The Berfooda Triangle: Aztec is so hot right now

Various conversations over the past few days have led me to the conclusion that, if one were to be resurrected in another life, the worst thing you could come back as would be the running person on Temple Run.

This is for several reasons, most notably the fact that the running would never end, save for fleeting moments of respite in some kind of tree-trunk-related death, only to be once more reborn into the same unfulfilling fate.

For as long as the procrastinators of the world continued to take the idol if they dared, you would be condemned to the same exhausting doom – it would be nothing short of HORRENDOUS.

The only upside would be your status as a hipster, because we all know Aztec is so hot right now.

In order to get in there before it becomes uncool to be living in the 1300s, here comes a delicious and filling Aztec recipe:

Ingredients:

Potatoes

An outside space

1) Put some potatoes outside on a cold night

2) Let them sit there for a while, until they turn to a pulp

3) Consume within one year

Sounds goooood. It’s called chuño too, which is pleasantly lyrical and appropriately poetic for such an elegant and refined meal.

If, however, in the unlikely event that the chuño does not satisfy you, there is always the rightly worshipped cocoa bean to fall back on. The authentic, very Aztec and therefore very edgy cocoa creation is Xocolatl, the traditional chocolate drink:

710ml water

2 sliced green chillies (inc. seeds)

2 or more litres of water (water = good for you, so it cancels out the cocoa)

45g unsweetened cocoa powder

20ml vanilla extract

1) Bring the 710 ml water to the boil

2) Put the sliced chillies and seeds in

3) Cook for seven minutes

4) Strain out the chillies and seeds and return water to the heat

5) Add the two litres of water to the chilli infused water

6) Stir in the cocoa powder and the vanilla extract

7) Continue to cook for 10 minutes

8) Recline and sip whilst wearing some suitably Aztec patterned tee shirt, probably from topman, preferably with the short sleeves rolled up a minimum of two folds.

This delicious bev, howev, is definitely not best enjoyed with accompanying Aztec music. Unless you are into off-beat squawks and piercing pan pipes, in which case go for it.

Instead, I am going to share with you the gift of KNOWLEDGE and INSIGHT given to me by my homeboy Borton, which is the entirety of Alt-J (∆) ‘s new album An Awesome Wave. Every song on it is good, especially Fitzpleasure, Breezeblocks and Taro, perfect for chilling to whenever, and not just ‘in a revision break’ because I hate that phrase so much.

While still in your Aztec tee, crack out One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez – it comes from the same part of the world as the Aztecs and ticks the whole remote civilisation box, dwelling significantly on foliage description. I’m only half way through it at the moment, but what I have read so far has been a brilliant tangle of magical realism and unhappy wives.

I’ve also heard Marquez is a fan of colour symbolism – apparently yellow and gold represent imperialism, something you are pretty much endorsing when you are collecting those coins on Temple Run, so that’s a nice circle we have come in there.

If you want to be really indulgently nerdy, there is an entire article on MY FAVOURITE EVER WEBSITE JSTOR which goes into much more detail about this (the colour symbolism, not the Temple Run coins):

http://www.jstor.org/stable/30203613

And to finish, a Fab Fun Fact about the Aztecs: Montezuma II’s headdress was made from the feathers of over 250 birds!!

WOW.