Hot Chocolate Festival 2014 - Mink - Paula Dean White Trash TrainWreck

January 31st (today!) is the last day to try Mink's first Hot Chocolate 2014 entry, "Paula Dean White Trash TrainWreck": 70% dark chocolate ganache with condensed milk, salted kettle chips, and vanilla whipped cream. Served with a 72% dark chocolate wafer.

Don't fret if you miss it, however. The concoction is basically Mink's drinking chocolate on the bottom, a pile of potato chips (which weren't quite salty enough, I thought), and whipped cream on top.

The separate layers contrasts it from many other Hot Chocolate Festival entries where you get a novel mixture of ingredients (which sometimes flies and sometimes flops). It is also a tall enough composition that you will likely make a huge mess if you try to stir it all together without eating some chips and whipped cream first. Sadly, none of the combinations of whipped cream, chips, and drinking chocolate were particularly interesting.

The saltiness of the chips may have been meant to bring out more flavour from the chocolate somehow -- salt is known to enhance flavour in various ways. A "trick" a friend of mine taught me was to add a tiny pinch of salt to coffee. It didn't really work for me, though. If you try this, let me know.

If this one passes you by, just go on a regular day and ask for their heady drinking chocolate.If anything deserves the name "hot chocolate", this is it. It really is like literally drinking chocolate. Not quite so thick that you need to spoon it up like a yoghurt, but definitely thick and rich. Every other hot chocolate you get just about everywhere else will taste unfairly watered down.
Here are some tips:

Ask for a full glass of water. Preferably on the hot side of warm. The richness (not so much the sweetness) of the drinking chocolate can actually ruin your experience with being too rich. The adage of too much of a good thing can, in fact, apply to chocolate.

You can try sharing it. That is a better idea given the richness-to-portion ratio, but this can be tricky. See if you can get a fat straw from Mink, or just bring your own.

Ask for a spoon. To help with the chips floating around. If you can't get one, go to the counter of coffee supplies and get one or two of the wooden stirring sticks. Either snap one in half, or use two. Hold them together so you have a makeshift fork. No, don't stab the chips. Scoop them out.
Watch your top. A drip of chocolate on a light-coloured shirt or dress can tattoo you for the rest of the day.

$8 + GST = $8.40.
Drinking chocolate is worth a try if you haven't had drinking chocolate before. Might as well do it now during the Hot Chocolate Festival.

Trafalgar's European Explorer 2006 memoirs part 3

A picture from my 2006 trip, a Trafalgar 's bus tour, on an itinerary called the European Explorer. I can't remember why I had this couple in the picture, but I do vaguely remember this to be in London, on the first official day of the tour group getting together. Their insistence on my helping them take a picture caused the three of us to be late getting back to the bus. The local tour guide had a "rule" about lateness, that we had to buy chocolate to share with everyone. As it turned out, later in the trip, on at least two occasions, we were stuck on the highway on either a long commute or a traffic jam, and I had chocolate and chocolate-covered marzipan to share. About the chocolate-covered marzipan -- Apparently we were in Austria just as they were celebrating Mozart's birthday with special marzipans wrapped in foil with the famous composer's picture. I'm pretty sure it was Mirabell Mozartkugeln . Anyway, there were enough to go around the en

Trafalgar's European Explorer 2006 memoirs part 10

The last of my pictures (at least the ones that survived the cheesy disposable cameras) from my 2006 trip, a Trafalgar 's bus tour, on an itinerary called the European Explorer. Below is the obligatory group photo. Not sure everyone's in it, actually. I'm pretty sure this one was taken by the tour director, Mike Scrimshire as I'm in the back row, on the right side.

Trafalgar's European Explorer 2006 memoirs part 9

More assorted couples on my 2006 trip, a Trafalgar 's bus tour, on an itinerary called the European Explorer. An American couple who joked about being from "the land of the giants" -- and with good reason, because both of them were really tall! A cute Jewish mother-daughter pair who ducked out part-way to divert to Israel. I vaguely remember the issue of the daughter being an orthodox Jew was highlighted in France when, to make things easy, she just declared herself vegetarian for the wait staff. I also remember there was some logistics error in France because our party size was way underestimated or simply relayed incorrectly, and there was a shortage of food at dinner. Dessert came as an unopened can of yogurt. It did not seem like they tried to make it up to us later, either. Plus there was smoking every which way in France, and I had a helluva time with that. We were also in a hotel that seemed tucked away in the burbs, and not walking distance from anythin

Life in the Lower Mainland (BC, Canada)

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