Goodbye, Swiss Miss...

...hello, made at home hot cocoa.  

I will be the first to admit that some "convenience" measures that have been discovered and followed during my lifetime are nothing short of absurd.  As my age has advanced, so has my skepticism surrounding the hidden ingredients in things like fast food fare, highly processed foods of all sorts on the grocery store aisles and even some of my forever favorites.  Some of my confusion and concern are addressed in Michael Pollan's In Defense of Food, which I finally picked up recently.  His background and detail on the food industry is nothing short of fascinating...and mostly terrifying.  I will spare full details here, but basically, the confusion present with regard to what we eat is not due to a drop in level of human intelligence on the consumer's part.  The industry and all of its components--and there are more than can be counted--has provided a history of shifts and lame hypotheses, leaving a trail of trails that dead end and nothing else.  There has been no continuity and, instead, a new food history of discontinuity.  Food choices have also become a tangled web of nutritional elements and terms rather than whole food options.  I will step down gingerly from my soapbox here and return to the hot cocoa lead.

This past week, I returned from an evening walk, craving hot cocoa.  I had left the house craving ice cream, but alas, fall decided to be present along with some cool temps.  So, I confidently passed by the Dairy Queen on the way home, brainstorming how to avoid leaving my dog in the car (barking like a panicking girl in all of his 65 lb goldendoodle glory and embarrassing me) at the store but also satisfying my hot cocoa craving.  And then, then light bulb shone brightly.  I had cocoa powder, and I figured it would have some hot cocoa concoction available on its label.  I was right!  The recipe?  Two tablespoons of powder, two tablespoons of sugar, a pinch of salt and a cup of heated milk.  I decided to skip the milk, heating mere water in the kettle, and I also skipped the recommended bit of vanilla.  The result?  Pretty much the best, richest, most delicious hot cocoa I've had in my life.  This moment made me pause to consider why, from my youngest years, I ignored that hot cocoa existed outside of those convenient little packets of mix.  I'm sure those tiny little marshmallow-like deposits in some envelopes would have always won out previously, but from here on out?  I will be a throw it together hot cocoa fan.