 Hey y'all, it's Timmy with Colored Valley Cuts. I'm about to make tea and I'm using my kettle and I fill it up to the 1.25 liter more before I make my tea. And I use Tetley tea bags. I like Tetley tea to me. It doesn't have a better flavor even if you decide to boil it a little bit. And I use the family size bags. I'm gonna put three of these in my kettle. We're gonna be making sweet tea today. And I've already pressed the button so it won't take it but a minute. But we're gonna be making sweet tea today and we're gonna be making hot chocolate. Because I know a lot of y'all are freezing and you're snowed in here in St. Mary's at 60 degrees in Christmas fishing. And I was just talking to Melissa on the phone and she was like, go do hot chocolate for them. And I thought, well, I think I will. So we're also gonna make some hot chocolate but we're gonna make this tea first, okay? And let me bring y'all down a little closer to me. I don't have my man here today to help me. All right, so we're gonna be using a gallon jug just like this, okay? This is what I like to make my tea in. So if you use a gallon jug for your CPAP or for whatever you use your water for, make sure you save them. It's great to make your tea also to take to different places. Of course, right now with COVID, we're not going to church and taking a bunch of stuff anymore. But what I do is I bring my tea. Oh, it went off. Why is it off? No, it's not off, it's still green. I'll be blue. Lord of mercy. Anyway, so what I'm gonna do is I am going to, I don't know why, oh, I know why now. I am going to put sugar in my jug, all right? So I take a gallon jug and I get a funnel. And this is sugar. Now my kettle's about to start boiling. And I put one and one third cup of sugar in here. Now you can reduce or increase the amount of sugar if you wish, but I will say, and I'm not gonna quite use a third, one and one third, I'll use one and a little bit. I will say though that tea is never, in my opinion, never good. When you sweeten it to drink it the day of, you should always make your tea a day ahead, not the day of your function. Put it in the refrigerator and let it sit overnight. Makes it taste so much better because the sugar just gets in there and the tea just tastes so delicious. If you drink it the day you make it, it's never as sweet, so it takes more sugar. But you can use less sugar if you get it good and cold, okay? You can see it now. Sorry about that, a cop came through because I didn't have to not disturb turned on my phone while we're live. And a lot of people would use their kettles but they only use them for water and they don't put their tea in here. But I personally put my tea bags in here. It only brings it to a boil for just a second or two, not long at all. And if you use totally tea, it doesn't make it better at all, okay? And I was raised on Tetley tea. Now my mama didn't do it this way. Of course she didn't have a kettle. Neither did she put it on the stove top. My mama would, it's about to start boiling. I love to watch it boil and that's why I've got y'all so that you can watch it. But my mama would just run a lot of hot water, just get water really hot and she would pour it over her tea bags and then she would let them sit in the tea, let the tea seep, in other words, during the day and that at night she would put her water in. So mama would let her seep just in some really hot water. She would never put it on the stove top like I, or do what I'm doing today. Now in this kettle you'll see that it rises as it boils. So what I do is I don't bring it. I don't put enough water in there for a maximum. I only put enough in there, I put two notches down. I also keep it in a pie plate so that if for any reason it bubbles over the top like it's doing now, the bubbles are just raising and raising and that way if for any reason it bubbles over this pie plate catches it y'all and that's a good thing to use if you're boiling in your kettle. If you're putting your tea in your kettle because the tea does make it boil up and fizz up kinda, okay? So now it's so hot. I've also had somebody do this. Say, I made your tea and it melted my jug and I'm thinking why would you put boiling water in your jug? So you need to let your tea cool down until it's not scalding hot but warm enough to melt your sugar. Another thing you can do is you could just put some water in your jug and then put the really hot water in there because it's still gonna be really warm enough to melt your sugar and that's what we're gonna do today because I wanna use my kettle for something else. So I'm gonna bring y'all down a little closer. Y'all were just gonna go for a few rides today in order for me to do a good video for y'all and let you see what I'm doing and not just see me, okay? I don't wanna just be the star of the show. So we've got sugar in there. So what we can do now is put a little actual cold water in here because I'm gonna pour this really hot water in this jug and when I pour it in this jug, I don't want it to melt the jug. So if I go ahead and fill it about a third full with cold water, not hot water, it will not melt the jug when I add it to the jug, if that makes sense. So never put your boiling water directly into the jug without some cold water in it, okay? Or just wait until your tea cools down enough that it's not gonna melt your jug. And I also use this stainless steel funnel. I love my stainless steel funnels. Do you know that they were actually gifted to me from a viewer and I just absolutely love them. I couldn't live without them now. I actually sent my brother some the other day. So I have figured out that if I put about a third cup of water in my jug, have a seat, then it does a pretty good job of not burning up my jug. Now I'm gonna shake it and I'm gonna mix all that sugar up, turn it over to the side, do it over the sink just in case you have an accident. It looked like my power just went off for a second. And there you have your sweet tea. We're going to finish adding