Classic Sweet Tea throws boiling water out the window for fantastic results

It’s the most unusual way I’d ever seen to prepare iced tea: Putting tea bags in room temperature water.
   Usually iced tea recipes call for boiling water, adding tea bags and cooling the liquid down.
   But Cali Rich, a writer for America’s Test Kitchen, found the best way to make Classic Sweet Tea (click for the recipe)* was to forget the boiling water and look to another way of making the drink – sun tea.
   Her mother would make sun tea by filling a pitcher with cool water, adding tea bags, then setting the pitcher outside on the deck to steep all day.
   Rich wanted to find out if she could get the same results as her mother’s delicious sun tea, but inside and at a fraction of the time.
   Rich succeeded.
   Her Classic Sweet Tea recipe is fantastic. It’s perfectly sweet and completely refreshing.
   It’s now my go-to quick iced tea recipe.
   *Besides the America’s Test Kitchen paid-access site, the only other place on the Internet that I could find Rich’s recipe, along with its variations, was in a discussion thread on a cooking magazine website. This is the recipe I linked to above, and it is exactly the same as the one I used. You just need to scroll down a bit to find it.
   The simple syrup that sweetens the tea is make by heating sugar (I used Splenda instead) and water together until the sugar dissolves. The syrup is cooled to room temperature and can be refrigerated.
   To make the tea itself, 10 tea bags (I used Tetley Orange Pekoe) are submerged in four cups of room temperature water for 45 minutes.
   The tea bags are removed, and six-nine tablespoons of simple syrup are stirred in according to desired sweetness (I used seven.)
   At this point, I refrigerated the tea for several hours then served it over ice.
   I also made the Orangeade Iced Tea variety of Classic Sweet Tea, which required adding one tablespoon grated orange zest (orange peel) to the sugar and water when making the simple syrup. The zest is strained out and the syrup cooled.
   The orange citrus syrup is added to the sweet tea, along with two cups of lemonade (I simply used storebought lemonade).
   It was delicious, and has made me want to try a couple of the other varieties of Classic Sweet Tea: Cherry-Lime Rickey (lime citrus syrup and cherry juice) and Nantucket (lime citrus syrup and cranberry juice).

Cucumber -- an ideal summer drink flavor

Cucumber, as it turns out, is a delicious flavor for a drink.
   Cucumber, Mint and Basil Soda (click for the recipe) from Bon Appetit magazine proves this.
   It tastes like cucumber in pure liquid form, and it tastes mighty fine. Plus there’s nice dashes of mint and basil, as the recipe’s name would imply.
   This non-alcoholic drink is a terrific late spring/summer refresher. It’s light and bubbly like champagne, but it’s not too sweet. Make it for a backyard barbecue, and I guarantee a hit.
   The recipe calls for soda water, but I used club soda instead, as I prefer the taste. Although it doesn’t specify to do this, make sure the club soda is nice and cold before pouring the drinks.
   A simple syrup is made by cooking sugar and water together until the sugar dissolves. This can be refrigerated until needed.
   The simple syrup is brought to a boil in a small saucepan, then is removed from the heat. Thinly-sliced cucumbers, fresh mint leaves and fresh basil leaves are added. The mixture is covered and left to steep for 30 mintes.
   The cucumber-herb syrup is strained into a jar, bowl or other type of container. If not needed right away, this syrup can also be refrigerated.
   Glasses are filled with ice cubes, and two tablespoons of syrup and ½ cup of soda are poured on top and stirred to combine. (The drinks are easily doubled with four tablespoons of syrup and one cup of soda.)
   The recipe says to make 11 more sodas, but you certainly don’t have to do this! The cucumber syrup can be refrigerated for another time and the sodas made again.

Bitter is best for Lime-Ginger Coolers

It’s a warm afternoon, and you’re going to sit down, put your feet up and relax.
   What are you going to drink to celebrate this bit of time to yourself?
   A Lime-Ginger Cooler (click for the recipe from Martha Stewart Living magazine).
   These drinks are so very refreshing, with their bubbly mix of lime juice and club soda (the recipe calls for seltzer, but I prefer the taste of club soda.)
   This is the recipe that introduced my husband and I to the wonders of bitters, an alcoholic flavoring that’s added sparingly, like hot sauce, to drinks.
   Angostura is the most commonly available variety of bitters. It can be found in liquor stores, and, we were surprised to find, supermarkets too.
   Although it’s made from gentian, a bitter herb, Angostura bitters add a refreshing tang to these coolers.
   The recipe’s suggestion of using Rose’s brand sweetened concentrated lime juice is an excellent one – it definitely elevates the drink to a sublime (pun intended) experience.
   This bottled juice is labeled "Rose's Lime Cordial" and can be found in the supermarket right beside Rose’s grenadine, which is in turn found with mixes for alcoholic drinks and non-alcoholic beers and wines.
   The slices of peeled sliced ginger that are added to the drinks are not essential, however. We’ve left it out plenty of times when we didn’t have ginger around.
   To make a cooler, ice is put into an eight-ounce glass, then two dashes of bitters and two to three tablespoons of lime juice are added. This is topped with ½ cup of club soda and the drink stirred.
   Serve and celebrate spring.

