#91 Ultimate Chocolate

#91 Ultimate Chocolate

My daughter is still on vacation and she visited the cutest little chocolate shop in Bruges. It's a shame she can't eat chocolate herself since it gives her headaches. I do hope she stopped in long enough to get some for her dear mother. The place is so tiny it looks like it must be run by elves. It must be magic, look at the shine they get on them, beautiful. Cookbook #91 is Ultimate Chocolate.

#33 Death by Chocolate

#33 Death by Chocolate, The Last Word on a Consuming Passion

Happy Valentine's Day! It was hard picking a cookbook for today. I wanted something romantic so I was all set to do The Paris Cookbook and tell you the lovely story of my husband whisking me off to that beautiful city. Then I passed by the book shelf and spotted Death by Chocolate, gee, Paris or Chocolate. It was a no brainer, Chocolate, so the Paris stories will have to wait.

My husband and I did have a very romantic first meeting at a Pizza Hut. It was September and I had just turned 18. It's actually a good idea meeting for the first time at a chain restaurant. It's cheap when you want to go back and recapture the old magic and you can find them anywhere in the world. Anyway we met, I was out with a friend of his and it was love at first sight. I went right back to the dorm and told everyone I had met the man I was going to marry, Ted! That wasn't his name I found out later but I've never been good with names. Love took a few strange turns. I ended up going to a Jimi Hendrix's concert with his brother before we had our first date. Hubby took me to a Andy Williams' concert, the man was smooth! So by Valentine's Day that year, I had him hooked. I found beautiful flowers waiting for me at the desk when I returned from class, what a thrill!

There have been many other lovely gifts over the years, the built in vacuum system, the chocolates. You just can't go wrong with chocolates in my book. Are you reading this dear? Not to worry, I have that box of Kit Kat candy bars hidden away just in case. So cookbook # 33 is Death by Chocolate, The Last Word on a Consuming Passion, by Marcel Desaulniers, now he sounds French.

#28 Nestle Classic Recipes

#28 Nestle Classic Recipes

Two important things happened on this date, Hershey's Chocolate was founded and my buddy Katherine was born. There may be a link between these two events because Katherine sure loves chocolate. I don't think anyone other than maybe a professional baker has made more chocolate chip cookies than Katherine. She has also eaten more raw cookie dough than most people would in 50 years but look at her, she's soooooooo tiny. It's just not fair and it's not fair she lives a 1000 miles away either!

Anyway, this is driving me nuts, I know I have a Hershey's Chocolate cookbook but darn, I can't find it. I've even been to Hershey PA and I've taken the factory tour. It's a great little city, you can smell the chocolate in the air as you drive through. I'm sure you take in calories just inhaling. The street lights are shaped like giant Hershey Kisses, see photo. They spell out the name in beautifully trimmed chocolate colored bushes. Real bushes and they look just like chocolate amazing. What a place that would be to live.

There was one disappointment, it's been a long time so they may have changed things, but they only took us through a mockup of the working production line. We were no where near the real chocolate as we rode through on little tram cars. Also the most shocking thing, at the end of the tour, you got ONE Hershey's Kiss to sample. ONE!!!! How cheap is that? They did have a big gift shop and you could buy all sorts of neat stuff but ONE KISS!

The reason this seemed even more shocking to me is, I've also been through the Cadbury Chocolate factory in Tasmania. What a difference! Down there on the other side of the world they had us put on paper shower caps and booties so we looked like nerds but then they handed us each a big paper bag and turned us loose right in the factory itself! It was just like Willie Wonka's world where we could scoop up handfuls of goodies from barrels stationed around the rooms. These may have been seconds or stuff that had dropped on the floor, we didn't care. It was so much fun, better than free candy at Halloween. We even learned the secret method by which they get the liquid caramel into the segmented chocolate bars. Don't ask, I'm not telling. So this should be a Hershey cookbook but Nestle will have to do, they do make the best chocolate chips after all. Cookbook #28 Nestle Classic Recipes.

Two minutes at the Cadbury Factory.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=alqq3EyfPls