(article, Liz Crain)
In mid-December Nupur, of the St. Louis-based food blog One Hot Stove, was bundling up with her family for a visit to her local chocolatier when the snow started to really come down. Stuck at home but unable to put her hot-cocoa desire aside, Nupur whipped up a dark chocolate ganache cocoa with vanilla extract and cinnamon. After sharing her delicious-looking recipe, Nupur added a note of sustainably minded encouragement: bq. Please make every effort to buy fair-trade chocolate and cocoa. Chocolate tastes so much better when exploitation is not one of the ingredients. Meanwhile, over at McSweeney's, hot chocolate got a metaphorical treatment with The Believer contributor Benjamin Cohen's December piece, "Hot Chocolate is the Loneliest Life." From instant-mix to melted and whisked, hot cocoa is Cohen's metaphor for all things warm and good, while its consumption is a metaphor for blind consumerism and love lost. For those who don't mind a spoiler, here's his concluding tongue-in-cheek paragraph: bq. Sometimes I know it: being hot chocolate is the loneliest, strangest thing. Beverages. We all want to be them. But then, when we get our dreams, we melt. When I'm gone, what's left? Empty mug, love. Nothing but one rich, chocolate-residued metaphor.