Addicted to chocolate...Now while I realise its summer for many of you (yes, including those in grey, damp England…), here’s Absolute Vanilla’s Hot Chocolate …
1 very heaped teaspoon of good quality cocoa
10 – 20 g of dark chocolate - I use Lindt 70% - broken into tiny pieces (the amount you use is entirely dependent on how indulgent you feel)
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 tiny pinch of sea salt (there is something about salt that enriches the chocolatiness of chocolate…)
1 mug of milk, rice milk or lactose free milk (I don’t recommend soya milk!)
Sugar to taste, it’s up to you how rich and sweet you like your hot choc.
Put everything into a small pot, whisk well and heat on a medium to high heat for about 5 ½ minutes – but do not allow to boil. Give another good whisk and pour into your favourite mug. Sit down and slurp away.
If you wanted to get fancy, you could add a dash of cinnamon or even a tiny pinch of chili, or alternately a dollop of cream or some marshmallows.
Meanwhile, I once more unashamedly acknowledge being a lousy blogger – but the energies, as you well know, are all directed elsewhere at present. The rewrite is complete and has had its first edit – I’m in the throes of working on the synopsis. I’ve also rewritten the prologue and first chapter of the other manuscript and at the moment, I have a short story that is insistent on spewing itself out. It happens like this. I get hijacked by words. And I’m thinking that I should perhaps start submitting one or two shorts somewhere.
In other news – bear with me, I’m playing catch up here, I had a text/sms from Angela. She is unemployed and the friend (who runs the employment agency for "disadvantaged" people) who had said she would help to find Angela a job, hasn’t done so. The friend and I are “no speak” at present, after I phoned up to find out how things were going and was roundly reprimanded for “interfering”. Hmm, well my view is this: when you raise people’s expectations you take on a load of responsibility. You can’t then turn around and say, “I never made any promises”. You just can’t play with people’s lives like that. Angela, loathe though she is to do so, may well have to go back to the dreadful Pecksniff for work. If any of you have any bright suggestions as to how one might help her in these dire recessionary times – and when xenophobia is raising its stinking head again, then I’d love to hear from you. We’ve offered to buy her and the baby a ticket back to Zimbabwe, because things are starting to improve there, but she doesn’t want to go.
And then talking of things recessionary and dire – I spotted this in today’s press – and it does nothing to fill me with any degree of hope or joy about South Africa's future. The pot, I fear, is simmering and it’s only a matter of time before it boils over.
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