In the immortal words of Charlie Brown, “Good grief!” Or maybe I should take a page from Scrooge’s book and say, “Bah, Humbug!”
What could throw me so harshly from the warmth of this season into the depths of Grinchdom? Hot chocolate. I know…it all sounds very cheery and warm and Cindy Lou Who-ish. Truth is, that’s how the whole thing started.
A few years ago, while reflecting on the meaning of Christmas, I also reflected on the meaning of my credit card bill. I had to wonder what changed so drastically to drive my gift budget sky high? Teachers. Well, presents for teachers actually. I’m not complaining. Quite the contrary – if I ever win the lottery I’ll buy each of our kids’ teachers a car or something really spectacular. It wasn’t the cost of each individual gift that gave way to sheer disbelief…it was the number of teachers! Each of my children had a schoolteacher, a religion schoolteacher, a speech therapist, art teachers, music teacher, P.E. teachers…you get the idea. Aughhh! Did I forget anyone? I think we spent more than $200 on non-relatives that year.
In an effort to personalize our gifts, (because I doubt the teachers really needed another candle, or more kiwi scented hand lotion), and to cut costs, I decided to turn to Martha Stewart. I found a relatively easy hot chocolate mix recipe and decided to spend a couple of hours preparing a homemade gift from the heart.
Ha! The joke was on me. Who knew canning was a seasonal thing? Not me. I don’t can anything. All I needed was four cases of wide-mouth canning jars (pint sized, thank you very much). Five grocery stores and two hours later, I hauled four cases of the jars from the back of the minivan into my kitchen. The shopping trip to purchase the ingredients would have to wait until the next day.
The recipe called for nonfat dry milk, nondairy creamer, unsweetened cocoa, mini marshmallows, mini chocolate chips, and confectioners’ sugar. Simply mix the dry ingredients and fill the jars. What could be easier?
I wanted go further, though. I ventured into a fabric store and found some beautiful red holiday fabric, some batting and hot glue sticks (the idea was to make puffy lids to give the hot cocoa a more festive appearance). My good scissors were most recently used to cut poster board for the kids, so I bought a new pair. Pretty gold ribbon was just the thing to attach the cocoa instructions to the jar…and who could resist adding a jingle bell to the ensemble? I needed new green and red computer paper to print out the cocoa instructions and a hole punch.
When all was said and done I burned four fingers with the hot glue gun, broke one or two canning jars, watched our 5 month-old dachshund try to eat a chunk of batting, and cursed every Martha wannabe on the planet for putting these (gasp!) domestic intentions in my brain.
Still, I managed to make 47 jars of homemade hot cocoa mix. Enough for all the teachers with a few left over. I was feeling quite proud of myself – puffy lids for heaven’s sake! Sure, I’d spent 15 hours on this idea that should have taken two hours, but I bet we’d breathe a sigh of relief when I tallied the receipts for my homemade Christmas project! How could hot cocoa cost $200?
It didn’t. It only cost me $197.89. But let’s remember the reason we go to such extremes. Love thy neighbor (and thy kids’ teachers!) Merry Christmas one and all.