A quiet tin of cocoa — lid tight, cool cupboard

The cocoa is already open “for cocoa in the evening” — and the tin stands by the hob without a lid. Easy: by the week the powder takes the smell of steam and onion, in lumps, bitter the wrong way. I shut it tight and put it in a cool cupboard — not above the kettle and not by the oven.

A quiet tin of cocoa — lid tight, cool cupboard. A stock cube tin shut tight is another note; sesame on the shelf its own; sugar by the spoon in baking another story. Here it’s the cocoa after the bag itself: a lid, dryness, cool — not a lecture about “chocolate without sugar”.

I smell honestly before cocoa: paint or damp — into the bin, not into the mug “nobody will notice”. I take a small tin we will finish in a month or two, not a sack above the hob. I’m not reviewing a new brand with a tasting here — it’s about the powder already open at ours.

I don’t need cocoa that sweats in the steam and spoils a cake with a foreign smell. I need a tin from the cupboard from which the mug still smells of cocoa. At yours does cocoa stand shut in the cool — or already open by the hob?