Hot Cocoa Mix
Mix and then sift before funneling into clean dry jars for gift giving and holiday sipping. To serve, use 3 1/2 tablespoons of dry mix to 1 cup of hot water.
What are you making for holiday gifts?
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For approximately the next month, I will not be in my own kitchen. This means that I am eating incredibly simply. Not pasta simply. Not really even sandwich simply. I’m talking about toast simply.
But that doesn’t mean that life has to get too dull. There are a lot of things you can do with a piece of toast.
For one, there’s the Biery Cinnamon Toast Technique. In Paul’s family, they treat cinnamon toast like garlic bread, and put it under the broiler so that the cinnamon sugar gets a bit bubbly and caramelized. Isn’t that genius? Or does everybody do that, and I was just incredibly deprived for those first sad Paul-less years of life?
If you’re in the mood for something more savory, might I recommend cheese toast? Employing that same technique, spread with butter, sprinkle with that cheese mix, and place under the broiler or in the toaster oven until lightly browned. This is the perfect accompaniment to tomato soup. Paul made a huge batch of the cheese powder last month, and it’s been gone for weeks.
There’s always avocado on toast. Depending on how much you love it, and how much avocados cost in your part of town, smash more or less a half an avocado on a big slice of multi-grain sourdough. Sprinkle with salt and pepper and a squeeze of lemon if you have it, mash that stuff into the avocado, and eat.
I am a lover of variety, but still, there were years that I ate almond butter and apricot jam on toast every single weekday. It’s just that good. And goes perfectly with a big cup of milky coffee.
And you, how do you spread it?
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Despite my best pioneer woman intentions, more often than not you will find one or two open plastic tubs of Trader Joe's animal crackers in my pantry. The kid loves them. I find them a bit dull, but wearing chocolate boots... well now, that's another story. Then, they're both adorable and delicious.
I imagine the "recipe" is fairly obvious, but here it is none the less: chop up a few squares of chocolate (I used 5 squares of Trader Joe's 72%) and microwave until melted (for me that was 1 1/2 minutes on 50% heat). Dip animals. Let cool until hardened on wax paper or a silpat mat.
Now, I am resisting the urge to set up a miniature parade route through my kitchen. Really, I have more important things to be doing. I swear.
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Phew. We're here. (In Shreveport, Louisiana - my mama-in-law's home town and our home for the next three months.) And today I would like to tell you that we would not have made it without emergency candy. In the days leading up to our trip, as I packed a toddler and most of a house on a cross country flight with a stop-over in Houston to change onto a tiny prop plane to take us to the 10th largest North American city in terms of land mass (woof this place is sprawling), there were some moments there, some moments where I found that I could... just... not... move... forward... without... candy. And while the boy slept or just turned his head, I managed to hunt down and finish off every last little stray box of Halloween treats. When that emergency stash was depleted, I turned to chocolate chips, but it just wasn't enough. And thus, emergency candy was born.
Take a blob of peanut butter (as much as you need, for my part this was about 2 Tablespoons). Add enough powdered sugar to blend the peanut butter into a firm dough (this is between one and one and a half times the amount of peanut butter - so start with 2 Tbsp, and add more as needed). Blend with a fork, as I said, into a firm dough. You will have to lightly knead with your finger tips as the dough becomes stiff. Now pinch off a piece of this dough, and just go ahead and eat it if this is a true candy emergency. If you can hold off for approximately two seconds, then roll that pinch into a ball, flatten it into a disk, press a chocolate chip or a cheerio into the middle, fold up the sides, and roll again into a ball. Repeat with remaining dough.
So, as I said, we're here. Thanks to the candy. Expect this blog to continue as before, with perhaps a slight southern accent. Now, if anyone knows where I can find organic and local fruit and vegetables in the Shreveport area, please share, we're slightly malnourished around here. No thanks to the candy.
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