A few nights ago, I was watching an old episode of Miss Marple, At Bertram’s Hotel to be exact, and in one scene a maid brought Miss Marple a cup of cocoa in bed. It was served in a dainty tea cup and the whole thought of drinking cocoa in bed from fine china seemed very luxurious. So I tried it the other day. It was glorious. It’s also a way of getting a sweet treat in a pretty limited amount – a tea cup doesn’t hold that much, after all.
It also reminded me of how fondly my aunt Gladys used to talk about her evenings at Bennington College in Vermont. Gladys had studied to be an English teacher at the INPLV in Buenos Aires (where the famed Argentine poet Alfonsina Storni had been one of her professors), and had received a fellowship to do post-graduate studies at Bennington. She taught Spanish there, I think, and lived in the dorms where every evening the girls would be served hot chocolate. I don’t know if they drank it from tea cups, but now I like imagining it being so. She was so extremely fond of reminiscing about her time at Bennington.
Growing up, cocoa was something that only children drunk. It was generally in cold drinks, which we called by the names of the most famous brands, Toddy and Nesquik. Or at least that’s how it was in my house. I don’t remember adults ever drinking cocoa, maybe that made the memories fonder.
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