Toll House Recipes
Long ago, in a galaxy far, far away, one had to pay a toll to travel from what would be Chocolatetown, USA (Hershey, PA) to Philadelphia. The man at the Toll House had a wife who cut 
up chocolate, baked it into cookies and invented Toll House cookies whose chips, Toll House chocolate chips are still sold in stores worldwide.
The actual Toll House was not far from my mother’s. She too worked and baked, but unlike the Mrs. Toll House my mother was not compelled to share her recipes. It took me years of teen age badgering to get my mother to admit that the recipe for her infamous cookies lay on the bag of every Toll House chocolate chips sold. (Truth be told, my mother though that as a man, I didn’t need to know how to cook. Wow, was she off base!)
Luckily, among the saints special to SMA, there was one not so set on keeping recipes secret.
St. Pascual is patron of cooks and having a small wooden statue of his bald friar self holding a wooden spoon is good luck for any SMA kitchen. His feast also falls near San Antonio’s, patron of Dia de Locos, so it is common to see St. Pacual parading about among the Dia de Locos activities.
Pascual was a cook for his order when, legend has, he was preparing comida. Suddenly more clergy came to visit and Pacual did not have enough chicken to go around. Knowing he didn’t have Jesus’ ability to multiply fish and bread, Pascual scurried about the kitchen adding everything to his sauce he had at his fingertips. A
pinch of chocolate, some coffee grounds, a stray vegetable, whatever. With this stroke of genius, he became the inventor of mole!
The recipes for mole, much like chocolate chips cookies, have varied over time. However, don’t be like my mother and keep your cooking successes a secret. Part of the fun of cooking is seeing what some else will add to up the flavor!