National Chocolate Week

"Chocolate is a perfect food, as wholesome as it is delicious, a beneficent restorer of exhausted power.

It is the best friend of those engaged in literary pursuits."

- Baron Justus von Liebig

Well this week is National Chocolate Week. Sounds pretty good to me! I love chocolate! At least good proper high quality chocolate. Apparently I have empathy with pigs, they love healthy eating but have a very weak spot for chocolate!  Sometimes I can mix the two, check out my healthy eating cake - Healthy Chocolate Cake, but most of the time nothing quite compares to sitting down somewhere quiet with ten minutes to yourself and indulging in a good book and chocolate bar!

So here’s a selection of fun facts about chocolate:

The word 'cocoa' was the result of the misspelling of 'cacao'

The amount of caffeine in chocolate is relatively small. There are about 5 to 10 milligrams of caffeine in one ounce of bittersweet chocolate, 5 milligrams in milk chocolate, and 10 milligrams in a six-ounce cup of cocoa.

An eight-ounce cup of coffee has 100 to 150 milligrams of caffeine.

Chocolate has great health benefits. It helps with depression, high blood pressure, Tumours and Pre-menstrual syndromes.

Cocoa and Dark Chocolate contain no cholesterol!

Milk Chocolate is the most preferred type of chocolate; however dark chocolate is especially popular among men.

Chocolate is actually a valuable energy source. One chocolate chip provides enough food energy for an adult to walk 150 feet. Therefore, it takes about 35 chocolate chips to walk a mile or 875,000 to get you around the world.

17,000 people in Belgium - that’s 1 in every 200 workers - are involved in the making, selling and promotion of chocolate.

If the number of Toblerones sold in one year were laid end to end, they would equate to 62,000 Km – equivalent to the circumference of the Earth.

Chocolate is definitely bad news in quantity. It contains high levels of theobromine, a powerful stimulant of the central nervous system. Theobromine poisoning can cause heart failure, seizures, acute kidney damage and dehydration. A lethal dosage of chocolate for a human being is about 22lb (or 40 bars of Dairy Milk). On the other hand, one Smartie would be enough to kill a robin or a blackbird.

The Aztec emperor Montezuma reportedly drank fifty or more portions of chocolate every day!

Heres a healthy or not chocolate recipe:

Chocolate coated strawberries!

500g of medium-sized whole strawberries

150g milk, dark or white chocolate.

Dollop of cream

 

1. Microwave the chocolate in a glass bowl on medium heat for 30 seconds, stir and return to the microwave, then every 10 seconds until almost melted. Stir until smooth and glossy add the cream!)

 

2. Wash strawberries and pat them dry (any moisture from the fruit will spoil the texture of the melted chocolate).

3. Dip each strawberry into the melted chocolate, covering the lower half of the strawberry. Place on a baking sheet lined with wax paper. Refrigerate for at least 1 hour.