Original Article: http://dartreview.com/archives/2007/12/08/mixology_the_warmer.php
Saturday, December 8, 2007
Prepare a pot of hot chocolate.
Add peppermint schnapps to taste.
Serve in a handled glass.
My usual m.o. is to put myself in situations that are the opposite of cozy. The reasons are both temperamental and related to the need to make money. But that evening as I strolled at my ease through the gloaming, a cozy scene seemed exactly what was called for. Various features of my walk suggested this. Snowflakes were visible in the aura around Christmas lights. I detected the voice of Burl Ives echoing out from a house I passed, which meant they had been playing it an absurdly loud volume. My neck felt very cold and exposed, which put in mind a scarf. Soon, I decided that I wanted the coziest of all possible evenings, an evening so absurdly cozy, so sentimental and treacly, so insulated by reindeer-themed sweaters, so warmed by loudly sipped hot cocoa, so located in front of a roaring hearth, so set to the tune of pop songs from the forties and fifties, and so fanatically fixated on the roasting and peeling of chestnuts that the earth, if it had any taste, would probably split open and swallow me up. I didn’t care. As I arrived at my stoop, a final image occurred to me, that of my trusty pooch conveying my slippers to me using his mouth. But crossing the threshold I saw, instead, a neighbor of mine, a man in all honesty named Bevis, whom, if he hadn’t ended up by chance in the same suburban cluster of culs-de-sac, I would never know or want to know. I remembered in a flash that my wife had talked me into throwing a neighborhood Christmas party. This, I thought, is not what I imagined, a thought I’ve recycled many times. Well, parties like these are the wages of uxoriousness, and crowds are anathema to coziness. These maxims floated through my head as I made my way to the kitchen, where I spied a simmering pot of dark liquid. I dipped a finger. Hm. I drew a cup. Triple hm. I won’t say that this rescued my evening, though in fairness it was beyond rescue. It was certainly the coziest way I’ve ever gotten bombed. The next morning my loving wife yielded up the astonishingly simple recipe, which I give to you here.