Now That We've Covered Cheese, Let's Talk About the Most Important Food Group.

I'm not sure I've ever seen a more beautiful sight - those two vats are full. What you are seeing is the entrance to Harrod's "Chocolate Bar". Now, I love a good cup of coffee, but if this were in my neighborhood, I don't think I would give Peet's a backwards glance (just as long as I could get it at the grocery store still - I'm not totally disloyal). Of course, I would probably weigh 400 pounds and be broke (our two cocoa's and a shared piece of cake were 11+ pounds - around $20) - but it might just be worth it.

There was an entire menu of differing types of cocoa drinks, I had the orange equatorial (dark chocolate and orange oil) and SB had the toffee cocoa (good, but he likes things so sweet that your teeth vibrate and this may have done the trick), but there were others - Venetian cocoa, cocoas with milk or water, spicy cocoas, you name it. OH, and the desserts! We opted for a vanilla pound cake with that ooey Devon cream they have there so as not to mask our drinks, but there was a LOT of chocolate in that little space.

Now, look up at he photo on the right...Can you see what she is troweling out of that pitcher? That is one of the bases for one of the cocoa's - I'm not sure which one - and it is the consistency of really thick cake frosting. All that's added to that is a little bit of steamed milk or water. This is truly part of heaven. Or maybe purgatory, given the prices.

After Harrod's, we went on the hunt for a little shop called Rococo. You might think that after Harrod's we'd had enough chocolate for one day. Nope. Rococo is definitely a must stop on the chocoholics trip to London. They had all sorts of goodies, including filled chocolates (I tried the gin and lemon cream - yummy) and the free sample of drinking chocolate that was served up as we entered the store. It worked, I bought the dark chocolate/black pepper version. Then the shopgirl brought out the big guns - samples of all the different flavors of the Organic Artisan Bars - they had everything: Lavendar, Rose, Rosemary, Persian Lime and Basil, Arabic Spices, Cardamon, Chili Pepper, Pink Peppercorn, Earl Grey and one of my favorites, Sea Salt and Milk Chocolate ( a big jump for someone who's been a confirmed dark chocolate lover since childhood - Ok, I was a weird kid) and they come all dressed up in pretty little wrappers. We managed to walk out of the store with only twelve of those. I'm thinking maybe I have a little issue with the chocolate. Oh well, I'll make sure none of it goes to waste - and even share with the Sweet Babboo - if he can find where I've hidden it.