October 28 “Chocolate fixes everything”

October 28th is National Chocolate Day. I have several books about chocolate. The first one is a marvelous photography book from Brazil. It is in Portuguese and English. The photographs are of fruits of the Brazilian rain forest.

Here are several pictures of the Cacau fruit.

The next book is an all around good book about chocolate, titled “The Chocolate Tree-A Natural History of Cacau”, by Allen M. Young, 1994. This is a sound history of chocolate, as well as the modern day procedures for harvesting and processing the cacau bean.

Going back in history a little, I have the book With a fantastic title “The Planting, Cultivation and Expression of Coconuts, Kernels, Cacao, and Edible Vegetable Oils and Seeds of Commerce. A Practicle handbook For Planters, Financiers, Scientists, and Others” by H. Osman Newland, printed 1919. There is interesting history of the tree, along with how plantations for Cacao work, just in case you wanted to invest. There were a good amount of photographs, as well.

This next book, at one time, was part of the City of Leeds Library of Commerce, Science and Technology in England. I picked it up online for a pretty good deal.

Going back just a little more in time, I have the book “Life in Brazil” with the subtitle “A journey of a Visit to the Land of the Cocoa and the Palm” by Thomas Ewbank, published in 1856.

This is an interesting diary of the author’s travels. He talks about the “people of equatorial Brazil are named Cocoas, from their fondness for the fruit, and eating it with every dish.” He also mentions another area of Brazil, the people are known as “Manoel Cocoas“. They used small cocoa-trees as a wedding dowery. Each tree was worth half a dollar. The new husband would go the the plantation and take the right amount in cocoa-trees.

I could not talk about chocolate without using at least one cookbook. I have “Hershey’s Holiday Favorites” from the Hershey Company. Several favorites are “Chocolate Swirl Lollipop Cookies”, “Autumn Peanutty Carrot Cake” ((Reeses Peanut Butter Chips in a homemade carrot cake!), and “Brownies in a Jar” which has items layered in a certain way using a gift jar, with the mixing and baking instructions attached. That brownie mix looked good in the jar before it was even made into brownies.

October 28th, 1886 was the day the Statue of Liberty was dedicated. It was a gift from France to the United States, designed by Frédéric-Auguste Bartholdiu. He made and built her in France, and then disassembled to ship to United states, and re-built.

I have two unusual books with the Statue of Liberty. The first is an “expand-A-Book by Arby’s for their kid’s meal promotion in 2008. There were four diferent ones made. I have number three, “The Statue of Liberty”.

The next book was a recent gift to me. It has been added to the other Robert Sabuda books I own. Sabuda is one of the country’s premere pop-up engineers. This is “America The Beautiful”published in 2004.

While each page is more interesting than the one before it, I thought the best might be the page with the Capital opened up, and in front of it was Washington monument popping up on one side of silver waves of the reflecting pool, and the Lincoln Memorial opening up on the other side. It is very impressive. Then, the last page is the skyline of New York, and the Statue of Liberty opening up. Wow.

There is also a tiny book of pop-ups next to the Statue of Liberty, that has more popups, along side all of the other verses of America the Beautiful. Different stanzas had different little pop-ups. One with the Twin Towers and the verse:

“O beautiful for heroes proved
In liberating strife,
Who more than self their country loved
And mercy more than life!
America! America!”

I took my mom and brother to Ellis Island, (suprised her with reseach of her dad and when he arrived in America, through Ellis Island). and we saw the Statue of Liberty in person. I was very impressed, you could say I carry a torch for her now.

My wife also was impressed. Knowing her occasional dropping of the F-bomb, she said Liberty was Fudging Amazing (just today because of chocolate day.)

Thanks for reading.