Good morning my people.

It’s 5 am.  Are you up?  Oh, good.  Me too.

(Yawn).  I’m ready to hit the slopes.

In Mommyspeak:  I’m up and ready to attack the day with a list of items to accomplish that are about as disparate and possible as trying to untangle my necklaces.  Endless list, I tell you.  I’m the marines.  But I accessorize better with a lotta necklaces.  I get more done in the morning than…

Wait, I don’t remember the rest of that – I haven’t had my coffee yet.  All I know, at this fuzzy-headed time in the morning, is that my day is going to be all about the dreaded Multitask.

I need my coffee, my people.

However, lately I have decided to, you know, try to throw food at my family that is a bit less, well, bad for them.  And well… I could use that ideology a bit too.  (My enthusiasm is OFFA THE CHARTS, right?  I know.  Like I said, I haven’t had my coffee.)

Here’s what I just read on the back of my beloved coffee creamer – the stuff I daily glug into my coffee mug with abandon:

Partially hydrogenated heart attack possibly waiting to happen, sodium caseinate that even my spell check doesn’t have a clue, cellulose gell that sounds really awful and kinda like it something a plastic surgeon would say, mono and not mono dyglycerides that maybe were used also to create I dunno, meth?  They just sound very Breaking Bad.

Oh and this little nugget of happiness at the end of the list:  CONTAINS: A MILK DERIVATIVE.  (The bold face and on caps was on their packaging.  Like we needed to be warned.  About the milk.  In my creamer.)

So…  “milk” creamer – we’re breaking up.  It’s hard, I know.  We used to be so close, you and I.  Every morning you would comfort me and cuddle up to my coffee with your milk-like chemically goodness.  I loved you, man.

But I made my OWN.  And it was easy!  And even slightly cheaper.  And, most importantly.  It was GOOD.And all the people rejoiced, because lo, the creamer was gooooooood, y’all.

Here you go:

•  One can of sweetened condensed milk (I use the organic kind, and I know that you can also make your own.  But that’s just crazy talk.  I don’t have time for that nuttiness until maybe next Tuesday.)
• One cup of whole milk or almond milk or soy milk  – your choice.  I used whole milk.
•  2-3 tablespoons pumpkin puree (We have tons of this stuff in our freezer.  Know why?  I froze some up from last Halloween from our pie pumpkins.  Just make sure NOT to carve these pumpkins (we just decorate with markers) and then slice, bake, and puree.  They make great soup thickeners and additions to cookies and bread…  Oh and PIE.
• 1 teaspoon of pumpkin pie spice OR:  nutmeg, allspice, cloves, cinnamon…  (I don’t have pumpkin pie spice)
• 3-4 tablespoons maple syrup (I also used molasses once when I was out of maple syrup – worked fine!)
• Mix all this over a low heat stove – stir and stir until just steaming. Remove from heat, add a glug or two of vanilla.  Et voila.
• Enjoy!!

This entire post was written under the influence of this creamer (and a little coffee).