[Sca-cooks] Pre-Columbian Foods

[Huette von Ahrens]

According to the Oxford Companion to Food,
amaranth is a large group of plants of which many
provide edible green leaves and some provide, or
formerly provided, grain.  They occur all around
the world, mostly in the tropics.  Many of the
species are primarily used as ornamental plants 
in gardens, but the edible ones alone are a
bewildering array, especially in Latin America,
Southeast Asia, and West Africa ...

Huette


--- Christine Seelye-King
<kingstaste at mindspring.com> wrote:
> 
> Alegria is an amaranth candy.  The amaranth is
> new world, but I doubt
> it would be made into candy.  I have not found
> any references to
> sugar used before Columbus, except for maple
> syrup.
> 
> 
> This is very interesting, I'd never heard of
> Alegria before (except as a
> Circe du Soliel performance) and since I have a
>  bunch of amananth on hand I
> looked it up.  This website:
> http://www.dolfzine.com/page401.htm describes
> both the popping technique and a recipe for
> Alegria.
> On a couple of sites (here's another one:
> http://chetday.com/amaranth.html)
> they describe a product made for 'communion' by
> the Aztecs as mixing popped
> amaranth with the sacrificial human's blood
> (one site says with honey -
> maybe wild wasp honey since it is a religious
> food?) and eating it as part
> of the ceremony.  They both say the Spaniards
> were so appalled that they
> banned the use of amaranth totally.
> I'm short of sacrificial victims, but I do have
> lots of amaranth handy (and
> no Spaniards),
> hmm, I may be popping little grains this
> afternoon...
> Christianna
> 
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=====
Blessed are they who can laugh at themselves for they 
shall never cease to be amused.

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