the papertalescass blog is a thing of the past, but http://www.papertales.etsy.com/  lives on and i've decided i'd like to document the adventures of professional pickin.  the sub title will be adventures with karen.  karen being the australian voice of my gps. 

my purpose here is twofold.  just to document what i find and where (cause my brain doesn't retain much for very long) and also to share what i learn on this journey acquiring old stuff.

today is a good example.  i was going through some old cookbooks that i picked up a while back and started reading Baker's Favorite Chocolate Recipes A Handbook of Chocolate Cookery copyright 1952 Fifth Edition.  on page 7 this line popped out at me:  "It's not just an accident that Baker's Chocolate has won and held friends for over 175 years."   WHAT?
wait a minute...175 years old in 1952?  that means the company started in 1760 something??????  so off to google i went, and sure enough baker's choclate started as a partnership is 1765, but the thing that really gave the company a boost was  the Boston Tea Party when patriots began drinking chocolate instead of tea.

another neat bit of info was that Abraham Lincoln had a grocery store in New Salem, IL in 1833 and researchers found that the only packaged and advertised food product sold in the store was Baker's Breakfast Cocoa.   more info at http://brands.kraftfoods.com/BakersChocolate/heritage.htm

i know that i've picked up a couple of Baker's cookbooks over the last year, but this one is going to hang out with me for a while :D

so i'm off to other chores now. have a good one.