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egin to give off oil. If they are removed from<br />
the heat before then,<br />
they will make a discolored and<br />
disagreeable-looking chocolate, which<br />
will be indigestible besides. On the other<br />
hand, if they are left on<br />
the heat too long, most of the beans will be<br />
burned, which will make<br />
the chocolate bitter and acrid.<br />
Tita extracted just half a teaspoon of this oil<br />
to mix with sweet<br />
almond oil for an excellent lip ointment. Her<br />
lips always chapped<br />
every winter, no matter what precautions she<br />
took. When she was a<br />
child, this caused her considerable<br />
discomfort1 whenever she laughed<br />
the fleshy part of her lips would crack open<br />
and bleed, producing a<br />
sharp pain. In time she grew resigned to<br />
this.<br />
Now that she didn't have a lot of reasons to<br />
laugh, it no longer<br />
concerned her. She could wait patiently for<br />
spring for the cracks to<br />
disappear. The only reason she was making<br />
the pomade was that some<br />
guests were coming to the house tonight to<br />
share the Kings' Day<br />
bread.<br />
It was for vanity that she wanted her lips to<br />
look soft and shiny for<br />
the party, not because she expected to laugh<br />
very much. The suspicion<br />
that she was pregnant hardly brought a laugh<br />
to her lips!<br />
This possibility had not occurred to her as<br />
she consummated her love<br />
with Pedro. She still hadn't told him. She<br />
planned to do so tonight,<br />
but she didn't know how. What would<br />
Pedro's reaction be?<br />
And the solution to this huge problem? She<br />
had no idea.<br />
She would rather not torment herself, would<br />
rather turn her mind toward<br />
more trivial matters like the preparation of a<br />
good lip balm.<br />
For that there's nothing like cocoa butter.<br />
But before starting to<br />
prepare it, she had to have the chocolate<br />
ready.<br />
When the cocoa beans are done being<br />
toasted, as described above, they<br />
are cleaned using a hair sieve to separate<br />
the hull from the bean.<br />
Beneath the metate in which the chocolate is<br />
to be ground place a flat<br />
pan containing a hot fire1 once the stone is<br />
warm, begin grinding the<br />
chocolate. Mix the chocolate with the sugar,<br />
pounding it with a mallet<br />
and grinding the two together. Then divide<br />
the mixture into chunks.<br />
The chunks are shaped by hand into tablets,<br />
square or round, according<br />
to your preference, and set out to air. The<br />
dividing points can be<br />
marked with the tip of a knife if you wish.<br />
While Tita was forming the squares, she<br />
mourned for the Three Kings'<br />
days of her childhood, when she didn't have<br />
such serious problems. Her<br />
biggest worry then was that the Magi never<br />
brought her what she asked<br />
for, but instead what Mama Elena thought<br />
best for her.<br />
It was some years before she learned the<br />
reason she had received the<br />
longed-for gift on one occasion1 Nancha had<br />
saved up her wages for a
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