Paul’s wife knows Paul loves to read cookbooks. She decides to
get him one for his birthday. Paul tells her he will try to make a new recipe
for three days in a row. On Monday, Paul makes blueberry pancakes for
breakfast. He gets the blueberries from the farmers’ market. On Tuesday, Paul
makes beef soup for dinner. He puts in cubes of beef, carrots, and onions. The
recipe calls for cream, but Paul does not cream. He uses water instead. On Wednesday,
Paul makes a tomato salad with cucumbers and onions. He picks the cucumbers and
tomatoes from his garden. He likes this dish best. It was also the easiest for
him to make.
Which dish does Paul like best?
Chocolate – there’s nothing quite like it, is there?
Chocolate is simply delicious. What is chocolate? Where does it come from?
Christopher Columbus was probably the first to take cacao
beans from the New World to Europe in around 1502. But the history of chocolate
goes back at least 4,000 years! The Aztecs, who lived in America, through that
their bitter cacao drink was a divine gift from heaven. In fact, the scientist
Carolus Linnaeus named the plant Theobroma, which means “food of the gods”
The Spanish explorer Hernando Cortex went to America in
1519. He visited the Mexican emperor Montezuma. He saw that Montezuma drank
cacao mixed with vanilla and spices. Cortez took some cacao home as a gift to the
Spanish King Charles. In Spain, people began to drink Cortez’s chocolate in
drink with chili peppers. However, the natural taste of cacao was too bitter
for most people. To sweeten the drink, Europeans added sugar to the cacao
drink. As a sweet drink, it became more popular. By the 17th
century, rich people in Europe were drinking it.
Later, people started using chocolate in pastries, like pies and cakes. In 1828, Dutch chocolate
makers started using a new process for removing the fat from cacao beans, and
getting to the center of the cacao bean. The Dutch chocolate maker Conrad J.
Van Houten made a machine that pressed the fat from the bean. The resulting powder
mixed better with water than cacao did. Now, some call van Houten’s chocolate “Dutch
chocolate.”
It was easy to mix Dutuch chocolate powder with sugar. So
other chocolate makers started trying new recipes that used powdered chocolate. People started
mixing sweetened chocolate with cocoa butter to make solid chocolate bars. In
1849, an English chocolate maker made the first chocolate bar. In the 19th
century, the Swiss started making milk chocolate by mixing powdered milk with
sweetened chocolate. Milk chocolate has not changed much since this process was
invented.
Today, two countries – Brazil and Ivory Coast – account for
almost half the world’s chocolate. The United States imports most of the
chocolate in the world, but the Swiss eat the most chocolate per person. The
most chocolate eaten today is sweet milk chocolate, but people also eat white
chocolate and dark chocolate.
Cocoa and dark chocolate are believed to help prevent heart
attacks, or help keep from happening. They are supposed to be good for the
circulatory system. On the other hand, the high fat content of chocolate can
cause weight gain, which is not good for people’s health. Other health claims
for chocolate have not been proven, but some research shows that chocolate
could be good for the brain.
Chocolate is a popular holiday gift. A popular Valentine’s
Day gift is a box of chocolate candies with a card and flowers. Chocolate is
sometimes given for Christmas and birthdays. Chocolate eggs are sometimes given
at Easter.
Chocolate is toxic to some animals. An ingredient in chocolate
is poisonous to dogs, cats, parrots, small rodents, and some livestock. Their
bodies cannot process some if the chemicals found in chocolate. Therefore, they
should never be fed chocolate.
Who was Montezuma?
When we are young, we learn that
tigers and sharks are dangerous animals. We might be scared of them because
they are big and powerful. As we get older, however, we learn that sometimes
the most dangerous animals are also the smallest animals. In fact, the animal
that kills the most people every year is one that you have probably killed
yourself many times: the mosquito.
While it may seem that all
mosquitoes are biters, this is not actually the case. Male mosquitoes eat plant
nectar. One the other hand, female mosquitoes feed on animal blood. They need
this blood to live and produce eggs. When a female mosquito bites a human
being, it transmits a small amount of saliva into the blood. The saliva may or
may not contain a deadly disease. The result of the bite can be as minor as an
itchy bump or as serious as death.
Because a mosquito can bite many
people in the course of its life, it can carry diseases from one person to
another very easily. Two of the most deadly diseases carried by mosquitoes are
malaria and yellow fever. More than 700 million people become sick from these
diseases every year. At least 2 million of these people will die from these
diseases.
Many scientists are working on
safer and better ways to kill mosquitoes, but so far, there is no sure way to
protect everyone in the world from their deadly bites. Mosquito nests can be
placed over beds to protect people against being bitten. These nets help people
stay safe at night, but they do not kill any mosquitoes. Mosquitoes have many
natural enemies like bats, birds, dragonflies, and certain kinds of fish.
Bringing more of these animals into places where mosquitoes live might help to
cut down the amount of mosquitoes in that area. This is a natural solution, but
is does not always work very well. Mosquitoes can also be killed with poisons
or sprays. Even though these sprays kill mosquitoes, they may also harm other
plants or animals.
Although mosquitoes may not seem
as scary as larger, more powerful animals, they are far more dangerous to human
beings. But things are changing. It is highly likely that one day scientists
will find a way to keep everyone safe from mosquitoes and the diseases they
carry.
Based on information in paragraph
3, it can be understood that if you get sick with malaria or yellow fever, your
chances of survival are
Philadelphia is a city known for
many things. It is where the Declaration of independence was signed in 1776,
and it was also the first capital of the United States. But one fact about Philadelphia
is not so well-known: it is home to nearly 3,000 murals painted on the sides of
homes and buildings around the city. In fact, it is said that Philadelphia has
more murals than any other city in the world, with the exception of Rome. How
did this come to be?
More than 20 years ago, a New
Jersey artist named Jane Golden started a program pairing troubled youth with
artists to paint murals on a few buildings around the city. Form this small
project, something magical happened. The young people involved helped to create
magnificent pieces of art, but there were other, perhaps more important
benefits. The young people learned to collaborate and get along with many
different kinds of people during the various steps required to paint and design
a mural. They learned to be responsible, because they needed to follow a
schedule to make sure the murals were completed. They also learned to take pride
in their community. It is hard for any resident to see the spectacular designs
and not feel proud to be a part of Philadelphia.
Take a walk around some of the
poorest neighborhoods I Philadelphia, neighborhoods full of broken windows and
littered front steps, and you will find beautiful works of art on the sides and
fronts of buildings. Of course they murals are not just in poor neighborhoods,
but more affluent ones as well. Special buses take tourists to different parts
of the city to see the various murals, which range from huge portraits of
historical heroes, to cityscapes, to scenes depicting the diverse ethnic groups
that call Philadelphia home.
As a result of its success, the
mural program created by Jane Golden has now become the nation’s largest public
art program and a model for to troubled youth.
The main focus of the passage is
