What I am learning, what has been essential over the last few months is to take pleasure in the small moments. To tangibly FEEL the joy brought about by the instances that could easily be passed over.

In the past couple of years I have really grown to LOVE coffee. Coffee isn’t an addiction for me. I don’t need it to start my day, or use it to be able wake myself up. Trust me, waking up to a crying child who is covered from head to toe in poop, is enough to rinse the sleep off. Plus caffeine messes with my head. It makes me all spastic and jittery, so I try to only drink decaf. 

No, coffee is a pleasurable routine for me. I never had a lot of 'routine' growing up. And if you would have asked me in my teens and early twenties what I would have thought about the words ‘routine’ or ‘schedule’ I would have rolled my eyes, and said something about how I was a ‘go with the flow, never plan in advance, spontaneous kind of gal’. In fact I never wore a watch. It was the perfect combination of forgetting to put one on and eschewing convention. The last point I proclaimed often and loudly. This often frustrated my parents, teachers and my husband.

Go figure.

Well, as any parent can tell you, kids change you.

Kids thrive off routine. If you have ever met a two year old, you will know what I mean when I say they exist in extremes. They have no control over their emotions. One minute giggling in joy, the next screaming in anguishing anger. If the one constant they can have is knowing what comes next in their day, they often feel some measure of control, which in turn helps calm them.

Hmmmmm….
That can't possible relate to MY emotions whilst experiencing PPD…..  Can it???

And here enters the coffee. My beloved routine. I wake up to my littlest one fussing for me. I nurse him in bed while checking my emails (gotta love my iphone- but that is another post for another day), then I get the kids up and we go downstairs. I make them breakfast, and while they giggle, chatter and slop up their porridge, I sip on my coffee, meditating on the small(coffee) and immense(kids) joys that I have been blessed with.

I love hot coffee with generous helpings of creamer. But I really love iced coffee. And in my efforts to partake of it at home and more importantly save money (those Starbucks and Tim Horton’s suckers are exxxxxxpensive!), I have over the past 2 years searched for the perfect iced coffee recipe. I have exhausted pinterest, only to find that every method is painstakingly long, or expensive. They involve cold brewing coffee (long and painstaking) or sweet and condensed evaporated milk (expensive) and many other combinations of painstaking and expensive.

You get the point.

So finally, after long and arduous experimenting, and lots of choking down subpar homemade iced coffees I finally came up with the perfect cheap, fast and easy iced coffee recipe!

Without further ado:

The: “Keep me sane ICED COFFEE”

You will need:
-Milk (skim for a low cal option)
-Freshly brewed coffee(if you use piping hot- then you may need to use more ice cubes)
-Coffee ice cubes
-No dairy liquid creamer (my favorite is International Delight Vanilla Toffee Caramel, or you can use a low cal option)
-Blender


Directions:
-Freeze coffee in an ice cube tray
-Make coffee (drip or pressed, doesn’t matter)
-Put 3-4 frozen cubes of ice followed by 1 cup of milk, followed by 1 cup of coffee into blender. Mix until ice cubes are broken up. DO NOT ADD CREAMER into the blender as it will produce too much foam.
-Pour out 1-2 tablespoons of creamer into large cup, followed by iced coffee.
-Stir.
- Add an extra iced coffee cube into the glass to keep beverage cold.
-Enjoy!


Additional comments
-If you want to make it into a Frappuccino, add more ice cubes to get a slushier consistency.
-Pour the left over coffee into the ice cube tray, freeze. That way you always have frozen cubes of coffee ready for the next day!(or that afternoon, or evening, or...)