Misc Ramblings – Page 26 – a hippie with a minivan

Hot Chocolate…

Or Hot Cocoa… whatever your preference, it is delicious!

I never thought about sharing this recipe because it really isn’t a recipe for me because I have just always made it like this… but I thought of writing it down last night to share because the homemade marshmallows just brought it to another level…

First, I measure my milk by filling the amounts of mugs with the quantities that I will be giving… (I don’t want extra dishes)

So for our family of 5 I add about 5 mugs worth of milk to a saucepan (which is roughly 5 cups, maybe a bit more… )

For each cup/mug worth of milk I add a small Tbsp of brown sugar (I am using a large spoon not an actual measuring spoon)
and then add a heaping Tbsp of Cocoa for each cup of milk… (I love a dark chocolate taste)
then I add 2 tbsp of Vanilla extract (so about 1/2 tsp per cup of milk) and a pinch of salt…
Whisk over medium high heat until the desired temperature and serve.

This hot Chocolate is creamy, dark and has a great vanilla twist to it that I love… it is the perfect treat for a cold day and the boys love coming in from the cold and having this waiting for them…

Last night it added just that extra touch to our evening watching Xmas cartoons and putting up the tree…

And again, served with homemade marshmallows, this is my perfect cup of chocolate goodness…

Nov 30th…

Well, we are the 30th, and today was the day that my oven was supposed to be fixed…

However, I got a call last Friday saying that they just received the parts and they would only get to the repair service next week, so they changed the date to the 8th of December. That will be a full 4 weeks without an reliable oven. Yes, I say reliable because we tried it out a few times since it went out and it has worked and cycled off when it should. However, the problem reoccurred twice so I am quite nervous when I use it so I will be be waiting and will get it fixed before it gives out again.

The new toaster oven is also proving to be a good buy. At the moment I have a chicken on the rotisserie in it and I took a chance to use the oven for potatoes. (since one costs a lot more than the other, I didn’t mind ruining the potatoes as much as ruining a chicken)

So I am still waiting and I can’t wait to have it back to a reliable appliance and make a good batch of bread along with other treats especially with the holidays coming up…

The 30th of November of course also ends NaBloPoMo ’09 and my 30 days of posting are up… I didn’t find this year as hard as I found last year, mostly because I was around home more, but I am happy that I won’t “have” to post every day and instead post when I want to… it did do what I wanted it to do though and gave me back the routine of posting on a more regular basis…

So… Yay!!

Khéna's birthday in pictures…

Making decorations the day before…

and birthday hats the morning of…

Grandmaman (Simon’s mom) brought over a game for the boys to play…

hungry, hungry frogs!

Two of the gifts that we gave Khéna are kitchen/food toys so we brought the toy kitchen in from outside and cleaned it up… both Khéna and Colin had a renewed interest in it and spent quite a bit of time making tea and other treats…

Here are some of the decorations that the boys made the day before… Paper chains are so easy to make and look so nice and festive around the house…

Cake time!! I made my favourite Chocolate cake recipe… (the corners got accidentally squished but no one cared but me)

Khéna was so excited at blowing out the candle and us all singing the birthday song…

Yay!!!!

The two Grandmas with the boys… (my mom is on the left)

Looking at one of the new gifts… (Xavier picked this one out)

Playing with his new Helicopter…

It was really a great day…

The boys played and had tons of fun with their two grandmothers here, we ordered Pizza and had cake and all the presents were perfect for Khéna and we know that he will enjoy them for a long time to come…

It was just a perfect day altogether…

32+ weeks…

My photos from Khéna’s birthday today are uploading and I am heading to bed, so to get my post in for today (only 2 days lefts after this for NaBloPoMo) I will share some pics that Simon took of me today…

It is rare that he picks up the camera without me asking so I was happy to oblige…