How to drink like a fashionable Ghanaian

Observing the fashionable food trends of Paris is so passe, so the last 100 years of haute cuisine. Everybody's doing it. Why not be a bit more daring and take your drinkable fashion cues from Africa?

Starbucks has a team devoted to dreaming up new beverages. How do they do it? First they dream up what colors will be fashionable next season. And so because orange is trendy, we get the awful orange frappucino that only reminds me of childhood cough medication. When blue is in vogue someone will surely decide that blueberry is a good taste/color to combine with coffee. I don't know about you, but I'm fundamentally uncomfortable about the idea of Calvin Klein dictating my food.

I propose it is time to drink fashionably, not drink your fashion.

Dodge the fashion-week hype and instead take a cutting-edge cue from West Africa. The hottest beverage trend right now in Ghana is all natural, minimally processed hot cocoa beverage. When I say cocoa this is not to be confused with the sugary beverage Midwestern mothers give their children during winter. We are talking about as close to the cocoa tree as you can get without sucking straight on the pods yourself. We are talking about cocoa as the Mayans intended it.

All natural unsweetened cocoa has an incredible rich, adult-like flavor very comparable to the pleasant bitterness in coffee. Best of all, it has great nutritional content that leaves Swiss Miss in the dust. Nearly every morning I have two tablespoons of this "brown gold" with hot water.

Nutritional Information
Serving size: 2 Tbsp

1.5 g fat
0 mg cholesterol
163.8 mg potassium
5.84 total carbohydrates
3.6 g fiber
2.1 g protein
13.8 mg calcium
53.7 mg Magnesium
1.4 mg Iron

Do yourself a great favor and approach the drink the way you would approach a cup of coffee. Disabuse yourself of all images of watery “hot chocolate” from childhood. This is Cocoa as nature intended it, cocoa for adults.

Chances are you will like your natural cocoa roughly the same way you take your coffee. Mix the cocoa powder with hot water, then fix it as you might your coffee. Take care to add less sugar initially, as the minimally processed cocoa is not nearly as bitter as most coffee. I take mine with 1 tsp sugar and 1 Tbsp milk.

If you can find a Ghanaian grocer near you (Makola Market on Wilson St in Chicago) you may be able to purchase some of Hord's Brown Gold.