Comfort Drink

It's still cold, rainy, and wet outside. I'm not complaining! I love change and, since I've spent pretty much most of my days living in Southern California, this comfy, dreery weather is a welcomed change for me!

I decided to join the masses and make myself a mug of cocoa as I gear up for the peace that awaits as the children nap. (I'll have a fire going, shortly.) But I used all-natural, healthy ingredients and, of course, fair trade chocolate. So I'll take my cocoa less the guilt, please!

There's not much to this story aside from the ingredients I chose. I'll tell you about them and let you find the ratios that work for you.

The chocolate comes from Sweet Earth Chocolates. You can find fairtrade cocoa powder at other places, but I buy a lot of my chocolate from this place because it's the best place for chocolate chips. I did recently see them at Sprouts, but they were very expensive. Fairtrade is very important to me and I think it should be to you, too. Chocolate is a luxury, so I would first do without than buy something I don't need that is tainted by the blood of child slavery. If you'd like to know more about this, you can check out Stop the Traffik for starters.

I use raw milk for drinking, but it's very expensive. Trader Joe's has unhomogenized milk that is pasteurized, so I sometimes mix it with the raw stuff and use it for cooking. There's just no sense paying $16/gallon for unheated milk that I'm just going to be heating up anyway! If you can't afford either option, definitely look for milk that is not ultra-pasteurized. Ultra-pasteurization is a violent process that heats milk to 280 degrees for 3 minutes, the end product devoid of important enzymes and nutrients we drink our milk for. Ordinary pasteurization heats milk to 180 degrees for 30 minutes. It's not a great option, but it beats ultra-pasteurized hands-down! If you want to learn more about the subject of pasteurization (why we started pasteurizing milk, what it does to the product, the benefits of raw milk, how to determine if your unpasteurized milk is safe, etc.) check out the Real Food book on my bookshelf. She's dedicated a lot of her book to this topic.

And, of course, our good friend agave nectar. Agave is an all-natural sweetener that does not raise your blood sugar. There are other appropriate sweeteners you can use: pure Grade B maple syrup with it's multitude of nutrients, and raw honey which has anti-viral properties among other things. I usually choose agave, though, since it doesn't affect blood sugar.