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Home › Articles › Food A-Z › Chocolate, Wine and Romance

Chocolate, Wine and Romance

Good for You and Your Love Life

By Kelly Burgess

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Romancing the Family

As nice as it is to have some romantic time with your partner, many relationships involve children as well. Usually, it's an easy food to prepare that everyone likes or order a pizza if the day has been hectic. Pizza has both tomato sauce (lycopene) and cheese (calcium), so it's not all bad. Like Dr. Hart says, eat it in moderation.

Webb thinks this type of loving celebration is an excellent example for children. "I believe that most people are not raised to be romantic adults," she says. "Show your children how to express love and enjoy life by being romantic. Nothing adds security to your children like being a loving couple."

Also, as Webb points out, romance is deepened by respect and it will benefit you, your relationship and be a good example to your children if you treat your partner with loving respect every day of the year. "It's how you treat your partner all through the year that is the most important thing in your relationship; this goes for both men and women," she says. "Don't wait for one day a year to express romance in your life. It's easy; make it a daily habit. And if you aren't one for flowery speech, let candies, cards and actions speak for you."

Taking that advice may help more than anything else to keep you healthy. After all, numerous studies have shown that people in good marriages tend to live longer than their unmarried counterparts. So eat in moderation, but don't be afraid to love to excess.

Chocolate's Sweet History
By Donna Smith


Chocolate is inextricably linked to romance, and that seems only fitting since it was a woman who played a key role in bringing chocolate to the masses.

Gail Robinson, of Evanston, Ill., is an entrepreneur and purveyor of gourmet chocolate. When she opened her chocolate shop, Marly Chocolates, in 2002, she says she wanted to honor those who had made chocolate possible. "The name Marly Chocolates is a journey into the history of chocolate," says Robinson. "My shop is dedicated to those who helped to move the cocoa bean from its original place in Mexico to Europe."

As Robinson tells it, the King of Spain sent Cortez to Mexico where he first tasted the beverage that Montezuma is said to have been addicted to. The Aztecs pressed the bean and added spices to the resultant liquid. Supposedly, Montezuma drank 40 to 50 cups per day. Although, since it was considered an aphrodisiac and the Montezuma did have a harem, perhaps it was more than just an addiction.

When Cortez brought the cocoa bean back to Spain in the 1500s, the Spanish got the idea of sweetening the beverage. Spain then kept the cocoa bean a secret for 150 years, with the monks processing it only for the nobility.

Then, in the 1660s, the Queen of France decided that France and Spain, which had been at war for 25 years, needed to find peace and become partners. She proposed a marriage of her son, Louis XIV, to Marie Therese, a princess of Spain. Along with great wealth and a peace treaty, Marie brought chocolate to France. She and her new husband planted cocoa trees on the French island of Martinique, and it became a large producer of cocoa beans.

As for the name Marly, Robinson says that Louis XIV built a chateau in the French town of Marly to get away when he needed privacy. Apparently, although he normally lived in the palace of Versailles, it was a public place and he couldn't even sit down for a meal without being observed by his subjects.

For the next 100 years Europeans continued to refine the product of the cocoa bean, and eventually machinery was developed to separate the butter from the cocoa, which led to the creation of solid milk chocolate. About 100 years after that, chocolate finally came to America.


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