The Mocha Java Recovery Program

It was one of those days. You know the kind I mean. I didn’t sleep well; tossed and turned most the night. Then when the alarm went off, I was too tired to start the day. But like most of you, I didn’t have an option, so I crawled out of bed, stum­bled to the kitchen and turned on the cof­fee pot. I put the dogs out­side and waited for the cof­fee to brew.

I felt a lit­tle bit like that Dolly Par­ton song “9 to 5” as I poured my “cup of ambi­tion”. I drink my cof­fee with cream in it. So I opened the refrig­er­a­tor, pulled out the orange juice and poured it right in my cof­fee cup!

Wow! Let me tell you that will wake a per­son in a hurry! I’m a fan of orange fla­vored tea, but orange juice in my cof­fee was not a good idea! Yes … I tasted it. Yes … I even thought I might be able to sal­vage it with some French Vanilla creamer. No… it didn’t work. The first cup went down the drain.

I won’t go into the details of how the rest of my day went, I’m sure you can well imag­ine. Altho, you will be amused to know that all of me employ­ees got a rather large chuckle out of my story. I did see the humor of it – about 10 am and three cups of real cof­fee later.

Let’s just say that by the time I arrived home for the evening, I was ready to put my feet up and relax. In my house there are two ways we relax:

1. With a cup of tea.

2. Witha cup of coffee.

What can I say? We’re caf­feine addicts. We come by it hon­estly, there’s a shoe string rel­a­tive of mine mar­ried to British roy­alty and my hus­band was a cop. It’s ingrained in us, this coffee/tea thing is.

So, when we need a bit of a cof­fee treat I mix up some mocha-java that allows us to chill out while we’re recharg­ing ourselves.

I fill a large cof­fee cup about two thirds full with steam­ing cof­fee. I add half a pack­age of instant hot cocoa mix and stir well. Add some French vanilla creamer and cover the top of the cup with the whipped cream that comes from the can. Sprin­kle lightly with cin­na­mon and you’re all set!

Some­times we bypass the canned whip, not because we’re on a diet or any­thing right­eous like that. It’s just that between the kids and the dogs, spray whip doesn’t last long in the fridge!

I will say the evening cup of java was much bet­ter than my first one of the day and I’m will­ing to bet that if you’re hav­ing “one of those days”, and you try this mocha java out, you’ll see how quickly you recover.

Noel Lizotte is break­ing free of cor­po­rate stress with con­ve­nience cook­ing! www.apronfreecooking.com