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I likes me a good cup of Postum. Well, not really, actually. What I’m drinking is a tablespoon of Postum with some Girardelli dark cocoa and vanilla flavored creamer. It’s a long story.

A few years back I bought a jar of the stuff in an attempt to find an acceptable substitute for coffee. After the first taste I realized it was in no way an effective substitute for coffee. But if I ever needed something that tasted like liquid toast, I had the hook up.

The jar languished in the bottom of my desk drawer for over a year before I saw a rerun of that Seinfeld episode where George and Jerry wonder why Postum is not a more popular drink. Hey yeah, said I, I have an actual jar of the stuff somewhere. So as a background project at work I experimented with Postum in combination with the other contents of my desk to see if I could use Postum to make a palatable drink. I didn’t just want to throw the Postum out. It had to be good for something, right?

At first I created combinations that simply hid the taste of the Postum, which, while quite yummy, did not seem to satisfy the spirit of the challenge I had set before myself. But the combination of equal parts Postum and dark cocoa mixed with some creamer and a little sugar makes a dandy hot chocolate drink.

You see some substances are just not made to be the dominant flavor. No one downs a glass of Cinnamon, but Cinnamon certainly enhances lots of different drinks. Postum is like that — it’s an accent flavor. It makes things taste, um, “toasty” I guess. Postum provides a dark, rich flavor to help offset the acidic flavors that go into tomato-based recipes like chili and barbecue sauce. I’ve used cocoa and instant coffee for a darker look and taste before, but Postum works in that role too. And it makes a very nice enhancement for a mug of cocoa. There you go.

Postum — one jar every three years. You might just use a bit now and then.