A CHIP OFF THE OLD BLOCK...

                                                                       ...of chocolate.

Another one of the articles that was fun to research. This week, I made a big batch of chocolate chip cookies for Frank. I packed a bit of extra nutrition in them by substituting a cup of quick-cook oatmeal for a cup of the flour, and adding chopped pecans. Here in the South you must add pecans wherever you can. I freeze the dough balls and bake the cookies a dozen at a time. If I baked 'em all at once, I'd eat 'em all at once.

These are what we use toady as chips for our cookies
(I prefer the Hershey Special Dark myself.)

They’re out there, but very hard to find: those without a sweet tooth, those who never, ever savored a chocolate chip cookie. Breathes there a man with soul so dead, who never to himself has said “this chocolate chip cookie is as American as baseball and apple pie.”

It is American. The exact date on which the first chocolate chip cookie was baked is not precisely known, but it was somewhere early in 1938, some 80 years ago, that the idea of them came to Ruth Graves Wakefield. At the time, she owned the Toll House Inn in Whitman, Massachusetts – thus their original name: Toll House Cookies. The chefs at the inn were very creative, so much so that they produced the classic cookbook Toll House Tried and True Recipes. The 1977 edition is still available. People were eager to follow the recipes of this very fine establishment. Evidently, the Massachusetts boys serving during World War II got the cookies in care packages from home, and shared them with their buddies. The joy of them spread like cookie dough in a hot oven.

The first chips were just that: chips off the chocolate on hand for the chefs at the inn, and technically, if it’s called a Toll House cookie, it is pristine: just the basic original recipe cookie dough with chips of chocolate.

These are more like the chips of chocolate used at the Toll House Inn

They say that if you change at least three ingredients in a recipe you can consider it yours. There have been so many changes to the original Toll House Cookies recipe that today’s recipes are anybody’s. Even the recipe on a Nestlé’s “morsels” departs from the original, substituting butter or margarine for the original shortening. The recipes today are as many and varied as those for spaghetti sauce or the many other foods that have become fixtures on American tables.

Chips are no longer chips: they’re extruded drops. And they are no longer just chocolate: they can also be semi-sweet, bitter-sweet, white chocolate, butterscotch, peanut butter, cinnamon, even mint. And chips can be regular size, chunks, or minis. To the dough you can beat in oatmeal, cocoa, walnut, pecans, hazelnuts, macadamias, raisins, dried cranberries, toffee, tiny marshmallows, and what? The beat goes on. Are they still chocolate chip cookies?  Probably yes, if there is still some chocolate in them.

The original drop cookie of about 2½ to 3 inches in diameter has grown. Some big, fat five-inchers are pikers. Chocolate chip cookies can be found in pita, plate, and pizza-size portions. We Americans like to make everything bigger, but Cookie Monster might consider some of those larger versions to be monstrosities, both size-wise and taste-wise.

National Chocolate Chip Day is celebrate every year on May 15. National Cookie Day is December 4 (time to start baking for the holidays) and, put them together and you get National Chocolate Chip Cookie Day on August 4. You might want to find other reasons (your Mother-in-law’s birthday, your neighbor’s new car) to celebrate with chocolate chip cookies. It is the American thing to do.

THE BEEB

Lordie, lordie, I just love the BBC. Without having to buy a subscription to read more than a few articles each month, as with the New York Times or the Washington Post, I can read and learn to my heart’s and my mind’s content.

Just this morning I copied their list of 100 Stories that Shaped the World, read about why doctors are dismissing pain, and, just when I thought I’d never know this, learned the secret of how Michael Jackson did that incredible dance move.

It occurred to me that this is probably the most valuable link I have in the array of sites I’ve bookmarked to check each day. I just thought I'd let you know.

RIVETED FOR 145 YEARS

Ah yes, another of the essays I wrote for our community magazine. This was an interesting topic to research. I did know the Nimes connection, but not the Genoa connection. I vaguely remember when my brother got a pair of what we then called dungarees - and that word is from the Hindi in India. He called them donkey pants. I remember my own first pair of blue jeans. I bought the for myself when I was in my late twenties, in the late 60's. Before that, I'd never have even thought to get them. 

Have you seen the latest trend in jeans? I'll tack on pictures at the bottom.

From France - the History of Jeans

What do the city of Nimes, France, and Genoa, Italy, have to do with the denim jeans you might have in your wardrobe? Historically, both cities were involved in the weaving of cloth. The cotton denim in your pants gets its name from serge de Nimes. There are many versions of the story of how the French fabric, serge de Nimes, made of silk and wool as long ago as the sixteenth century, became the cotton fabric known today.

And why do we call them jeans? Jean, in the sense of clothing, is said to be, among other thigs, a corruption of the word Genoa. The French word for Genoa is Gênes. The Genoese, masters of the sea, were also known for sturdy fabrics, many of them similar to today’s corduroy. Jean became a generic term for sturdy cloth and clothes, including the work clothes often worn by navy men.

Drawing for Patent 139,121

And what is the significance of this month? It was 145 years ago this month, in 1873, that Levi Strauss, businessman, and Jacob Davis, tailor, were granted U.S. Patent 139,121, “Improvement in Fastening Pocket-openings,” for work pants strengthened with metal rivets. The applicant was Levi Strauss & Co., and the inventor was Jacob W. Davis. Strauss, a wholesale dry goods merchant born in Germany, brought in goods, jean fabric among them, from his family’s company in New York. Opening his San Francisco company in 1853, he made and sold necessities, including tents and trousers, for the miners during the Gold Rush.

