*drools*

Mmm... Godiva...

My art teacher gets migraines from chocolate, cheese, and wine. I asked her what the point of living was if she can eat chocolate... She said it's not so bad... but considering my after-school snack was a chocolate donut, hot chocolate, and a hershey bar... I think I'd have trouble giving it up completely.

Makes me wonder if Middle Earth had peanut butter...

Fea

Mm...you almost can't have chocolate w/o peanut butter.... [img]smilies/wink.gif[/img] [img]smilies/tongue.gif[/img]

Being a fan of the Middle-Earth Gardener, and seeing as how both chocolate and peanuts come from plants, why not? [img]smilies/wink.gif[/img]

Ithaeliel is right. There couldn't have been chocolate in Middle-Earth at that "time" because it came from south America. I don't know the story exactly, but I hear that inside a coco pod(including the beans and such) the beans are covered in a sticky sweet syrup. The story I heard said something about the natives only eating the sweet sticky stuff cause it was tasty, and leaving the coco beans for medicine or something. I hope you all know that coco beans by themselves taste terrible. So I guess one day, a native was collecting coco pods when one was crushed(don't ask how, I don't know) and the beans were mixed with the syrup. And that's how the first chocolate was invented, or so I hear. I don't think that chocolate would have been introduced to Europe or any of the eastern Hemisphere until the Spanish landed in South America in the 1400's. Sorry everybody who would have loved there to be chocolate in ME, you'll just have to stick to bacon. Mmmmm, bacon.

It's been said before on this thread, but potatoes and tobacco (ie pipeweed) came from the Americas too (darn you Americans for my addiction [img]smilies/wink.gif[/img] ). Given that it is a fantasy world, I see no reason why they should not also have had chocolate (or coco beans at least).

There is Carob.

Carob is a plant that grows in the Mediterranian area which produces little brown beans. Some types of Chocolate are made from Carob instead of Cocoa beans. The climate in places like Ithilien was probably warm enough to grow things like coffee, oranges, and carob.

Sorry to drag things up in a spirit of pedantry, but I have to quibble with this claim in an otherwise most learned and informative post. According to some wise food historians I recently had the honour of hobnobbing with, the idea that mediaeval food was heavily spiced is actually erroneous. Spices were extremely expensive and thus used with delicacy and caution.

And yes, if M-E had pipeweed and taters, I see no issue with chocolate. They certainly had stuff to sweeten it with - remember that honeycomb at Tom Bombadil's, and the honeycakes of the Beornings...

Frodo Baggins
Ghost Prince of Cardolan

Mr. Frodo??? [img]smilies/eek.gif[/img] [img]smilies/eek.gif[/img]

I have no issue with chocolate, either. It was a plant, and there were certainly plants in ME, or they wouldn't have needed Gardeners! [img]smilies/wink.gif[/img]