make a cup of coffee, and then add a packet of cocoa mix, (no milk or sugar), top with whipped cream and caramel sauce...delish! :)

a 'baby'- shot of gin, shot of apple juice

SAHLEP

In Winter Try This !

In Turkey i learned from my wife the tradition of drinking orchids in winter.

Sahlep is made from the dried powdered roots of a mountain orchid.

The orchids used for sahlep grow in the mountains of southern Turkey (Orchis Latifolia / Orchis Anatolica). Their tubers are pulled from the ground while the plant is flowering and then they are boiled (in water or milk) before being dried and then ground into a powder.

Later it is mixed with steaming hot milk and sugar ....and topped off with a dusting of cinnamon.
It is served as a very thick drink.

I find it quite delicious.

silent lotus
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and for those who enjoy to know more
http://www.botanical.com/botanical/mgmh/o/orchid13.html

Most of the Orchids native to this country have tuberous roots full of a highly nutritious starch-like substance, called Bassorin, of a sweetish taste and with a faint, somewhat unpleasant smell, which replaces starch as a reserve material. In Turkey and Persia this has for many centuries been extracted from the tubers of various kinds of Orchis and exported under the name of Sahlep (an Arabian word, corrupted into English as Saloop or Salep), which has long been used, especially in the East, for making a wholesome and nutritious drink of the same name.

Before coffee supplanted it, it used to be sold at stalls in the streets of London, and was held in great repute in herbal medicine, being largely employed as a strengthening and demulcent agent.{ a substance used to soothe irritated or inflamed skin or internal parts of the nose, mouth or Throat} The best English Salep came from Oxfordshire, but the tubers were chiefly imported from the East.

 Charles Lamb refers to a 'Salopian shop' in Fleet Street, and says that to many tastes it has 'a delicacy beyond the China luxury,' and adds that a basin of it at three-halfpence, accompanied by a slice of bread-and-butter at a halfpenny, is an ideal breakfast for a chimney-sweep. Though Salep is no longer a popular London beverage, before the war it was regularly sold by street merchants in Constantinople as a hot drink during the winter.

You've got me thinking, Jess, and I know it's a well-stirred talking point, of the the daunting cosmopolitan choice of hot beverages available in cafes nowadays, especially coffee.  I've been taking adventurous leaps though lately at my local supermarket hot-beverages self-service dispenser.  At home, I'm an instant with milk man.  Tomorrow when I go there, I'm seriously considering pressing the 'Latte' button.

That drink you've prescribed sounds delish indeed.  Being sweet-toothed, I might just try that.