our water to it to make a full gallon. And now I will actually let this sit out at room temperature until it comes all the way to room temperature because it's still pretty warm. And then once it comes to room temperature, I'll put it in the refrigerator. I don't like to put anything real hot in my refrigerator. And then I'll put it in my refrigerator. I will not drink this tea until tomorrow. If you drink your tea the day you make it, it is not that good. So if you've always wondered, why doesn't my tea taste like Mama's does? Or why don't my tea taste as good as everybody else's? It could be as simple as you are making it and drinking it immediately, which is not what you wanna do, okay? Now we're about to do some hot chocolate. I am going to not just do the recipe for hot chocolate. Now the sweet tea recipe is in my, I believe it's in my login to Cookbook, the Georgia sweet tea. I call it Georgia sweet tea because Tetley tea is made in Georgia, okay? Manufactured in Georgia. And that's why I love Tetley tea. Tetley tea is spelled T-E-T-L-E-Y. I don't know if this is backwards for y'all or not, and if it is, I'm sorry. All right, and then, because I just did a reset on my phone so it may be, and then you got hot chocolate mix that's in my third Cookbook. Now it helps you make a good bit of hot chocolate, okay? But I only wanna make one cup of hot chocolate, and you're saying, well, how do I make just one cup of hot chocolate? Well, the recipe calls for a cup, a cup, a cup, a half cup, and a quarter cup. So instead of using a cup, you're gonna look at it like tablespoons. So you'd use one tablespoon, one tablespoon, one tablespoon, a half of a tablespoon, which is one and one half teaspoons, and then a quarter of a tablespoon would be a teaspoon, pretty much. And so we're going to make us some delicious, delicious hot chocolate. Now, I am going to rinse out this kettle right quick, and we are going to get the tea out of it and put a little water in it so that we can, sorry y'all, y'all have the best of yous right this second. I'm just gonna rinse it out and we'll get a little bit of water in it to make our hot chocolate. If you don't have one of these kettles, they're so convenient to use, especially for things like this. You can also use them for other things, but if you just need some hot water, they're really nice to have around the house. So I'm gonna press the button so that that starts getting hot and boiling. And while that's doing that, we're gonna put our hot chocolate mix in our cup. But you know what I didn't do? I didn't get out a good hot chocolate cup. So let me go get a cup and I'll be right back. And I'm gonna show y'all the ingredients we're gonna put in our hot chocolate and we're gonna make a delicious cup of hot chocolate. My clear cup, I got things at Dollar Tree one year. They're clear and that way y'all can see it when I mix it up. So what we're gonna do now is, let me fix the angle because y'all don't have to see exactly what, you know, it's not like I'm cooking something. So what we're gonna use is a tablespoon. I also have a half tablespoon. Okay, I have a tablespoon. I have a half tablespoon. And then we're gonna use a teaspoon. So, and if it's one and a half teaspoons, you can eyeball it, you know. So what we're gonna do is we're going to use a tablespoon of sugar. Yes, we are, because we're gonna put some cocoa in here. All this is dry ingredients, except for my evaporated milk. I tell you to use powdered milk when you're just making a mix. You're gonna use some powdered milk and you're gonna use some coffee creamer. But today I don't want the powdered milk in mine. You can always throw some real cream in there. This is evaporated milk, which is my favorite. All right, you're going to use some cocoa and you're gonna use a half a tablespoon of cocoa. And this cocoa, I've been wanting to taste it. I really haven't, I bought it for the holidays and they never used it. But this cocoa, I got, I believe it, bells or boss or somewhere like that. And it was $7.99 of this huge bag of cocoa and I thought, man, I'm trying to get smells really good. So I'm gonna find out whether or not it tastes good. The brand is Terra Soul Super Foods. I like to look at their specialty foods. That's where I get all my spices. All my spices came from stores like that. I love the, they're called gourmet collections. And I'll show you all these, those before we leave just so you can see them. The next time you go into bells or Ross or Marshalls or home goods, go to that section and see if they have these gourmet collection spices because they're well worth the money you spend, they're usually $3.99 for a big bottle of them. And I'll show you the different ones I found over the years really and what I like to use. But anyway, we've got a tablespoon. We've got one and a half teaspoons or a half tablespoon of cocoa. We're going to put in a tablespoon of powdered creamer. I am gonna use the powdered creamer, just not the powdered milk. We're gonna use some instant coffee. It's optional, but we are going to put it in ours today. If you've got instant coffee, my favorite instant coffee is the Nest Cafe, I believe it's Folders and it's, or no, I think this is Taster's Choice, Columbian and then Folders makes a really good one too. But I like the dark roast, okay? So our water's boiling and I'm gonna put in a teaspoon of this coffee. I surely am. So now we've got all of our dry ingredients in here, I'm gonna stir them up. So we got the cocoa, the coffee, the powdered creamer and the sugar. And now all of them do, once I put in the water, is put in a dollop of this can cream. I've got an opener right here that I absolutely love. It's same steel. Y'all, this is work the money you pay for and I think it's, I know it's less than $10 on my website. It's an XO, OXO product, you know, but it's same steel and oh my gosh, it'll open bottles and it'll open your cans of evaporated milk and like, tomato juice and stuff like that. And I just love using