It´s beginning to look like hot chocolate

The Christmas decorations at my parents´ house went up yesterday. We always do it on the 8th, a national holiday, and a very good day to start spreading the Yuletide spirit.

Chez moi all you will see are a couple of rows of small twinkly lights, but my mother´s approach is of the take no prisoners sort. There´s a tree, several kilometers of garlands, mistletoe, and of course a sprawling Nativity scene with at least a hundred figures. There´s a dancing Santa Claus, ribbons for the front door, an advent calendar, and for some reason a pink fish and a glittery monkey have joined the throng.

The thing to do is to listen to silly music, fight over who gets to put the star on top of the tree, and decide who´s luckier, according to the importance of the Nativity figures we pull out first. Then, after all the pieces of newspaper, stray bits of ribbon, broken figurine arms and tiny plastic pigs have all been put in the trash, it´s time for a cup of hot chocolate.

The Spanish version, as sold in bars and chocolaterías to accompany a side of churros is a thick sweet gloop, eaten with a spoon, and tasting only remotely of cocoa. When you buy a bar of chocolate "a la taza" you´re buying something that has a lot of flour or cornstarch, or both. Which is why I advise you to stay clear of the chocolate a la taza bars, and go instead for Lindt´s cooking chocolate, or Valrhona, if you can find it.

I make a frenchified version, made with 1250 ml of whole milk, 250 gr of 70% chocolate, a teaspoonful of cornstarch ( I am a Spanish, after all), a piece of cinammon, and no sugar.
It´s dark, velvety and strong, perfect for dunking sweet cake, biscuits, churros or even roscón. If you have a plateful of migas to go alongside, then you will be very close to heaven.

Thermos therapy: Moroccan tea

I´m not so frantically busy these days. Everyone is shifting gears in September, and they let me alone, mostly. Maybe a couple of calls to say "be ready in october", but by and large I´m only doing magazine work, and that´s quick stuff.
Perfect, you´d say, for sleeping in, watching lots of dvds, and catching up with tomato preserving.
No way. Peace and quiet are out of the picture. They´re tearing the walls of my building to pieces. Ostensibly to install a lift, but mostly to drive me insane, I think.
Two builders start blasting away with a jackhammer at 8 in the morning. At 9 they stop, and spend the day randomly dissappearing for hours and hitting the walls with heavy bludgeons thatmake the building shake. After lunch they get the hardware out again, and drill away to their heart´s content, while you start to mutter darkly and wish bad things. This has gone on for a week now, and by the time a picture fell off the wall today, I´d had enough. I had to leave the house before it crashed about me, or I went on the rampage with a baseball bat.

This is the recipe for a calming yet slightly energetic afternoon.
First, make moroccan tea. Shredding the mint will soothe you enough to stop the murderous thoughts, and pay attention to the proportions.
500 ml. water, 3 tsp green gunpowder tea, a fistful of mint leaves, and 2 tsp sugar, which is less sweet than the usual. Make the tea first, don´t leave it more than 4 minutes or it´ll go bitter. Then mix everything inside a thermos that fits snugly inside your handbag.
Step two, walk briskly. The Retiro is a lovely park, and just thirty minutes away.
Step three, sit down on the grass, and enjoy the sunlight filtered through the trees. Sip your tea.
Step four, a good book. Today I had "Right ho, Jeeves!", by the great inmortal P.G.Wodehouse. All P.G. is the best thing ever, but this particular novel features Anatole the chef, a.k.a. God´s gift to the gastric juices, and is a neat tie-in for a food blog.
Within five sips of this treatment, you should be grinning like a Cheshire cat. Five minutes into the book, you´ll be laughing out loud.
By the time you´re back, the builders will have left, leaving only a trail of dust and debris, and you can enjoy silence until 8.01 a.m.