Death by (Hot) Chocolate

I've said it before and I'll say it again: I have a sweet tooth.  I could eat an entire bag of Lindt truffles in one sitting. (No, those are not vegan).  But I don't.  And I think the reason why is because I don't deprive myself of what I want.  And that's probably why I've moved away from vegan to more of a lacto-vegetarian, who eats cheese.  It was too hard to cut it out completely.  So I incorporated it back into my diet in small doses.  Well, that's kind of how chocolate is.  If you eat a little bit every now and then, you won't binge eat because you feel deprived.  I like Caramellos and Hershey's Cookies and Cream bars every now and then, and sometimes I give into them.  But my face always breaks out, and my stomach always hurts, and I'm left with a bit of regret.  So to get some sweetness without all that, I'll go for organic dark chocolate, splurge on a Crev all-natural truffle bar, or grab a chocolate raspberry Luna Bar (which I think tastes exactly like Godiva chocolate raspberry ice cream).  And when it's really cold out, I like hot cocoa.

Instead of spending close to $4 on a Starbucks hot chocolate with soy milk-- and without drinking nearly as many calories-- I like to make my own non-dairy version.  I buy organic chocolate soy milk, nuke it for two minutes, and then add in a teaspoon of Penzey's Hot Chocolate mix, which is sugar, natural cocoa, cinnamon, and real vanilla beans.  If you don't have a mix, you can simply heat up the soy milk.  It doesn't taste as chocolatey, but it still has a nice flavor to it.   Other brands to try: Green & Black's, Dagoba, or Lake Champlain.  Stay away from Swiss Miss, Nestle and the Cold Stone Creamery ones.  They have nonfat dry milk, corn syrup, gelatin (if marshmallows are included), "natural flavors" (which we could mean anything, as we learned earlier), and a bunch of chemicals I can't even pronounce.

If you want to make your own organic, dairy-free mix, here are the ingredients:
-- 1 cup of organic dry powdered rice or soy milk
-- 1/4 cup of quality organic cocoa powder
-- 1/2 cup of vanilla sugar: made with 2 cups of organic, unbleached raw cane sugar and one minced vanilla bean, blended together in a food processor

Mix all ingredients together by hand.  Add 1/4 cup of the mix to one cup of boiling water.