| Tea and chocolate
Chocolate's relationship with coffee has too long been monogamous. Sure, they make for happy mouth companions, but in this tiny little space, I want to tell you that if you've never tried eating a bit of chocolate with your tea, you must. Seriously. I confess that I did not hit on this idea myself. It was pitched onto my desk by some creative thinker at San Francisco Chocolate Company, makers of all manner of chocolates, including tins of delicate, meltingly rich chips that are just the right size for eating with tea. My instructions were to boil a pot of water and brew cups of chai, black and green teas, then to enjoy each tea with a specific type of chocolate. I did and I was bowled over by the balance I discovered between the teas and the chocolate. The white chocolate seemed to smooth out the grassy edges of the green tea.
Surge in tea, apparel exports
COLOMBO: The trade deficit in July narrowed 35.1 per cent from a year earlier to 225 million dollars in July as clothes and tea exports surged, according to official data released yesterday. July imports rose 6.2 per cent to 915.5 million dollars year-on-year while exports climbed 33.9 per cent to 690.5 million dollars, driven by higher sales of clothes, tea and vegetable cooking oil, the Central Bank of Sri Lanka said. For the January-to-July period, the deficit has shrunk 15.6 per cent from a year earlier to 1.8 billion dollars, helped by a 3.9 per cent drop in the import oil bill, the bank said. The fall in the oil bill in the seven-month period has been helped by price hedging which the Government introduced in February. A jump in international oil prices has strained the economy which has no crude oil reserves of its own.
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