Hope you all enjoyed your holiday season. After “V” we took a break from the “ABC Life“ during the holidays and are raring to go and explore life again, one letter at a time.

New activity: WINTER WARMING

What better way to bring in the New Year – especially with the cold spell we’re experiencing – than to warm ourselves up with some hot chocolate. We saw an article about various places to go and decided to sample three of them.

The first place we chose was Astoria Café and Wine Bar in Addison. This was a cute little place, reminiscent of some of the independent cafés we saw in California, rather than a chain like “someplace” we all know. They did up the place for the winter, so it was quite cozy. The hot chocolate we tried was the Peppermint Hot Chocolate.  We both enjoyed it although it was Laura’s second favorite and Barbara’s least favorite. It had a nice chocolaty flavor, but Barbara was disappointed that the only hint of peppermint was in the small candy cane they served it with.

Next, we went to Frogg Coffee Bar and Creperie in Allen.

For this outing we wanted to try the Azteca Hot Chocolate. Azteca was hot chocolate spiced with cinnamon and cumin.  We were assured by the sales staff that the drink would not be hot spicy, just flavorful. Laura disagreed; she felt it had the least chocolate flavor of the three drinks we eventually tried. Barbara, however, nearly had an orgasm. We thought we were going to hear “I’ll have what she’s having” a la When Harry Met Sally. (We think she’ll sneak back next week).

Finally, we tried the Dark Chocolate Hot Chocolate served by Mud Leaf Café in Plano. We hadn’t been to Mud Leaf yet and boy, the place was hopping. We were lucky to get the last table available. This hot chocolate was very good, Laura’s favorite. Just the right amount of chocolate flavor. The only negative is that, although the price was very reasonable, the cup was very small.

All in all, the tastings were very welcome, and we can tell ourselves that it was for our health since Dark Chocolate is what’s called a MUFA (monounsaturated fatty acid) which enhances heart health an protects against disease. How’s that for a justification!