The Christmas Bucket List #2: Drink Hot Chocolate

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“All you need is love. But a little chocolate now and then doesn’t hurt.”
Charles M. Schulz

Anything related to food is right up my street, especially when it comes to Christmas – all the flavours and treats are a huge part of my festive memories. And one of the things I loved most coming from South Africa and living in the Northern Hemisphere is that winter was the perfect excuse to order a hot chocolate at every opportunity. My absolute BEST was in Italy, where the drinking chocolate is thick and smooth – you pretty much have to eat it with a spoon. Although drinking it through a metal straw at Harrods (where the molten chocolate flows through tubes around you, Willie Wonka style) or in Switzerland with a dollop of ice cream, or even just at the local Starbucks also come to mind as happy chocolate drinking memories. So of course hot chocolate had to be on Isobel’s list in The Christmas Bucket List too. In fact, because she’s a smart girl, she also drinks it at every opportunity (calories don’t count for book characters, obviously). This year, I decided to get a bit adventurous and see what sort of recipes I could find on Pinterest for hot chocolate to sweeten up my festive season. And wow, there were a lot! Here are the three I think sound most delicious, and I’ll be whipping them up soon! Will so be posting a pic and some nomnom noises on Twitter when I do…

Which hot chocolate recipes will you be trying out?

Image credit: 79 Ideas (photography: radostina)

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The Christmas Bucket List #1: Buy & Decorate a Real Tree

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First on the list is a tree. Back at home, my parents have several Christmas trees, commissioned from local craftsmen, fashioned from wire and beadwork or carved from driftwood. They don’t need decorating, you just sort of set them up and admire them. They’re beautiful and unique, but growing up, I longed for the smell of evergreen filling the house.

From The Christmas Bucket List

Buying a real tree might be first on the list for Isobel, the heroine of The Christmas Bucket List, but the truth is that I’m more of a fake tree girl myself. Of course, I adore the smell of fresh pine, and they always look so pretty, but I hate seeing sad, dying trees abandoned in the streets after Twelfth Night. It reminds me of that Friends episode where Phoebe tries to get all the ugly trees in the tree lot to fulfil their Christmas destiny instead of facing the woodchipper.

The other reason is that in my family, we have a (fake) tree that has been around FOREVER, and is very much part of the whole holiday tradition for me. When I was just a small girl, my dad bought it from a company that usually sold trees to shops for display, because it was the only place he could find one that was big enough to hold the gigantic collection of decorations and baubles that came from both sides of the family. We have glass balls that my grandparents brought with them from Italy, that have been hung for generations, little angels from my mother’s mother, and of course loads of decorations that we’ve bought ourselves over the years. The end result is pretty amazing – even if it does take hours and hours to do. Underneath it all, there’s a traditional Italian presepio, with the full nativity scene as well as a village teeming with people, a lake, mountains and tiny houses.

The tree never goes up before 16 December, when the whole family spends the day pulling boxes out of storage, sorting through boxes packed with sawdust and cotton wool, and trying to find gaps for just one more wooden santa or Venetian glass icicle. When it’s done, it’s absolutely magical – even if it doesn’t actually smell of evergreen.

Image credit: Bon Appetit Magazine (stylist: Susie Theodorou)

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