Today is Chocolate Milk Day. A day for all of us to make like ancient Olmecs and Mayans and drink some chocolate.
Those ancient cultures knew what it was about. The Olmecs started making a chocolate drink for special occasions around 1900 B.C. The Mayans continued the idea. But since they didn’t have a lot of sugar around, I’m not sure what it would taste like.
But the idea of mixing chocolate with milk came to us not from these ancient people, but from the combination of two islands… Jamaica and Ireland. Apparently, an Irish doctor, Hans Sloane, who was stationed in Jamaica was given a local drink made from chocolate and water. He found it way too bitter, so came up with the idea of mixing it with milk. Not only did it taste better, but he thought it was probably good for you because of the calcium and protein in the milk. This was around 1689 that he figured all this out. And he brought his idea back to England when he returned.
A couple hundred years later, the Van Houten company of Amsterdam came up with a process to turn chocolate into powder so the stuff could be mixed up easier.
Now we are able to simply purchase it from the grocery store. As many people know, this fine elixir comes directly to us from brown cows. Or there are about thirty percent of people who believe that. But the chocolate milk you buy is a bit different from the type you mix yourself using syrup or powder.
Not that I drink much of it. I am too old for such things. Although we do occasionally buy it for the grandchildren and I may accidentally consume some of it from time to time.
Store bought chocolate milk was never a big thing when I was younger. But there was usually a container of powder to be mixed with milk somewhere in the house.
In rating the taste of such beverages, I have to say I generally rated the powder a bit above the syrup. I’m not sure why. But the store bought stuff was always my favourite. Possibly because I didn’t get it very often.
But hot or cold, chocolate milk is still a fine beverage. And it deserves to be celebrated.
