air as recent research and development suggests smoking as a potential cure for high blood pressure, asthma and tuberculosis. A new odourless, tasteless white protein extract from its leaves promises to be every masterchef’s dream ingredient as a salt-free, fat- and cholesterol-free low-calorie substitute for mayonnaise and whipped cream and can take on the flavour and texture of several foods and beverages.

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Oblivious to all of that, engrossed in inhaling, Pa is unaware that smoking tobacco was considered - by the people who first inhabited our soil before Columbus and his bunch decimated them - a divine gift. They believed its exhaled smoke carried one's thoughts and prayers to heaven. Pa looks the part, shamanistic, dreaming and relaxed as if communing with some higher authority as he ease back on the wooden bench he had made with his saw, chisel and smoothing plane. I had gathered up the chippings that fell of the plane and put them in the fowl coub, as we called it, behind the house. My fowl pet had just had chicks – eight little yellow delights that I would feed on scraps of left over roti and rice while talking to them about the unfolding mysteries of the universe. I had a pet goat too, that I untied and took to graze on roadside grasses on evenings. There was much to do, but first I had to finish with this inquisition.

I absorb his answer: ‘Today, Discovery Day, was the day Christopher Columbus discovered Trinidad.’ Something did not fit there. My chick’s mind isn’t sure what it is. I know Christopher Columbus from the picture with the three triangle ships in my sister’s school book. Once, when I am visiting some relatives, one of their children had a Ladybird book about Columbus. He is in fancy pants and long shoulder long white ‘hair’ which I would later learn was a wig that fancy Europeans and massa-like Trini people in courts and the Parliament like to wear. In the picture book, Columbus’ shirt is bellowing in the wind. He looks soft and effeminate as European men in their garb of that era. His three ships of varying sizes are on the sea behind him. Black haired, wide-eyed, brown people are peering at him from the bushes. Maybe it is they who discovered him; not he discovered them. That’s how thought pop into my head and out of my mouth.

“So how Christopher Columbus discover Trinidad?”

My question brings Pa back from where he had gone with the warm cocoa inside him and the cigarette already nearly half done.

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He looks at me. “You would know all about that when you start school.” It did not cross my mind that he did not have an answer and that the question was baffling many others more than my own child’s mind.

Pa calls out to Ma. “You ready?” That is his cue for her to accompany him to the garden – having for the morning, already finished washing the clothes of all of us, prepared breakfast and made lunch too, cleaned the house and washed the dishes.

My rare morning discovering our Discovery with my Pa at home is over. I scramble up to accompany them to the garden, not waiting to be asked; secretly hoping that might get some more answers.

The giant bedsheet bellowing out from over the island and collapsing on Columbus’ ship settle in my mind’s eye, before which also swirls experiences of cocoa, chenette, and tobacco, all of which predated Columbus’ discoverings, and the eastern spices and we who came thereafter.

When the sun rose that July 31, it was only the dawn to a near lifelong quest for my holy grail – knowledge of it all, and uncovering the puzzles of the discovery of Trinidad that was before Columbus discovered then. It has taken me to many parts and through many sunsets.

Even though Discovery Day has been wiped off the calendar, he still haunts the landscape, and is stamped on national emblems inspiring the false knowledge that marked his own Discoverie, and mine.

One fine sunset, then another, then another, I gathered and pieced together the skeletal knowledge in the bones he had scattered all over the Caribbean from Puerto Rico through Cuba, Santo Domingo, across Jamaica and your colonial archipelago to Trinidad, from Mexico to Argentina, and the Americas and across in Europe through Barcelona and Seville and Italy, Portugal, and Spain, as discovered, too, Columbus’ own bones. Scattered in pieces and fragments in which he cut up our land and our history and our Discovery in the blood soaked soil still violently echoing in the bones of ghosts in their sleep-walking dreaming state they tell one story. But for me gathering the pieces, like our collective story, they spoke to me of the yet undiscovered El Dorado, at treasure trove of buried knowledge echoing down the ages even now, through little known corridors and crannies, the knowledge bridge from Columbus to us that can soothe and calm like cocoa balm when cocoa is no longer god, nor king, but you still a Queen, Your Majesty, Dear Lizzie.

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