drinks – zezoo cooks

Duo of Hot Chocolate

american, celebration, chocolate, christmas, dessert, drinks, fall, general announcements, holidays, sweet, winter

Quick and simple recipes to make really decadent White Hot Chocolate and regular Hot Chocolate! Follow along.

The past few months have been exceedingly busy – what with bringing this li’l guy into the world and everything – I haven’t had a whole lot of time to cook, let alone shoot and write up a post! We’ve been making lots of simple meals though, mostly of the hearty, one-pot variety, and given the constant time crunch, I’m learning so much about shortcuts and cooking in small bursts (hello, nap time!), I definitely have the desire to share more in this space.

So, I have made an executive decision to override pre-baby Zezoo, and from here on out, I’ll be sharing whatever I have! I may not have the prettiest pictures, or everything decked out in each one of my 11 identical pinch bowls, or the bandwidth to write cutesy backstories (who is reading those, anyway?), but I will allow myself to share less-than-perfect but still delicious fare!

Starting with these 2 hot chocolate recipes that I make around the holidays – I particularly love the white chocolate one because it is feels more festive to me than regular old hot chocolate. But don’t sleep on this regular hot chocolate below – the addition of cocoa powder and chopped bittersweet chocolate, especially with a pinch of sea salt, makes it totally drool-worthy! Bring on the marshmallows!

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Got GoT?

appetizer, baking, celebration, dessert, dinner, drinks, european, fall, game of thrones, main, pie, pork, salad, savory, themed

Season 8 spoilers ahead! Beware!

There’s nothing I can say about Season 8 of Game of Thrones that a 1000 reviewers haven’t said already. While I didn’t think it was bad enough (as of the penultimate episode) to petition HBO for a “season 8 rewrite”, it does say a lot about the show where the memes are better than the episodes. Before I start grinding my teeth on why they royally messed up Jaime’s arc (turned into a circle) and Brienne’s arc (such a shame especially after the beautiful Knighting ceremony) and so many other arcs (Varys: sidelined then torched! Tyrion: got dumber and dumber! Bran: well, only the weird-wood trees know what he was up to!) let’s talk food! This post is fairly spoiler free.

So many times when I’m watching Game of Thrones, I feel, among other things, hungry! The big feasts, the beautiful tea cakes, the platters of cheeses, all the wine that Cersei drinks, the list goes on! Just as exciting as seeing food from another region, is seeing food from a different time period. You wonder how they measured ingredients, baked bread without any time table or weighing scales, and stuffed and roasted whichever animal they hunted down before being eaten by it.

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“Holi Hai!”

celebration, dairy free, dessert, drinks, grain free, indian, seasonal, vegan, vegetarian, winter

(jump to recipe)

Think “Color Run 5K”. Now multiply by 50,000 and replace “run” with dancing, giggling and frolic. And that’s Holi in India for you! “Holi Hai!” translates to “It’s Holi!” and is the warcry of one of the funnest Indian festivals, usually around the beginning of March, to celebrate the arrival of spring and the triumph of good over evil. Part 1 of Holi is celebrated late in the evening with huge bonfires, where people burn statues of a demon princess. The only “ritual” on the following day (Part 2) is to have fun and lots of it: friends and family visit each other and throw colors on each other, hose each other down with colored water, and other such activities.

IMG_6102(1) — A few of the many colors that will cover the streets of India *(and also some in the United States)*

Music, dancing and good food is involved, as with most Indian festivals.

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