Jacob Davis, a Russian immigrant based in Reno, Nevada, had been making work pants from the jean cloth supplied by Strauss. Becoming aware of the need to reinforce the stress points where the trousers often ripped, even after being reinforced with more cloth, Davis invented a method of inserting copper rivets at these points. Not having funds of his own, he went to Strauss for the money to patent them. The rest was, as they say, is history.

Stressed beyond imagination, these will stress your budget: 

they cost a small fortune - $1,290 - really!
whywouldya!

The stress points in question were the corners of the pockets and the bottom of the button fly. “Waist overalls,” different from over-all overalls, were always popular with miners, cowboys, and other working men. The original riveted trousers were made from several sturdy fabrics with which Strauss and Davis, who managed the production of work pants and other clothing, experimented. Eventually, they settled on a blue denim made by an American manufacturer.

By the 1920’s Levi’s waist overalls were the country’s best-selling blue jeans. Their popularity grew after World War II: American G.I.s popularized them, movie stars wore them, kids wore them, bikers wore them, hippies wore them, and ladies began to wear them with the zipper in the front instead of the side. Overseas in 70’s and 80’s, American blue jeans fetched exorbitant prices. Strauss blue jeans became so popular that the word Levi’s, like Kleenex and Vaseline, became a generic term.

denim made in India

Denim is no longer the blue-collar working man’s fabric, and blue jeans are no longer their basic blue. They come in a range from white to black, and the blues range from pale ice to dark indigo, their original color. No longer stiff as a board after washing, jeans are pre-softened for us and are often distressed, embroidered and bejeweled, and even artistically ripped in strategic places. We often question why people would happily pay up to hundreds of dollars for ripped and shredded jeans, when it is obvious that they are the very last ones who should wear them. Such rips and shreds, available for mere money, should be the badge of honor earned by hard work. Hard work was what necessitated sturdy jeans in the first place.

The very latest in jeans 

Coming...

...and going!

- again, whywouldya?

·      

HEAVEN HELP US

Every year, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York holds a benefit gala for itself. It’s a red-carpet fashion event, worthy of the Oscars and Emmys. Many take the year’s theme and run with it, and the outfits run from the ridiculous worn by a few of the more daring and darling celebrities, to the sublime and elegant worn by most.

Brooke Shields - Sublime

(I wanted to get a few facts straight, so I googled “mma gala.” I got info, but it was for the IMFA MMA GALA, held by the people who do the mixed martial arts. There’s a good connection there, and probably a pithy comment or two, but my brain can’t deal with it right at this moment.)

Katy Perry - Ridiculous
(if for no other reason than she couldn't sit in that rig)

 This year’s theme was “Heavenly Bodies: Fashion and the Catholic Imagination” to celebrate the museum’s exhibit of religious artwork, papal vestments on loan from the Vatican, and haute couture outfits from designers like Chanel, Balenciaga, Yves Saint Laurent...

...and Balmain on Jennifer Lopez 

Not that I’d ever have the occasion to wear it, but I do love seeing pictures of elegant haute couture. I wrote a blog about Evening Gowns, the Nuns, and My Mom. I can’t help but wonder what the nuns would have thought of some of the more outré ensembles at the MMA gala.

Rianna - Ridiculous

When events like this take place, I am always eager to go through the slides and comment, as I’ve done in the past. I’ve blogged about The Tasty and The Tasteless at these events. This gala was another example of the tasty and the tasteless.

Tasteless.  I rest my case.

One of my pet peeves is people wearing clothing that looks like it was made out of our flag. Another is the wearing of religious symbols as decorative jewelry. To me a cross or medal or other religious symbol, worn hanging around the neck as has been traditional for centuries, is the only acceptable way to let the world know what you are. These two pet peeves are concerned more with respect than with dignity, but some of the outfits at the gala were less than dignified. Some of the celebrities and their designers let their Catholic Imagination run amok.

Madonna! Marone! Definitely a miss mass mess.
(and check that gal's left arm - is that tat a temp?)

Google Metropolitan Museum of Art Gala 2018 to see all the crosses and losses, halos and JLos and other astonishing outfits.

There had to be something nun-such in there.
nun today, nun tomorrow.

Later:

Read an article about all this in the New York Times from May 20th.

THE WEEK THAT WAS

Busy chickens at Hancock Shaker Village

It's been a busy week here at what we call Asgard South. One of the people most dear to us came for her annual birthday visit - this year for Frank's 87th birthday. We always delight in whatever time we can spend with her. I had some extra meetings this week, and a luncheon with a magazine colleague. I do like to brainstorm with her.

I tell you though, my sense of what day is which was completely awry. On Wednesday night I started to put out the trash and recyclables - no, they go out on Thursday night. On Thursday night I took my Friday-night cholesterol pill. (Those are working, by the way. My cholesterol count it down to 170 and the other numbers are nicely where they should be.) And on Friday I forgot to write a post for my blog. Perhaps I'm a bit muddled. After all, I've had some busy days.

Welcome to May and warm days and cool nights. Camelot weather.