Mocha Morning Drink

The house was quiet in the way houses with grown children are quiet — a quiet that contains memory. The week was a winter week, the kind where the light through the kitchen window arrives at a particular angle and the freezer hums in a different register depending on the temperature in the garage. I made notes in my prep notebook on Sunday afternoon, the way I always do: meal name, ingredient list, cost per serving, prep time, freezer instructions. Twenty-eight bags. Two hours and eleven minutes. A little slow this week, by my standards, but Brandon was helping and the conversation was good, and I have learned, slowly and against my own grain, that the conversation is sometimes the point and the time is sometimes a courtesy I extend to my husband for being willing to chop onions on a Sunday afternoon.

Brandon golfed Saturday morning, attended his executive secretary meeting Sunday morning, and did the dishes Wednesday night, which is the rhythm of our life now. We have been married a long time. The arithmetic of it is the arithmetic of my whole life. There were years we missed each other in the same room, and there are years we find each other in the silences, and this is one of the latter, and I am old enough now to know that the latter is the achievement and the former was the cost.

The recipe of the week was breakfast casserole, which I have made some specific number of times in my life and have refined to a system that I now hand to other people in printed form. The version I made this week fed eight, cost under fifteen dollars, and required twenty-six minutes of active prep, which is within my requirements and not a coincidence. Sunday prep is twenty-eight bags. I time myself. The accountant never leaves. I have stopped explaining the freezer-meal philosophy to people who already follow my work, and I have stopped apologizing for it to people who do not. The philosophy is simple: tomorrow is coming whether you are ready or not. You can either be ready or not. I pick ready.

The children are doing what they do, which is the central report of every week of my adult life. Ethan is 21, finishing his mission in the Philippines. We have a countdown calendar on the fridge — Olivia's idea, executed in her handwriting, which is mine. Olivia is 19, at BYU studying elementary education — the path she chose at age seven and has not deviated from once. Mason, 17, is in Brazil on his mission. His weekly emails are short and full of jokes. He does not write much about the work. He writes about the food. Lily is 15, in high school, asking the kind of questions in Sunday School that make the teachers uncomfortable, which I find difficult and also, secretly, admirable. Noah is 12, in high school, deeply involved in the drama program — the Larson kid most likely to make a career out of being looked at. That is the family report. I do not have a system for these reports. I just listen and remember and call back when I said I would call back, which is most of the time and not all of the time, and the difference between most and all is the territory of motherhood.

I will close the laptop in a moment. I will go to bed. I will get up tomorrow. The freezer will be there. The photograph will be there. The work will be there. So will I.

Twenty-eight bags, two hours and eleven minutes, and one concession I make every single Sunday: I do not freeze the mocha. The breakfast casserole goes in bags, the soups go in bags, the whole week goes in bags—but this drink I make fresh, at the beginning of prep and sometimes at the end, and it is the one item in my kitchen that exists outside my system entirely on purpose. Brandon was still at the counter chopping onions when I made the first one this week, and I handed it to him without saying anything, and he took it the same way, and that is twenty-eight years of marriage in a single gesture. The recipe is below. It takes less time than I spend deciding whether to document it.

Prep Time: 3 min | Cook Time: 2 min | Total Time: 5 min | Servings: 1

Ingredients

1 cup hot brewed coffee (strong preferred)
1/2 cup whole milk or milk of choice
1 tablespoon unsweetened cocoa powder
1 tablespoon granulated sugar (or to taste)
1/4 teaspoon vanilla extract
Pinch of salt
Whipped cream, for topping (optional)

Instructions

Warm the milk. Heat milk in a small saucepan over medium heat or in the microwave for 60—90 seconds until steaming but not boiling.
Mix the mocha base. In your mug, whisk together the cocoa powder, sugar, and salt. Add 2 tablespoons of the hot coffee and stir into a smooth paste, making sure no cocoa clumps remain.
Combine. Pour in the remaining hot coffee and stir to combine. Add the warmed milk and vanilla extract and stir once more.
Finish and serve. Top with whipped cream if desired. Serve immediately while hot.

Nutrition (per serving)

Mocha Morning Drink — The One Thing I Never Put in the Freezer