December. Christmas season at the bookstore, wedding planning at home, and Ryan on the phone every night at 9 PM talking about base housing applications and how much furniture we need (answer: almost none, because neither of us owns anything).
We've been approved for base housing at Camp Lejeune. After the wedding, I'll move to Jacksonville, North Carolina, and live in a two-bedroom apartment that looks exactly like every other two-bedroom apartment on every military base in America. Beige walls, industrial carpet, kitchen that was last updated during a president I can't identify. I've lived in these apartments before. I grew up in them. The sameness used to bother me. Now it feels like coming home.
Mom is processing the fact that I'm moving to Lejeune. She hasn't said anything directly — Donna doesn't do direct emotional statements — but I notice things. She's writing in the journal more. She's cooking bigger batches of things and freezing them ('For when you need meals, at Lejeune'). She's copying recipes from her binder onto cards — actual handwritten cards — and putting them in an envelope that she hasn't given me yet but that I've seen on her desk.
She's making me a recipe binder. My own. For my own kitchen.
I found the envelope. I didn't open it. But I saw her handwriting on the cards through the paper — the same looping script that labels everything in her kitchen, that writes the grocery lists, that wrote the Thanksgiving timeline. She's writing down the recipes she carries in her hands and she's giving them to me, because I'm leaving, and the kitchen I learned in won't be my kitchen anymore.
I sat in my bedroom and thought about this and cried for twenty minutes. Quiet crying. The kind Mom taught me — after the kids are asleep, at the kitchen table, alone.
Mom made her peppermint hot chocolate tonight because it's December and this is a Donna tradition: real hot chocolate (milk, cocoa powder, sugar, vanilla, a pinch of salt, heated on the stove — not from a packet) with a candy cane stirrer and whipped cream. She makes it on the first Friday of December and it means Christmas has officially begun.
Ryan called. I told him about the hot chocolate. He said, 'Save me some.' I said, 'It'll be cold by Saturday.' He said, 'Make me a new one.'
'I don't know how.'
'Ask your mom.'
I will. I'll ask her. And she'll teach me. And it'll go on a recipe card. And someday I'll make it in a kitchen that's mine, in a place I haven't been yet, for people I haven't met yet.
But first: December. Christmas. The bookstore. The wedding dress in my closet. The recipe cards in the envelope. The everything of right now.
Mom’s version has a candy cane and whipped cream and twenty years of December Fridays behind it — and I haven’t asked her how to make it yet, but I will. Until then, I’ve been practicing with this Nutella hot chocolate, because it’s the same idea at its heart: real milk, real heat, something warm and a little indulgent stirred in from a jar. It’s the kind of recipe that fits on one card, travels anywhere, and tastes like the beginning of Christmas — which is exactly what I’m going to need in a beige apartment in Jacksonville when December rolls around and I’m making it for the first time alone.
Nutella Hot Chocolate
Prep Time: 2 minutes | Cook Time: 8 minutes | Total Time: 10 minutes | Servings: 2
Ingredients
- 2 cups whole milk
- 3 tablespoons Nutella
- 1 tablespoon unsweetened cocoa powder
- 1 teaspoon granulated sugar (adjust to taste)
- 1/4 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
- Pinch of fine salt
- Whipped cream, for serving
- Candy cane or crushed peppermint, optional for serving
Instructions
- Warm the milk. Pour the milk into a small saucepan and set over medium-low heat. Warm until steaming and just beginning to simmer at the edges — do not boil.
- Whisk in the Nutella. Add the Nutella, cocoa powder, sugar, and salt to the warm milk. Whisk steadily until everything is fully dissolved and the mixture is smooth and uniform, about 2–3 minutes.
- Finish and taste. Remove from heat and stir in the vanilla extract. Taste and adjust sugar if needed.
- Serve. Pour into mugs and top with whipped cream. Add a candy cane stirrer or a pinch of crushed peppermint if you want to lean into the December feeling.
Nutrition (per serving)
Calories: 280 | Protein: 9g | Fat: 13g | Carbs: 32g | Fiber: 2g | Sodium: 135mg
About the cook who shared this
Rachel Abernathy
Week 89 of Rachel’s 30-year story
· San Diego, California
Rachel is a twenty-eight-year-old Marine wife and mom of two who has moved five times in six years and learned to cook a Thanksgiving dinner with half her cookware still in boxes. She married young, survived postpartum depression, and feeds her family of four on a junior Marine's salary with a freezer full of pre-made meals and a crockpot that has never let her down. She writes for the military spouses who are cooking dinner alone in base housing and wondering if they're enough. You are.
