Some Like It Hot!

I’ll pause for a second to let you enjoy today’s musical selection

What can I say? I’m a child of the late 70’s/early 80’s and yes my musical taste at moments can be questionable but there are times when a phrase or a word will trigger the memory of a song and then I just can’t help myself. In this case the phrase is “Some like it hot”

But today isn’t about classic 80’s rock no matter how awesome it is, today I need a moment to whine about the weather, again! For the past several mornings I’ve awaken at the lovely hour of 5:30 am to temperatures in the low 40’s! Mornings like this make it darn near impossible to get out of bed, but at the same time I love wrapping myself up in my favorite cozy sweater and putting on my thickest wool socks. Last week I discussed the shift in my culinary cravings. This morning I was two seconds away from whipping up a bowl of hot oatmeal for my oldest daughter instead of letting her indulge in her favorite store-bought cold cereal (organic of course!), I also picked up a store-bought bag of gingersnaps (favorite Fall cookie) while out shopping with my 85-year-old grandmother. But for me these cooler mornings mean one thing, hot chocolate. Before there was Bourbon my beverage of choice was hot chocolate. My 87-year-old grandfather loves sharing the story of how at 3 years of age I was addicted to “quick” as in Nestle’s quick. My mother would already be at work when I rose and I would toddle downstairs, climb into my high chair and wait patiently as my grandfather warmed milk in a saucepan and stirred in the “quick”. He would pour it into my favorite cup, set it in front me and wait for me to take my first sip and nod my approval. Apparently I could be quite the task master when it came to the “quick“, I knew the taste well  and would not take kindly to any substitutions.  There’s even a secondary tale of someone melting a piece of chocolate in milk when discovered that the house was all out of “quick”.

I eventually outgrew “quick” but not Hot Chocolate as a whole. There were those years where Swiss Miss was de rigueur and then I remember experimenting with a combination of unsweetened cocoa powder, cane sugar and non-fat dry milk. But these days my cocoa of choice is made with TAZA Mexican Chocolate discs. One wedge melted in 6-8 ounces of grass-fed organic whole milk and whipped until frothy equals pure perfection.