Like the busy ant I have been readying for winter. After an unseasonably warm September and October, autumn proper has set in with a chill. And so I have been hustling about, buying woolen insoles to tuck into my winter boots, stocking up on extra-rich face cream, and tonight after dinner I climbed up on a chair to extricate my last cherished jar of Green & Black's hot chocolate.

My friend Alison bought my first jar of Green & Black's for me while visiting a few years ago. We were walking through Helmholzplatz when we came across a new chocolate shop, and seeing how thrilled I was she offered to to buy me one thing. After extensive, careful inspection of everything in the small but crowded shop, I settled on the hot chocolate mix. "Organic raw cane sugar, cocoa powder, dark chocolate and vanilla"  –how could I resist? In the crisp March  days that followed a mug became my daily (or twice-daily) pleasure and I polished off the jar in weeks. When I went back to in't Veld I was crushed to learn they no longer stocked the mixture.

And yet I do enjoy a challenge. Over the past few years I have determinedly scouted out Green & Black's hot chocolate in various and sundry places; my current jar is one of four I bought at the Lincoln Center Whole Foods while my friends waited patiently upstairs (no doubt thinking a bit wistfully of the other more thrilling things there were to do in Manhattan). And my next? Well, let’s see how soon I can get to another country with a G&B stockist…