This recipe came to us from Liam Bates in Vancouver, who occasionally contributes travel articles to GenevaLunch:

Put mint leaves in a tea ball and let them steep in milk as you heat it for hot chocolate. Pour the milk over the dark chocolate powder, preferably Swiss!

So I gently lifted a branch of peppermint out of the January 1 snow this morning, pulled off the dried leaves and tried it.

I discovered that at least with dried leaves you need to heat the milk more slowly than I usually do with a speed heat burner. But the dried leaves are remarkably potent, keeping all their mintiness, so this was a wonderful winter garden surprise, even better than finding healthy sage leaves under the snow on Christmas Eve, just in time for the turkey’s bread and onion stuffing.

Verdict on the peppermint hot chocolate: definitely delicious!