it. I'm sure you have one growing up and if you haven't used one in a while, they really come in handy because they make everything more pourable, okay? So we are going to, I'm gonna bring y'all down so y'all can watch me mix this up because I want y'all to see it. And we may even put a little whipped cream on the top for fun today. I bet y'all need to be warmed up some of y'all, especially those that are in this Arctic freeze. There's so many of y'all right now in this Arctic freeze that aren't used to getting cold weather. Bless your heart. I feel for ya. Put in our hot water and of course, if you want to use milk by all means, warm you up some milk to put in your hot chocolate. And now I'm gonna put a dollop of this creamer and I'm gonna give it a try and I'm gonna see if it's sweet enough for me. And to me it is. Now, if it's not sweet enough for you, of course you can add a little more sugar to it. But I think it's just right. And now I'm gonna do something else. And that is put a little whipped cream on the top. Let's go all out. Chris St. Hey, you will have a treat today. And you can put a little chocolate on the top if you want to for your kids, for your grandkids. I just have Hershey bar. Yes, I do. So what we'll do is grate just a little bit of chocolate to go on top of it. This is a good cup. Nothing's better than a Hershey bar, right? I got this because it was in a Valentine gift. Chris got me a couple of things for Valentine's Day. I'll show them to y'all. Now that is a delicious cup of hot chocolate. I will show y'all what he got me for Valentine's Day right quick. And I will also show y'all how I decorated for Easter and the kitchen. Let me raise this up a little so y'all can see. You can see I've got a cross up there and it says amazing grace. Because you know, Easter is all about the Savior, Jesus Christ or our Savior. And I bought this, let me turn this around so I can do this better. Okay, I got this. And they had these eggs, these eggs that are on sticks. And so I took them and I put them inside this for decoration and then I can take them out of it and still keep this floral for the rest of the springtime. Isn't that cute? Now Chris got me this for Valentine's Day. It is an old fashioned measuring cup. Back then they measured, it's got a half pint, a pint, a one and a half pint in a quart. So he got me this at a consignment type store. She sells all kind of old antiques. Now I've had the tulips since last year and this is a rabbit that I found at Marshall's, I believe. She's a cookie jar and she's just really pretty. Chris helped me decorate for Easter and he doesn't let me put out as much. He really is a better decorator than I am. This is my Wedgewood tableware. Daddy bought me this. He bought it second hand. It is Queensware Wedgewood and he only paid like $125 for a whole huge set of it. And so I decided I'd display some for Easter. That's the teacup. And you can see I put out my thumb print glass because it is springtime and it's so pretty and green. And then he brought this piece in here as well. And then you'll see here we put out our glasses. We've got our Wedgewood out and yes, we're gonna use it, a little rabbit. And then these are plates that I found and some of y'all have already seen them but they have a scripture on them. It says, the Lord is my strength and my shield. My heart trusts in him. So I'm 28-7 and I just really thought these were pretty. They had them at Ross and they had them in sets of four. I went ahead and got two sets. Now you could go to your local Ross. Be careful, wear your mask and see if they may have something like this. And lots of times anything Ross has, marshals, bells, home goods, all three of those other ones could also have it. Okay, this is an antique and so I put it out because it's kind of blue. It's got a little blue in it. And of course I put out a few of the canned goods that we have. And then on this I've got all my glass that I use and this big rabbit and some eggs. So that's our kitchen decor for Easter. What y'all think? Y'all like his gifts, he got me. So he got me the measuring cup. Oh, I forgot to show you one. He got me the measuring cup and he also got me this. This is an old fashioned potato masher and if you're an older woman, you probably remember your grandmother or mother using this to mash your potatoes. They for real used it to mash their potatoes. So a lot of y'all probably remember this being used to mash your potatoes. If you do remember it, tell us about it and tell us how you remember. But that's what this is, an old fashioned potato masher. It says antique primitive within potato masher. It was only $11. So he bought me that and he bought me the measuring cup and that was my Valentine gift. The Hershey bar was actually part of my decoration in here for Valentine's. So that's where that came from. Let's taste our hot chocolate. Maybe it's cooled down enough I can drink it. It's still pretty dog on hot, but it's so good. That little bit of coffee makes it taste so good y'all. I hope y'all have enjoyed being in the kitchen with me today. It's Monday. I like to take Mondays and get organized, maybe prep some of your vegetables, make your sweet tea for the week and do a few things like that, clean out the refrigerator and tonight I plan on making chicken and dumplings and I'll probably record it, but maybe I'll get to see it one day this week because I wanna make dumplings and make extra ones for my blackberry cobbler. So I may either do one or the other tonight or maybe do both, I don't know, but you won't see it until the rest of the week. I hope y'all have a blessed and wonderful day, President's Day all, and God bless ya. And thanks for watching Colored Valley Cooks where we cook like mama did and I'll put these recipes in the description post when we sign off just like I always do. Bye y'all love ya. Wish y'all were here would have a cup of hot chocolate. Oh, and I'd get you out a piece of that millionaire pie too if you were here. See ya.