I admit it. I love chocolate.
I used to often eat two squares of dark chocolate a day until Consumer Reports came out with studies showing dangerous amounts of lead and cadmium in some dark chocolate.
I ate a brownie today, although it isn’t one of my two sugar days of the week. Then, when I saw an item about National Chocolate Day, I made some chocolate pudding out of tofu, shown in the photo. It’s easy. You just mix it up in a food processor and pour it into little bowls. It’s a recipe from the Dean Ornish heart health program. No fat, no dairy, and made with maple sugar.
Here a history of chocolate from NaionalToday.com:
Chocolate history goes back 2,500 years. Aztecs loved their newly discovered liquid chocolate and they believed Quetzalcoatl, the god of wisdom, bestowed it on them. Cacao seeds acted as a form of currency. It was “bitter” chocolate – before sugar was added. After chocolate turned sweet – in 16th-century Europe – everyone caught on and turned chocolate into a powerhouse treat.
Several present-day chocolate companies began operations in the 19th and early 20th centuries.
Cadbury started in England by 1868. Milton S. Hershey, 25 years later, purchased chocolate processing equipment at the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago He started the company by producing chocolate-coated caramels.
Nestlé, dating back to the 1860s, has grown into one of the largest food conglomerates in the world.
Chocolate is a fermented food. After cacao pods are picked, cleaned of pithy white material from the fruit and dried, the cacao beans are fermented. The papery shell is removed and cacao nibs are revealed.
Chocolatiers then grind them into cocoa mass, separate them into cocoa solids and cocoa butter, and combine them with milk and sugar, or in the case of white chocolate, just the chocolate butter with milk and sugar.
Today there’s a move toward dark chocolate since it contains far less sugar. Ghana, Ecuador, and the Ivory Coast, all near the equator, have ideal climates for cacao trees and produce some of the world’s best chocolate.But there’s a dark side. Child labor has become a serious issue. When you purchase “fair trade chocolate,” you’re working to help make cocoa farming more sustainable.
Happy World Chocolate Day. Don’t over due it. Halloween is coming up soon.