Raspberry Limeade: an easy-to-make refresher

Raspberry Limeade from Eating Well magazine is an astonishingly good drink.
   It’s refreshing, the flavors blend perfectly, and to top it all off, it’s really easy to make. It took me mere minutes to put this together.
   Fresh lime juice is combined with sugar (I substituted an equal amount of Splenda) in a pitcher.
   Fresh or thawed frozen raspberries are placed in a fine-mesh sieve over a bowl, and mashed (I used a wooden spoon rather than the spatula as directed in the recipe), extracting the juice.
   Make sure to mash the heck out of the berries to get all the juice you can.
   The raspberry puree is stirred into the lime juice mixture in the pitcher.
   At this point, you can refrigerate the mixture until you are ready to serve it.
   When ready to serve, three cups of seltzer are added. I used club soda, chilled, instead.

The Raspberry Limeade recipe came from the August issue of Eating Well magazine.
   Here’s another recipe from that issue that’s well worth making: Tomato & Provolone Sandwiches.
   As I wrote in another blog post on Recipes That Worked, tomatoes and fresh tarragon make a terrific combination.
   In this recipe, tarragon is combined with mayonnaise to make a tasty spread that complements the fresh tomatoes.
   These sandwiches are so easy to make.
   Mashed garlic, mayonnaise, fresh tarragon, lemon juice, pepper and salt are combined.
   Bread slices are toasted under the broiler, then provolone cheese is placed on half of the slices and the bread toasted a little longer until the cheese is melted.
   On the other half of the slices, the tarragon-mayonnaise is spread. The tomatoes are placed on these slices, then the melted cheese bread on top.

Mint driving you crazy? Here's a great way to use it

Every year I like to grow mint in my herb garden. This year I planted peppermint and a spearmint.
   As a mint plant grows, I like to watch its glorious green leaves reach out to the sky, ready to be picked and used in a delicious dish or recipe.
   But as anyone who plants mint knows, it grows well. There’s no need to coax a mint plant along – there is always a plethora ready to be picked once it starts to grow.
   The recipe I write about today, Mintade, is one of my favorite ways to use plentiful mint.
   It’s so quick, so easy, and a lovely drink to serve at a summer breakfast.
   The recipe was originally published in Gourmet magazine a few years back, but is not present on epicurious.com, the mag’s recipe site.
   However, I found it reprinted on another blog. Click here for the recipe.
   The recipe calls for fresh orange juice and fresh pink grapefruit juice, but in the interest of saving time, I use store-bought juices in these instances.
   The fresh lemon and lime juices, though, I squeeze from the citrus fruits with a juicer.
   The recipe says to tear the mint leaves, and that’s a good direction. It helps release the mint flavor into the drink.
   The blog on which this recipe is reprinted says the writer used ¼ sugar – I used ½ cup as the recipe directed. And, I used Splenda instead of sugar.
   You don’t need to strain out the mint leaves before serving this drink. They will settle to the bottom of the glass, or sneak in with a sip.
   To make mintade, orange, pink grapefruit, lemon and lime juices are combined with water, fresh mint leaves and sugar.
   Chill and serve!

Hibiscus and Ginger Iced Tea - another brilliant non-alcoholic summer refresher.

Hibiscus and Ginger Iced Tea - a glorious summer refresher

Thanks to the wonders of modern technology, I'm sitting outside to write about a terrific drink that my husband I enjoyed with supper just this evening.
   It’s Hibiscus and Ginger Iced Tea (click here for the recipe on the Martha Stewart Living website), and it’s been a summer staple ever since I first made it four years ago.
   It’s a real treat – refreshing and not too sweet, with a light taste I’d compare to raspberries.
   It’s quite family-friendly, too. Perhaps children about the age of 10 or under might not immediately take to it, but everyone else will!
   The drink is easy to make, it’s just tracking down the hibiscus tea bags to get started that might be a little tricky.
   Here in Canada, I found rosehip and hibiscus tea bags at Superstore, and they work perfectly.
   The recipe says it serves eight. Not quite! It makes two generous servings -- if you want to make more, you'll have to double it.
   Although the recipe doesn’t specify to refrigerate before serving, I strongly recommend it. You’ll want to serve this drink ice cold.
   This is another recipe for which I successfully substituted an equal amount of Splenda for sugar.
   To make the iced tea, water, ginger and sugar (or for me, Splenda), are brought to a boil and removed from heat. The tea bags are added and left to steep for 15 minutes.
   The tea is then poured through a fine mesh sieve set over a bowl in an ice-water bath, and left to cool (I let it cool for about 45 minutes to an hour.)
   Fresh lemon juice is stirred in. Refrigerate.
   The recipe says to serve over crushed ice, but that’s a fancy touch; regular ol’ ice cubes will work just fine.