In Honor of Chocolate and a Certain Cookbook

As we're only a few weeks out from the release Chocolate Never Faileth (squeee!) I decided to give a sneak peek into part of the book.

No, not into the recipes themselves (although maybe I'll post one or two in the next couple weeks, just for kicks).

I thought that showing some of the other elements of the book, the in-between stuff, would be fun. The book has lots of trivia, facts, and anecdotes I dug up, all centered on, of course, chocolate.

Below are four of many from the book. (Remember that you can now PRE-ORDER Chocolate Never Faileth through Deseret Book!)


True Story #1, about Lynn:
After being admitted at 18 weeks of pregnancy and spending over one hundred days in the hospital, Lynn broke the record for the longest stay at that hospital’s neonatal unit in hopes of saving the life of her unborn baby. Her daughter was finally born, nine weeks early—young but alive and with a good prognosis, weighing in at 3 lbs, 2 oz. Exhausted, Lynn returned home, craving a giant bag of peanut M&Ms. She ate the whole thing in a day . . . then picked up the empty bag and realized with a tad of horror that it had contained . . . 3 lbs, 2 oz. The exact weight of her baby.


Anecdote from Delyana:
A good piece of chocolate has about 200 calories. As I enjoy two servings per night, and a few more on weekends, I consume 3,500 calories of chocolate in a week, which equals one pound of weight per week. Therefore . . . In the last 3 ½ years, I have had a chocolate caloric intake of about 180 pounds. I weigh 165 pounds. Without chocolate, I would have wasted away to nothing about three months ago!

I owe my life to chocolate.


A Bit of Trivia:
A few years ago, Mars. Inc. stopped marketing the Mars Bar candy bar—but they didn’t stop making it. In its place, the company now sells the exact same bar with a new name. It’s now Snickers Almond. Did you realize it’s the exact same candy bar?

But in Europe and elsewhere, the same candy bar is sold as Mars Almond.

Confused yet? Let’s make it worse.

A candy bar marketed to Europeans and others outside the U.S. as the Mars Bar is called the Milky Way here in the U.S.

Wait. What?

And finally, a gem from my dear friend Luisa:

Elga called it a dessert when she gave me the little handwritten index card [with the recipe], but I know she must have been kidding, because, um, see, Elga, it doesn't have any chocolate in it.

IMPORTANT NOTE:

I get to be part of Ladies Night at Deseret Book's flagship store in Salt Lake City on Saturday, October 2! (Woohoo!)

I'll be there signing cookbooks . . . and giving out samples. Please come!