An Honest Quandery

I like really like really really like chocolate. Before my tea days, before the brief stint when I drank hot chocolate-vanilla cappuchinos from the crappy coffee machine in the dining hall (they were pretty delicious but I shudder to think about what I was consuming), I would drink hot chocolate. It was warm and delicious and very easy to make. My parents gave me a huge container of hot chocolate mix when I moved in my freshman year.

It's not Paleo in the slightest.

In the evenings, I roam through the apartment searching for a piece of chocolate. I long for that sweet little bite right before bed. Hot chocolate would be an easy, obvious solution. It would also help me hydrate more, I could drink it at work, and it's chocolate. Er, chocolate flavored. It would stop the craving and halt the evening hunt.

A few days ago I found out about Choffy. It's a drink similar to coffee, but made with cacao nibs instead of coffee beans. It's recommended you make it in a French press, but it can be made in a regular coffee maker too.

I own neither of those products, having sworn off coffee after I had nasty, nasty caffine jitters from 2 cups of chocolate vanilla cappuchinos during a final my freshman year. (It wasn't even all that much caffine! The drinks were half hot chocolate and half whatever the vanilla cappuchino mix was. It was the equivalent of a cup of hot chocolate and a cup of cappuchino. Clearly my body does not handle caffine well.) It has tons of antioxidants (more than blueberries, believe it or not) and no caffine (a plus for me!). It does however have theobromine, which is a more mild stimulant than caffine, but it's still a stimulant. It sounds like I'd have to get a French press and a 12 oz bag if I wanted to try it, but that would be a waste of money if I didn't like it.

EDIT: just found out Choffy can be brewed in a tea infuser for 5 minutes! Now to find somewhere I can try a cup before splurging on a $15 bag...

But I do love tea.

Tea was the next logical step after the coffee fueled final debacle. I didn't like tea, really at all, before college. Super A got me to drink it. I started drinking black tea, since sometimes I needed the caffine first thing in the morning. There's one that tastes just like a cookie, it's incredible. Usually I have the fruit infused black teas, or this really yummy vanilla caramel one that tastes the way coffee smells (yes I still really like the smell, residual from childhood and a mother who drinks coffee every single morning). I'll even drink chamomille and herbal cinnamon apple teas now. I'm starting to run out of the flavored ones, though, so I'm looking for more to replace them. Generally, I'd like to find fruity or chai teas, but then I stumbled on this:

It's rooibos tea with chai spices and chocolate pieces. I'm not sure how Paleo it is, but it's caffine free and certainly better for you than hot chocolate mix. Cha Tea Company sells the blend in the picture above and Urbane Tea Company sells a chocolate hazelnut blend (also caffine free as it's made with honeybush leaves). They both come out to $6.00 for 2 oz. I imagine Cha's tastes cinnamony and chocolatey while Urbane's might taste like liquid Nutella. I'm not sure which one sounds better, so I might just have to get a bit of both (as well as more of the blueberry tea I'm drinking as I write this).

Chocolate cravings satisfied?