Comfort and Joy

[darkemeralds]

Super Indulgent Hot Chocolate

1. Chop up one Scharffen Berger unsweetened 99% cacao baking chocolate bar and then grind it up in the food processor.
2. Put 4 tablespoons (36 grams) of ground chocolate into a milk-steaming pitcher (or a small saucepan).
3. Add 3 tablespoons of sugar. Vanilla sugar is nice.
4. Add 3/4 cup of whole milk
5. Add 1/4 cup of heavy cream

Steam it with an espresso steamer (or whisk gently over low heat) till it's about 165F/75C and the chocolate is thoroughly melted and blended. Sit down with your feet near a heater and drink it slowly.

Yup, that's 700 calories right there, of which 60% come from fat. It's crazy--a nice modest pot of tea would have had almost the same effect. But once in a while, y'know? Once in a while...




The chocolate-requiring level of frustration was brought on not just by the truly dreary rain, but by my regrettable Android tablet. It's the LG G-Slate, which T-Mobile sold for about ten minutes last summer before admitting that it is a sucky piece of crap and withdrawing it. I'm one of the ten people in the American marketplace dumb enough to have bought one.

So anyway, I finally got to the point with it today where hitting the "factory reset, wipe everything, are you sure??? Really sure???" button seemed like a good idea, and less expensive than throwing the damn thing out into a big puddle and riding over it a couple of times with Eleanor O.

Factory-reset solved the problems that a simple reboot wouldn't touch, but it meant spending a couple of precious Sunday hours reinstalling apps and fiddling around. The Indulgent Hot Chocolate helped quite a bit.





In other news, I've enticed vampirefan to Sherlock! I finally talked her into chatwatching "A Study in Pink" with me, and it was instant fandom love. What's more, watching each ep for the fourth or fifth time through a newcomer's eyes has let me slot all the bits and pieces into place. A lot goes on in those tightly-packed episodes, doesn't it?

We have only "Reichenbach" still to go. And then vampirefan can join the rest of us in the long, long wait for Series Three.

I encourage you, if you know vampirefan, to share the Bendy goodness with her!