subgenius wrote:so had there been a few more recipes you would be convinced...great point!
Yes, actually, that would make a great difference.
According to Mayan legend, tortillas were invented by a peasant for his hungry king in ancient times. The first tortillas discovered, which date back to approximately 10,000 BC, were made of native maize with dried kernel[citation needed]. The Aztecs used a lot of maize, both eaten straight from the cob and in recipes. They ground the maize, and used the cornmeal to make a dough called masa.[2]
Excavations in the "Valle de Tehuacán" in the state of Puebla, Mexico have revealed the use around 3000 BC of the basic cereal, a small, wild cob, eaten by native people. According to Agustín Gaytán, chef and Mexican Cuisine historian, in a Greeley Tribune newspaper article:
"Sometime about 3000 BC, people of the Sierra Madre mountains in Mexico hybridized wild grasses to produce large, nutritious kernels we know as corn. Mexican anthropologist and maize historian Arturo Warman credits the development of corn with the rise of Mesoamerican civilizations such as the Mayans and the Aztecs, which were advanced in art, architecture, math and astronomy. The significance of corn was not lost on indigenous cultures that viewed it as a foundation of humanity. It is revered as the seed of life. According to legend, human beings were made of corn by the Gods. By the time Spaniards reached the shores of what is now Mexico in the 1400s, indigenous Mesoamericans had a sophisticated and flavorful cuisine based on native fruits, game, cultivated beans and corn and domesticated turkeys".[3]
On 22 April 1519, Spaniards led by Hernán Cortés, also known as Hernando Cortez, arrived in what is now Mexico. They found that the inhabitants (Aztecs and other native Mexican peoples) made flat maize bread. The native Nahuatl name for this was tlaxcalli.[4]
In Cortés' 1520 second letter to King Charles V of Spain, he described the public markets:
"This city has many public squares, in which are situated the markets and other places for buying and selling. . . where are daily assembled more than sixty thousand souls, engaged in buying and selling; and where are found all kinds of merchandise that the world affords, embracing the necessaries of life, as for instance articles of food. . . maize or Indian corn, in the grain and in the form of bread, preferred in the grain for its flavor to that of the other islands and Terra-firma".[5]
This bread made from maize was later given the name tortilla (little cake) by the Spanish.
In 1529, Franciscan friar Bernardino de Sahagun was sent to New Spain (Mexico) to compile a compendium of all things relating to native history and customs that might be useful for Christianizing the Aztecs, named "Indians" by the Spain conquerors. This took some seven years, in collaboration with the best native authorities, and was expanded into a history and description of the Aztec people and civilization in twelve manuscript books, together with grammar (Arte) and a dictionary of the language.[6]
In his extensive manuscripts – General History of the Things of New Spain (Historia general de las cosas de Nueva España) – Sahagun described how the Aztec diet was based on maize, tortillas, tamales and a wide variety of chiles. He compiled and translated testimonies of his culinary informants from the native language of Nahuatl into Spanish. His work is the most complete record of Aztec foods and eating habits, and he is considered one of the fathers of culinary history.
Traditionally, maize tortillas were made from nixtamalized maize; kernels were soaked in a solution of lime (calcium hydroxide) and water to remove their skins; this also increases the bioavailability of then-unknown niacin. The grains were then ground into maize dough (masa). A golf ball-sized piece of dough was patted down by hand into a thin pancake shape, placed on a hot griddle (comal), and cooked on both sides. This tortilla-making process is still used today in southern Mexico.[7]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TortillaOr you can check out the Florentine Codex.
The first “taco bash” in the history of New Spain was documented by none other than Bernal Diaz del Castillo. Hernan Cortes organized this memorable banquet in Coyoacan for his captains, with pigs brought all the way from Cuba. It would, however, be a mistake to think that Cortes invented the taco, since anthropologists have discovered evidence that inhabitants of the lake region of the Valley of Mexico ate tacos filled with small fish, such as acosiles and charales. The fish were replaced by small live insects and ants in the states of Morelos and Guerrero, while locusts and snails were favorite fillings in Puebla and Oaxaca.
Too bad Joseph Smith doesn't mentions tacos.
And in the end, the love you take, is equal to the love...you make. PMcC