Sweet Tooth

at the beginning. Those who are new to fixing up cars or close up magic or cross fit can be downright zealous about their latest obsession to anyone and everyone who would listen to them. People like Simeon style Ets Born and raised by a poor shepherd family in Turkey in three d Simeon got way into Christianity when he was only thirteen years old. The Roman Empire had officially adopted the religion less than a hundred years before, so many folks were just discovering it for the first time.

Simeon had been entranced by a sermon on the Beatitudes, and only a few short years later he left his family to join a monastery. Now, Simeon didn't do anything halfway. If he was going to adopt Christianity as his own personal religion. Then he was going to go all in, which he did. He took it so seriously and lived in such an austere and pauper like manner that even

the other monks thought that he had gone overboard. For example, Simeon once hold up in a small hut, where several monks eventually discovered him unconscious with palm fronds wrapped around his midsection as a form of self punishment. They tended to his wounds, but they didn't believe that he would fit in with the rest of the community, and so

they asked him to leave the monastery for good. Shunned by the people who should have accepted him, he traveled to a small hermitage and gave up eating and drinking for lynt. When he finally emerged still alive, the people believed that it was a miracle, and Simeon had gained a following. He set out on his own, doing the best he could to tamp down his physical urges and live the life he believed God wanted him to, and the more he did so, the more that others wanted

to learn from him. They followed him wherever he went, asking for advice and help with their problems, but Simeon needed peace and quiet, so he climbed what is known today as the Sheik Barakat mountain and found himself a modest dwelling in a narrow space, just big enough for one person himself. Sadly, even that wasn't far enough away for him to go. It didn't take long for his disciples to track him down and harass him for answers

and prayers. Simeon didn't have any time for the studying and praying that he needed to do for himself, so he kept walking until he stumbled across a pillar in the town of Telenisa in Syria. He climbed up the pillar and laid down a platform on which he sat all day and night. Local children often climbed up to give him bread and goat's milk to keep him fed. It was also believed that a pulley system was devised so that he could raise and lower the necessary sustenance himself.

The Christian elders who lived nearby heard about Simeon's life on the pillar, and they didn't get it. They wanted to make sure that his particular brand of asceticism was being practiced for the right reasons, so they met him and ordered him to come down. If he refused, then they would go up there and get him by force. But if he relented and came down voluntarily, then he could stay. He agreed to humbly vacate the pillar, and the elders were satisfied, so they let him remain where

he was. But he didn't stay up there for long. He wasn't just a hermit. He was more like a hermit crab, constantly looking for larger pillars to accommodate his needs. His first pillar measured about ten ft tall by the time he was done, though his final pillar reached a soaring height of fifty feet. He called those pillars home for the next thirty seven years. They were where he prayed, fasted,

and eventually died. His body was found by one of his disciples, hunched in prayer, and soon taken down to be buried just a short distance from the pillar. So there you have it. St. Simeon Stylides may not have been understood by Christian leaders and elders, but those who followed his teachings certainly believed in his methods. After his death, other ascetics started living their lives high above the earth

on similar structures. Perhaps they believed they could get closer to God that way, or maybe, like Simeon, they just needed a break from all the noise down below. Everyone has a comfort food, something they indulge in when the world has gotten them down or the work they has been too long. It might be a banquet of tomato soup and grilled cheese sandwiches on a chilly fall day, or a slice of chocolate cake as a midnight snack.

But unlike most of us, one woman had a comfort food that she invented for herself, and that creation changed the world. Ruth was born in East Walpole, Massachusetts, in nineteen o three. After attending a local household art school, she became a high school home economics teacher, where she taught students, mostly women, how to cook and so. In addition, Ruth worked in a hospital as a dietitian, and even

as a service director for a local utility company. She kept busy, eventually marrying her husband, Kenneth in n and having two children, a boy and a girl. However, in nineteen thirty, Ruth and Kenneth jumped headfirst into a brand new endeavor. Perhaps she wanted to be more than a homech teacher or a hospital dietitian, or maybe she just wanted the joy of working for herself. Whatever the reason, the couple purchased a Cape Cod style tourist lodge in Whitman, Massachusetts,

about forty minutes from where she was born. It had originally been built in eighteen seventeen as someone's personal home, but because of its location between Boston and New Bedford, it took on other rolls. After a while, it became a kind of rest stop where travelers would pay their tolls, feed their horses, and even have a bite for themselves before heading back out on the road. But Ruth and Kenneth had other ideas for their new business. It would

be a restaurant with Ruth as its head chef. She took care of all the recipes to both the main courses and the desserts, which wasn't a problem when the place first opened they only had seven tables, but soon word got out about some of her signature dishes. There was her sea foam salad ring made with lime green gelatine, and her delicious lobster entrees, but it was her desserts that really kept people coming back. She made killer pies,

the Boston cream and lemon meringue. There was also Indian putting, a custard dish that dated back to New England's colonial days, when the indigenous people's first introduced colonist to corn. She eventually published a cookbook titled Ruth's Tried and True Recipes, and also started feeding her new v I P customers, including US Ambassador Joe Kennedy, Sr. The father of future

American President John F. Kennedy. But aside from the pies and the puddings, there was one dessert that Ruth truly treasured, her cookies. You see, she was always trying to expand upon her existing confectionery offerings. The restaurant already sold a thin butter Scotch cookie, which was served with ice cream. It was a fan favorite, but Ruth was unsatisfied. She wanted to give the people something more, so around ninety eight, she and her assistant Sue started testing a new kind

of cookie made with pecan drop cookie dough. The recipe was fairly basic, and Ruth wondered if she could bake different types of cookies using the same dough. She looked in her pantry for some baker's chocolate to drop into the mix and came up empty. Then she remembered she had been given some semi sweet chocolate bars by Andrew Nestley of the Nestle Company. She chopped up one of the bars into tiny pieces and tossed it all into the dough, expecting the pieces to melt as it baked. Instead,

the chocolate held its form. Ruth and Sue had just invented the chocolate chip cookie and it was an instant hit, which meant Ruth was going to need a lot of chocolate, so she reached out to NESTLEYE and worked out a special deal. They were allowed to print her cookie recipe on the packaging of the chocolate bars, and in return,

she got free chocolate for life. Nestley even started making special chocolate chips just for baking cookies, and the company still prints Ruth's recipe on packages of their chips to this day, and it still bears the name of the restaurant that Ruth first sold her cookies at, the Toll

House in in Whitman's, Massachusetts. Countless others have tried to improve upon that recipe over the years, adding in all sorts of other ingredients like toffee, caramel, and marshmallows, but none have ever come close to the ouey, gooey chocolate e goodness of Ruth Wakefield's original toll House chocolate chip cookie. I hope you've enjoyed today's guided tour of the Cabinet

of Curiosities. Subscribe for free on Apple Podcasts, or learn more about the show by visiting Curiosities podcast dot com. The show was created by me Aaron Manky in partnership with how Stuff Works. I make another award winning show called Lore, which is a podcast, book series, and television show, and you can learn all about it over at the World of Lore dot com. And until next time, stay curious, Ye