Thursday Thirteen.....

.....Chocolate Chip Cookie Facts.

1. The original chocolate-chip cookie-was created in the 1930s by Ruth Wakefield, who ran the Toll House Restaurant outside of Whitman, Massachusetts. Mrs. Wakefield, in a moment of brilliant inspiration, cut up bars of chocolate to add to a basic butter-cookie dough.
2. Prior to packaging the chocolate chips as we know them Nestles printed the recipe on the package of their chocolate bars and even included a little chopper so that people could use them to make the cookies easily.
3. On July 9, 1997, the state of Massachusetts designated the chocolate chip cookie as the official state cookie, after it was proposed by a third grade class from Somerset, Massachusetts.
4. Chocolate chip cookies are the favored cookies of Sesame Street's Cookie Monster.
5. Doubletree Hotels, Suites, Resorts and Clubs present a freshly baked chocolate chip cookie to each guest at check-in. The hotel chain has done so since the 1980s as a way of distinguishing itself from its competitors.
6. Midwest Airlines and Aloha Airlines bake and serve fresh chocolate chip cookies on board many of their flights.
7. The desert camouflage pattern worn by US forces during the first Gulf War earned the nickname 'chocolate chip' due to how it resembled chocolate chip cookie dough, with its brown, black and light tan specks scattered across the garment.
8. In the 2004 film The Aviator, Howard Hughes orders "10 chocolate chip cookies" - which in 1928, were not yet invented.
9. Citibank offers free Mrs. Fields cookies to customers.
10. Cookie Crisp is a chocolate chip cookie breakfast cereal manufactured by General Mills
11. Today, half the cookies baked in American homes are chocolate-chip, with an estimated seven billion consumed annually.
12. On February 7, 2001, the Chocolate Chip Cookie was declared the official cookie of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.
13. Neiman Marcus Urban Myth: "Our signature chocolate chip cookie is the subject of one such myth. If you haven't heard the story, we won't perpetuate it here. If you have, the recipe should serve to refute it. Copy it, print it out, pass it along to friends and family. It's a terrific recipe. And it's absolutely free."