Hey, Chocoholics!
We’re all fans of chocolate and whatever genius thought to make tiny chips out of this blessing from nature! Invented for the sheer purpose of chocolate chip cookies, chocolate chips were created the same day as the cookie in 1937. The baker Ruth Graves Wakefield of the Toll House Inn in the town of Whitman, Massachusetts cut up chunks of a semi-sweet chocolate bar and added the chunks to a cookie recipe.
And with that, a classic was born.
Chocolate is certainly a gift from Mother Nature to mankind with many health benefits and interesting things about it. For instance—a typical cacao bean contains less than 1/20th of the caffeine found in a coffee bean. Here are some other points about this amazing vegetable—that’s right—vegetable:
The Dark Side of Chocolate
Like many things (including water) too much of something can be bad—even deadly. Chocolate is no different. If you were to eat 6 kilograms (≈ a gallon of solid dark chocolate), you’d likely keel over from heart failure and kidney damage. Too much of a good thing becomes a bad thing! It’s a good lesson.
Chocolate—the Medicinal Drink
As I’ve covered in a previous Blog post, chocolate was initially consumed as a beverage like hot chocolate. Only it wasn’t the sweet, sugary hot chocolate we know today with marshmallows floating in the mug. Ancient Mayans drank a bitter drink of a creamy milk with cocoa melted inside and it was eventually advertised as a cure-all drink in the 15th Century.
Chocolate…POTATO?!..Chips
Chocolate chips are delici—wait a minute! I wasn’t talking about THOSE kinds of chips! It was five years ago when the Lay’s company thought to combine chocolate with potato chips and, lo and behold…it sells. My niece enjoys this daring dessert snack. I don’t so much.
Chocolate is an interesting part of our world. It has health benefits, it has caffeine, it goes well with salty snacks…apparently. Anyway, no matter how I feel about certain sweet and salty snacks, enjoy some chocolate in whatever way you prefer today—but it’d be best if you had some good ol’ fashioned chocolate chip cookies! And, as always, thanks for reading!
- John