You sound like you'd enjoy Mexican chocolate drinks, if you get the chance. I once had the chance to try freshly-prepared Mexican hot chocolate -- at a museum,

You sound like you'd enjoy Mexican chocolate drinks, if you get the chance. I once had the chance to try freshly-prepared Mexican hot chocolate -- at a museum, actually, in connection with Day of the Dead festivities -- and it's certainly very different from what one thinks of as hot chocolate most of the time. The drink's kind of like coffee; you can certainly taste the chiles (note: NOT wasabi :) ), and it feels like it could get you drunk if you drank enough of it. Spanish and Hispanic chocolate drinks, from what I understand, are pretty close to the old Mexican style. (Even Nestle's "Abeulita" milk chocolate mix tastes pretty similar, at least to my palate.) There was a reference in Braudel (The Structures of Everyday Life) to an Indonesian Muslim prince who was intoxicated when he drank a chocolate drink that a Spanish embassy served them, and was enraged that they had treacherously given him an intoxicant to make him lose his reason; Braudel is really skeptical of the account, but trying Hispanic chocolate, especially Mexican, makes it sound a lot more plausible...