A World in a Word

The word “salad” probably triggers thoughts of lettuce for most people, right next to the adjective “boring.”

But I’ll let you in on one of salad’s simple secrets: Salad is one of the most versatile dishes you can make. The possible combinations of ingredients are so numerous that you could serve two or three salads at one meal and not repeat a major ingredient! (Try it!)

With dozens of vegetables, dozens of fruits, many kinds of nuts, beans, grains, cheese, and even meats to choose from, the options are limited only by your imagination and what’s available. Add the range of choices in dressings and seasonings and you can see that there’s a whole world of flavor combination’s waiting to be explored.

And with the vitamins and minerals of organic foods, unprocessed oils, and quality vinegar or lemon juice, salads pack a major nutritional punch.

What Is a Salad, Anyway?

To my mind, the main feature of a salad is its being served cold. It doesn’t have to be raw; it doesn’t have to be dressed; but it should be cold. It should also have things that need to be chewed (otherwise it’s soup). That’s about it.

So if you’ve been stuck in the lettuce and tomato rut (with maybe the occasional cucumber thrown in), consider the wide range of foods that can pull you out called “salad.”

I mean, think about some of the more unusual salads you may have heard of or tried: Waldorf Salad (apples and raisins), chef’s salad (cold cuts added), potato salad (not a leaf of lettuce in sight!), Mexican salad (corn and peppers), gazpacho (tomato-based chopped salad), spinach salad (with bacon and walnuts), and more…some yet to be named or even invented!

Where Salads Reign

What if instead of the standard meat-potato-vegetable dinner, you served a meal with a small portion of cooked food and two or three cold salads? Revolutionary, I know. Maybe even un-American. But one of the things that makes the Standard American Diet so S.A.D. is its reliance on cooked (and even overcooked) foods.

Our national standards require many more servings of vegetables than most of us get. The first step to eating more vegetables and fruits may be to stop thinking “cooked” and start thinking “salads.” Raw vegetables are good on so many levels, not the least of which is: It’s hard to get fat on vegetables…but it’s easy to get healthier!

So get out those recipe cards and shopping lists and make “salad” one of your favorite meal-planning concepts. Salad’s simple secrets will reward your body well.

The earliest chocolate beverages were a frothy, bitter drink that was made by the Mayans. They grew cacao beans in their backyard. In addition to everyday use, there is also an indication the Mayans used the drink for ceremonial purposes. Throughout pre-Columbian Mesoamerica the cacao beans were traded as a luxury food item and sometimes even used as currency. Records indicate that Aztecs used cacao beans to trade. A turkey was priced at one hundred beans and an avocado at three beans. The beans were also used to pay tribute to the Aztecs in the regions they conquered.

It was only by the 16th century, with the Spanish conquest of the Aztecs and the Americans, that the cacao beans and chocolate were imported to Europe. Before then Europeans had been completely unaware of it. It was brought into Spain by the Conquistadors and quickly became a favorite beverage at the Spanish court. Within a century it had spread throughout Europe and became highly popular. Demand for cacao beans increased. Chocolate was in such high demand that Spanish armies enslaved the Mesoamericans in order to mass-produce cacao. But even with the mass production chocolate was still expensive. Only European nobility and the rich could afford it.

The first European chocolate house opened its doors in London in 1657 making chocolate more accessible and popular in England. Still, it was not exactly as we know chocolate today. The first milk chocolate drink was developed by an Irish physician named Hans Sloane in Jamaica in 1689. It was originally intended for use in apothecaries. In 1897 the formula was eventually sold to the Cadbury brothers.

The emergence of modern chocolate only occurred with the arrival of the Industrial Revolution. Sweetened, tasty chocolate bars came into existence with an invention from a Dutch family that allowed for the production of chocolate bars. Mechanical mills were built to churn out cocoa butter helping to create hard chocolate. It could be poured into different forms and molds to create interesting and unique chocolate shapes once hardened.

These mills originated in the 1700′s but were only put to greater use when the Industrial Revolution came along. With new technology and types of machinery being produced and with higher yields of cacao beans from plantations the business of making chocolate started booming and chocolate as we know it today was born. Chocolate is a much loved treat and its popularity never seems to wane. Whether chocolate is drunk as hot cocoa or enjoyed as a bar it remains the king of confection for most.

The coffee plant:

The coffee you drink comes from what are commonly referred to as beans and the beans come from plants. There is more than one type of plant, though. In fact, coffee is actually a word that refers to an entire genus of plants that are made up of nearly a hundred individual plant species. Small trees or shrubs, originally native to tropical parts of Asia and Africa, some of the plants are the source of the seeds used to make the drink.

Also spelled Coffea, the species of this genus that produces the best quality coffee beans is called Coffea arabica. The quality that coffee is most famous for, caffeine, is actually used as these plants’ defense against wild animals. Caffeine is a natural toxin that would harm feeding animals.

The word coffee:

The word coffee was popularized in the English language at some point in the seventeenth century. There are, however, traces of the word as early as the century prior. It came to the English language through one language that had already taken it from another.

As far back as can be traced, the word originates from one of two Arabic terms. One of them is qahwat al-bunn, which means wine of the bean, and the other is a geographic area known as Kaffa. At some point this gave origin to the Turkish word kahve, which was later translated into English as the word we use today.

Coffee as a drink:

No one really knows how Coffea plants wound up being turned into a drink. There are many legends and stories that try to explain it but the truth will likely never be known. What is knows is that the drink has existed since at least the ninth century of the Common Era, but is sometimes dated back to as early as the fifth century.

The drink is made through what is now a long and heavily specialized process of cultivation, harvesting, processing and preparation. In almost all cases, seeds are actually handpicked and then put through a few normally low tech treatments. Huge industrial machines then roast the seeds until they resemble the beans most of us are familiar with. The actual drink is created by filtering boiling water through the ground beans. Many different steps can be taken, or altered, to create a wide variety of similar beverages.

Types of drinks:

Coffee itself can take several different forms. One popular variant is espresso, a highly concentrated version of coffee that is served as a shot. Cappuccino is another famous form of the drink, which is basically one part espresso and one part milk. Beyond that are countless commercialized forms of the drink designed to make it more popular amongst consumers. These include things ranging from iced coffee to instant coffee. Of course, everyone has their favorite.