Cooking?

The cooking I've been doing recently has primarily consisted of digging through my deep freezer for something I carefully assembled and labeled before November, putting it in the oven for about and hour and hoping it still tastes good enough to eat. Maybe some parents of a 2.5 month old and a 2.5 year old cook, but Dan has traveled enough to be away more nights in 2014 than he was at home, and we had a 5 night hospital stay with Connor that I'll still be reeling from for decades so cooking is just a low priority these days.


But you know what isn't a low priority? COFFEE. Prior to children, we converted to decaf for a while, but that was a brief (laughable) phase and now, when I am feeding Connor at 1 am, or 4 am, or both, all I think about is my beautiful cup of morning coffee. So I went digging into my cabinets and I found this gem, which I believe was a Christmas present in 2007. It is called a cafetera and it makes a beautiful large espresso and I add some condensed milk to it (this is not the time for calorie counting) and it makes me feel better even on the darkest, most sleep deprived of mornings.

And then sometimes in the afternoon, I start thinking about coffee AGAIN, but desperately want to be able to fall asleep at 8:30 pm at night (yes, that is what it has come to), and with the Polar Vortex situation outside, I rediscovered making hot cocoa from scratch. Sometimes I put the spices in, sometimes I don't, but this is the most magical hot chocolate recipe and I hope you enjoy it as much as I do. Even just a cinnamon stick is enough to make it special if you don't have everything else hanging around.

This past Sunday, I had had enough of frozen meals and was able to subdue both kids long enough with Dan's help to dedicate half an hour to making Bacon and Egg Ramen. It was warm, satisfying and just what I needed to face another week of pastas and soups frozen months ago.

Final thought. Did you know Domino's has an app? Never before have I been more grateful to be able to order pizza from my phone.