Rainy Days and Mondays

While most people are complaining about snow, people in Hawaii are complaining about rain.  It has been raining buckets today.  As my Mom would say, when I was a child, "It's duck weather."

Today is, for sure, "duck weather".

Most of the time I love my sunny days and honestly by the end of winter I am totally craving them, but every once in awhile it's nice to have a pouring buckets rainy day.  It's fun. 

You get to pull out all of your warmest, fuzziest, plushiest blankets and snuggle.  I must confess, I am a snuggler.  It's an addiction of mine.  I love fuzzy blankets.  I can't get enough of them.  I have about 5 in my house.  I think that they are all out on my couch right now.  I use all of them no matter what the weather is.  It could be 80 degrees and sunny, but I'll face the fan to blow right on me so that I can sit under a blanket.  I have issues...don't worry, I know this.

So go ahead, curl up under your blanket!  You can curl up and read a book in your nice quiet house...if you are able to sneak in some alone time.  Or you can curl up with your special someone and watch a romantic movie.  Or if you have kids, as I know some of you do, you can curl up with those little nuggets of joy and watch a silly kids movie.  My personal favorite right now is "Despicable Me".

Video treat!  "It's so fluffy!"...sorry I couldn't help myself.

Oooh and don't forget the hot chocolate!  On cold, blistery days such as this one hot chocolate is so essential.  (It's a freezing 73 degrees right now.  Hey, it's going to drop to 64 degrees tonight!  Call me a wienie if you must, but I'm tropical, so that's pretty damn cold to me.)

In honor of the hot chocolate tradition, here is the from scratch recipe that I use:

Hershey's Hot Cocoa

1/2 cup sugar

1/4 cup Hershey's Unsweetened Cocoa

Dash of Salt

1/3 cup hot water

4 cups of milk

3/4 teaspoon vanilla extract

Mini marshmallows or whipped cream

Stir together sugar, cocoa, and salt in medium sauce pan; stir in water.  Cook over medium heat, stirring constantly, until mixture comes to a boil.  Boil and stir for about two minutes.

Add milk and vanilla extract and heat to serving temperature.  Do not boil...or your milk will get funky.

Top with mini marshmallows or whipped cream.  If you want to be extra cool add sprinkles on top of that.  The kids go nuts for them!

Note: If you like frothy hot chocolate stir with a whisk rather than a spoon.

If your husband is like mine and will only drink hot chocolate made from scratch and you just don't have the energy or the time for it, make it from the hot cocoa packets and add in a few drops of vanilla extract right before you serve it.  No one will be the wiser, trust me!  (Shhh!  Don't tell him that I do that sometimes.  It's our little secret.)

Happy Rainy Monday!  Here's to a great rest of the week!