today, we had our conference dinner at an italian restaurant called l’espresso. the atmosphere was nice and the food was good, and after the dessert espresso, coffee or cappuccino was served. i asked for hot chocolate itself, and the waiter said he has to check whether that is ok, since they use high quality chocolate which is a bit more expensive. that already sounded good, so i told him in case of doubt i’d pay for that one myself. some minutes later, i got my chocolate (without having to pay for it), and i must say, it’s the best hot chocolate i ever had. i guess it was made in a similar manner to the one i once produced myself. if i ever come back to toronto, i have to get back to this place :)

• i still don’t understand who would voluntary make hot chocolate with water instead of milk. and why it’s so hard to buy drinking chocolate powder which is not designed for hot water but for milk, may it be hot or cold.
• the taste of water and supermarkets in general seem to suck in north america.
• the difference between europe and north america seems not to be the number of people in a driving car or the amount of cars, but the size of the cars. and the size of the streets.
• sometimes google maps really screws up adresses, or certain ticket sellers fail to tell google maps the correct address. at least, i walked like 25 minutes around until i got an idea where the ticket shop could be (obviously, not where it should have been, i was at the designated point on the map after maybe 15 minutes). then, i had another 10 minutes to finally locate the shop and to find out that it has already closed. i’ll try again tomorrow morning.
• the power plug converter i bought on saturday costed quite a lot, looked really good, is pretty universal and compact, has a good design, but also one bad point: it simply won’t work. great.
• nine inch nails (<3) released another album, the slip, this time 100% for free.

yesterday i tried to make “real” hot chocolate, resulting in the most intense hot chocolate i ever had. i began with 200 gramms of dark chocolate, half a liter of milk, and a bit of sugar.
using the double boiling method, i.e. putting a smaller pot into a bigger pot filled with hot water, i melted the chocolate. when it was mostly melted, i started adding the milk and stirring. then, i added the sugar, and waited until it got hot again. then, finally, i added some chili powder and a bit of creme de cacao.
one last hint of mine is that you shouldn’t try to drink more than one cup of this in a few hours, it’s simply too much chocolate at once :-)

a few days ago, kornel wrote something on chili drink chocolate. it’s really easy: take usual chocolate powder, take chili powder, take milk, mix it, drink it, enjoy it. and, well, it is great. if you take a sip, it first tastes as usual drink chocolate, and then, seconds later, the chili starts burning on your tongue. that’s the kind of hot chocolate i like.