Homemade Cocoa Heaven.

There are many things I am in love with.

My husband. Winter time. Shrimp and grits. Coffee. Georgia. 

And...

Homemade Cocoa. 

I'm talking winter goodness on steroids. This is all the comfort of snow, pine needles, and fuzzy mittens all rolled into one. It is, like, the best thing that has ever happened to me.

Well, perhaps that is a bit dramatic. But it is pretty dang amazing.

Homemade Hot Chocolate

You will need:

• 1/4 cup maple syrup or sweetener of choice
• 1/8 cup cacoa powder
• 5 cups whole milk
• 1 teaspoon real vanilla extract
• Teeny pinch sea salt

Step One: Mix the sugar, salt, milk, and cocoa in a small saucepan.

Step Two: Heat on medium heat until the mixture turns nice and warm and frothy. DO NOT SCALD THE MILK. Once the mixture starts heating up, just keep stirring it with a whisk to prevent the milk from burning.

Wanna take a swim? I do. I do.

Yum. My belly is so thankful that I drank this. 

There are a lot of things that I choose to do the slower way (like making this from scratch), simply for quality of life. Sometimes, I just want the days to slow down. I want to breath deeply. We can move too fast and be too anxious to move onto our next project. Life just turns into this "go, go, go!" mentality that is focused around meaningless accomplishments and scratching things off our "To Do" list. It's nice to take a step back sometimes and just move slower. It's so easy to buy pre-packaged cocoa mix, but isn't it fun to make something yourself - even if you don't have to? To know you made something from scratch? To spend a few minutes just slowly stirring milk? 

I realize that I may sound crazy. I am okay with that.

My parents recently gifted us with a vintage, coffee grinder. It's cast iron and wood - really beautiful. Every morning now, I hear the crank of the handle and the crunching of the beans as Stuart makes our morning java. It's a little slower than our electric grinder. Doesn't quite get the coffee as fine either. But it's a beautiful sound, far better than the high pitched scream of the electric grinder. So what if it takes 45 extra seconds to grind the coffee? It's a simple, beautiful thing to grind your coffee by hand. I love it. My homestead will have one of these always.

Frothy. Milky. Chocolatey. Vanillay. Christmasy.

Cheers to the good life on the homestead. 

Where time moves a little slower and that's the way we like it.

For other great meal ideas, no matter what your dietary restrictions, check out the meal planning service I use: Real Plans.

Homemade Hot Chocolate

• ¼ cup maple syrup or sweetener of choice
• ⅛ cup cacoa powder
• 5 cups whole milk
• 1 tsp real vanilla extract
• Teeny pinch sea salt

1. Mix the sugar, salt, milk, and cocoa in a small saucepan.

2. Heat on medium heat until the mixture turns nice and warm and frothy. DO NOT SCALD THE MILK. Once the mixture starts heating up, just keep stirring it with a whisk to prevent the milk from burning.