Let It Snow

Let it snow, let it snow, let it snooow.

More like, let it snow, let it melt, let it turn into ice, am I right?

If you’re Canadian like me, you know the drill. Shorts one day, a parka the next. We are the true north, strong and free.

From far and wide O’ Canada. We stand on guard for thee.

Sorry… had to. Anybody else rise like a sleeper agent when they hear their national anthem, doomed to repeat the words in a toneless reverie? Just me? Cool. Cool. Cool.

Now just because you’re freezing your butt-cheeks off this holiday season, doesn’t mean your food has to be cold. In fact, I recommend against it.

Unless you’re one of those savages who eats ice cream in the winter like an ANIMAL. You people cannot be helped. Snow bears with a taste for cream and sugar is what you are! Bah!

Anyway…moving on… if you’re going to keep those buns toasty, you’re going to need my recipes. Read on if you want to keep those buns attached.
Or don’t. Maybe you want your ass to freeze off. It’s a free country.

I am a literal hot chocolate goblin. I will sniff that stuff out from any cabinet in the thick of winter. Chocolate is happiness. It could probably create worldwide peace under the right circumstances. The people need only chocolate to get along :-p

So, naturally, you’re getting a homemade hot chocolate recipe from me this month. The stuff in the jars is fiiiine, but it doesn’t compare to the homemade stuff. The richness! The decadence! I swear on my life, you’ll never buy jarred again. Unless you’re having a lazy week, in which case, by all means: you drink that easy chocolate! haha

I’m usually more of a traditionalist when it comes to the molten mug. I like it chocolaty. Nuff said. The addition of cinnamon in this recipe takes you to a flavor town slightly south of the border: Mexico. That’s right, Mexican hot chocolate. If you haven’t had cinnamon with chocolate, you’re missing out, boyo!

Ingredients:

1 tbsp cocoa powder

1 cup whole milk

1 tsp vanilla

1/2 tsp salt

1/2 tsp cinnamon

1/4 cup maple syrup

Directions:

Combine all ingredients into a small sauce pot and simmer over a medium-low heat until warmed through and steaming. Pour into your favorite hot chocolate mug (mine says “Chocolate is life” never have truer words been spoken), top with marshmallows and enjoy!

I love baths. I LOVE them. I could live in the tub if I was forced to. It makes me that happy. Never more in winter, when I’ve just come in from the snow. My face is chapped. My legs are red. I’m more or less an icicle woman looking to be thawed. Of course, a normal bath will unfreeze you, but we don’t do normal baths around here. We do beauty baths. In the winter, we do carrot cake baths. Forget the gourmand perfume. Soak in this for an hour and you’ll smell like a freaking cake.

Ingredients:

2 Cups Epsom Salt

10 drops vanilla essential oil

5 drops ginger oil

3 drops carrot oil

Directions:

Combine all ingredients in air-tight container, and seal. Leave it overnight for it to marinate, otherwise you won’t smell like carrot cake when you leave the bathtub, you’ll just be a soggy carrot. No one wants that. Listen to Aunty Trina and leave the Epsom salts overnight, K? K.

You’re welcome.

Wreck The Halls Review:

Ohhh, this book. It’s cute. The perfect blend of sweetness and spice.

Meet Beat and Melody, offspring of the famously separated Rockstar duo, Steel Birds.
Raised in the media, neither feels as if they have any privacy or anyone they can trust except each other. Despite this, their mother’s tumultuous past and unfailing bitterness keeps them apart. Seriously, coffee would take a seat around these two. BIT-TER. If it’s one thing the ex-leaders of Steel Birds can’t stand, it’s each other.
Enter: the ex drummer who broke up the band. He’s blackmailing Beat to keep a big secret under wraps and if Beat wants him to keep his mouth shut, he better cough up a cool million by Christmas.

Tapped out financially, Beat does the one thing he never expected to: accepts the offer to star in a television broadcast about reuniting Steel Birds. A feat as likely as dinosaurs roaming the earth again.

With Melody at his side, the reunion actually appears possible, but that doesn’t matter anymore, not when Magnificent Mel charms him and all of America on their livestream and he falls madly, hopelessly, in love with her.

Problem is, Beat’s never had a relationship before. He’s never let anyone in. Ever.

Will Steel Birds unite for Christmas? Do Melody and Beat end up together? Does that ex-drummer finally get what’s coming to him?

You’ll have to Wreck The Halls to find out!

I did it. I wrecked the halls.

Announcement time! ANNOUNCEMENT TIIIIIIMEEEEE! HEAR YE, HEAR YE!

I have been a busy little snow bunny typing away at my desk this winter. I have three new books releasing this year! THREE! Read it again: THREE.

For years, I have been creating my own skincare products and cooking meals from scratch. These simple domestic skills make such a difference in your overall quality of life. Preparing things by yourself saves money, the product is of a higher quality and it works/tastes better.

I look out at a consumer industry and see people wasting money, time and resources on products that don’t work or on convenience foods that hold no nutritional value, and, if we’re being honest, taste like butt. Straight butthole. No one wants that. If you do, then I have no words for you, haha.

Seeing what the industry upholds and knowing there’s a better way, a healthier way, to go about things, I wanted to create books that people can use to upgrade their self-care routines and take better care of their skin, bodies and minds.

So, without further ado, I present to you: The Souper Food Cookbook. The first of my 2025 releases.

There’s no food quite so accessible and humble as soup. Anyone can make it. Anyone can afford it. Even if you’re not a soup aficiando, I promise you, it’s just because you haven’t tried the right one. Which brings me to my next point: it’s versatile. Once you get the basics down for building flavor, there’s no limit to what you can do with a large sauce pot and a few cups of water.

The Souper Food Cookbook will release during the first quarter of 2025 as an ebook. Get your sauce pots out and get ready, because IT’S COMING.

Subscribe to The Prattler for updates, fun recipes and book reviews of the latest releases!