Cacao

A friend recently returned from a trip to the Honduras and brought me great photos of the cacao plant and fruit. We've traveled together in the past and she knows what interests me (she brought me chiltepin peppers from NW Mexico). What she didn't remember was that we had seen cacao pods in Guatemala near Coban, but that's okay, these pictures are fantastic. From my bookshelves, I have the following books on cacao:

Coe, Sophie D. America's first cuisines. University of Texas Press, 1994.

Coe, Sophie D. and Michael D. Coe. The true history of chocolate. 2nd edition. Thames and Hudson, 2007.

Diccionario enciclopedico de gastronomia mexicana. 6. burrito-calabacitas con queso. Clio, 200-?

Young, Allen M. The chocolate tree : a natural history of cacao. Rev. and expanded ed. University Press of Florida, 2007.

My apologies for not putting citations in the correct format, will update and correct later.

Maguey and Los Otomies

I'm reading a report from the Washington State University Laboratory of Anthropology written in 1969. The title is: Los Otomies : papers from the Ixmiquilpan Field School / edited by H. Russell Bernard. It is the Laboratory's Report of Investigations ; no. 46. I upgraded the cataloging of this report while working as a Washington State Library cataloger so I knew of its existence and knew that I would find it interesting to read. The report contains papers by anthropology students who attended the WSU Field School in Ethnology and Linguistics where they studied the culture of the Otomi people, an indigenous group who live in the state of Hidalgo, Mexico. I was interested because of the descriptions of agriculture as well as the descriptions of the diet of this group.

One of the papers entitled San Andres : land, produce, and power in an Otomi village / by Daniel Early is especially informative with illustrations of farm equipment, plates which further illustrate techniques and demonstrations of tools developed for various agricultural and harvest needs. There is also a good description on how Maguey (agave) is grown, the use of the leaves for fiber, how agua miel is harvested and how pulque is made from agua miel. I found the paper fascinating and thought of other books that I have in my own library that provide more information on Maguey. Now I am looking at a map of Mexico and comparing it to the areas of Mexico written about in the series Cocina indigena y popular (series published by Consejo Nacional para la Cultura y las Artes). If I do not have the book from that series about that area I will try to find one that covers the land closest to or including the Otomies' land. I also have Tequila : a natural and cultural history / by Ana Guadalupe Valenzuela-Zapata and Gary Paul Nabhan. I will be re-reading sections looking for more information on the agriculture of Maguey and of this area.

Sounds like a good project to start on, researching traditional agriculture and uses of Maguey. I will report back when I have more information.