Surprising Things You Can Do With Chocolate
In Latin, chocolate means food of the gods; European used to incorporate it to various medicines to treat cholera, smallpox, typhus, scarlet fever or tuberculosis. Before that, in pre-Columbian society, it had been a currency and a part of different rituals. Today we know the real benefits of chocolate – magnesium, iron, fiber, antioxidants, and many more. Dark, unsweetened chocolate influences our mental health, the condition of our hearts and skin, and we could probably go on and on and on with listing the perks of it. Since it has so many properties, you may wonder if there are some different uses of chocolate other than eating it as a delicious snack or using it as a part of a dessert. Visit mid-day squares. Well, there are many, and some of them are rather surprising.
- Feed the flowers
You can help your flowers thrive and bloom by adding a little bit of cocoa to their soil. If you mix it with some used coffee grounds, you will get an effective and nutrient fertilizer, plus, it deals with slugs and snail without scaring off critters that are your flowers’ friends. Cocoa can also be helpful when you fight with weeds and extreme temperatures. However, you shouldn’t use it if you have dogs, as the smell attracts them, and chocolate may be poisonous for them.
- Refresh your hair
Were you forced to skip the shower, but you don’t want to use dry shampoo (or you simply don’t have one)? All is not lost yet. Everything you need is cocoa powder, cornstarch, and essential oil. Mix it all together, put it in some kind of a dispenser (e.g. salt shaker) and sprinkle yourself a couple of times. Your hair will not only not look greasy, but you will also smell amazing.
- Have red wine hot chocolate
We all hate these long winter evenings and we all have our means of dealing with them. A cup of mulled wine or hot chocolate can be the answer to all our winter blues. However, there are times when you sit on your couch and you simply can’t decide – but now you don’t have to. Red wine hot chocolate drink was called spectacular by Martha Stewart herself, and she was 100% right. It’s not a chocolate wine, that you might have drunk before, neither is it a drink with a liquor – it really is a smooth, silky hot chocolate with real red wine. All you have to do is add milk and chocolate chips to a saucepan over medium heat, wait until chocolate melts, and pour some wine (accordingly to your taste). Et voilà!
- Make chocolate candles
Are you bored with regular candles that lay around your house? What don’t you turn them into chocolate-scented candles? You just have to put the pieces of chocolate into the can (with the can’s top cut off), and put the wax on top of it, then place the can in boiling water. When it melts, mix them carefully, making sure that they blended properly. If you’re sure they have, pour it all to a container and stick the wicks in. Wait for it to cool – you will see how the color darkens – and give the smell about 24 hours to develop.
- Start a fire
No, it’s not a joke. If you have a chocolate bar and a can of soda (not very unusual things to have, right?), you can use them to start a fire, for example, if you get lost in the woods and need to warm yourself up, or you’re camping, your friend has forgotten a grill again and you don’t have any matches. You only have to find some dry, light tinder, then you use the chocolate to shine the bottom of the can, you wipe it off and turn the can to the sun which reflects in the shiny bottom. The dry tinder will concentrate the heat and the fire will appear. As simple as that.
- Make fake blood
Apparently, chocolate was used as fake blood in the movies Psycho (1960) and Night of the Living Dead (1968) because it looked authentically on the black and white screen. If you want to use it with colors, you only need to add some red cooking dye and you may be a very delicious zombie for the next Halloween.
- Make perfumes
You have probably heard about chocolate-scented perfumes, but you may not know that you can easily do them yourself. You won’t smell like a pot of hot chocolate, as these perfumes tend to be very subtle, but why shouldn’t you give it a go? All you need is some chocolate fragrance oil, alcohol and whatever you want to go with it – vanilla, amaretto, and patchouli are among the most popular choices.
As you can see, chocolate is not only nutrient and delicious but also versatile. In fact, according to research, chocolate can be turned into an eco-fuel so maybe in the future, we will all power our cars with it. People continue to discover new uses of chocolate – from delightful to truly bizarre – and there will probably be more surprises.
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