Martha Stewart's Cinnamon Spiced Mexican Horchata

I have been going back and forth about whether I should post this recipe or not, because as good as it is (and it's really good), and as lovely as the pictures are (don't you like them?), this is not very authentic horchata. I say that because it has cow's milk in it, and traditionally, Mexican horchata is made of rice milk. And traditionally, you must wake up at the crack of dawn, soak the rice all day, and then grind it to a paste (by hand!) in your molcajete (what's that sound I hear? Ah, yes, cue the tiny violin).

Alternatively, you buy a little plastic baggie of powdered mix from the Mexican section of the grocery store, and you mix it with water. Which, by the way, I am pretty sure is what most Mexican people around here actually do when they want to drink horchata. Who has time to grind rice in a molcajete all day long?

So this drink, while delicious, is sort of Martha's irreverent devil-may-care-what-the-real-thing-is interpretation of horchata, and I have to say, it's good! It's creamy and delicious and the milk pairs well with Mexican food, which can be spicy! I imagine you could probably even just use unsweetened rice milk from the grocery store if you want to make it more authentic, or if you happen to be allergic to cow's milk, or you are vegan or WHATEVER. You don't have to make any explanations to me! I love you just the way you are, non-milk drinking friend.

If you want to make this a more grown-up drink, you can add in a little dark rum. It's quite tasty!

Martha Stewart's Cinnamon Spiced Mexican Horchata
adapted from Martha Stewart Living 2011
Serves 4

Ingredients
4 cups milk (use whatever fat content you like best)
1 cinnamon stick
1 can (14 oz) sweetened condensed milk
1/3 cup rice flour
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
optional: 1/2 cup dark rum

1. bring milk and cinnamon stick to a simmer over medium heat. Remove from heat, and transfer to a pitcher or bowl. Mix in sweetened condensed milk, flour, vanilla, and cinnamon. Chill until cold (a good 2 hours should do it).

2. strain mixture with a sieve, and add in rum (if using). Pour over ice, and garnish with a cinnamon stick, or a little sprinkle or cinnamon. Enjoy!

Raspberry Zinger Iced Tea with Lemon Simple Syrup

One of the biggest perks of the July "eating-in" challenge, in which we approximately zero dollars eating out, is that it broke my Starbucks dependency (or Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf, or Peets, ad infinitum. I use "Starbucks" as a catch-all for fancy espresso venues, because Starbucks is ubiquitous and everyone knows what I'm talking about). And let's be honest, it's not like I was spending a bushel at Starbucks every month. In fact, my monthly Starbucks bill usually only comes to about $25. And since I don't exactly indulge in any other vices (other than gratuitous amounts of butter, that is) I don't really have a problem with my liquid caffeine habit. EXCEPT....



Why spend $3 for one cup of their fantastic Passion Iced Tea, when I can make an equally fantastic entire gallon of Raspberry Zinger Iced Tea at home for only... $4? Let's break it down, shall we? If you make your own iced tea, it costs $.25 a cup, or $4 a gallon ($3.50 for the box of tea bags, $.50 for the sugar, lemon, and water). If you buy Starbucks iced tea, (assuming you are paying $3 for a venti, which has about 2 cups of liquid in it, + ice), you are paying $1.50 a cup, or $24 a gallon. $24 a gallon!? If gas or milk cost that much, there would be riots in the streets.



I'm still going to be purchasing my espresso beverages at a coffee bar because let's be honest, I don't have a $5,000 espresso machine at home, but during August, when the sweltering dog days of summer are upon us, I need a refreshing iced beverage every day. And I need that refreshing iced beverage to be, um, affordable. If I bought a glass of iced at at Starbucks every day during August (let's assume it's a venti), I would be spending... $93 on iced tea! Yikes! If I made my own tea at home (let's assume I drink an equivalent amount, 2 cups) I'll only be spending $15.50 for the month. Multiply that out over the whole summer, and I'll be saving myself ...$232.50. That's more than a season pass to Disneyland! Hmmm...




Raspberry Zinger Iced Tea with Lemon Simple Syrup

We have been making quite a lot of iced tea this summer, but this one has been my favorite by far, which is why I am sharing it with you! I used Celestial Seasonings "Lemon Zinger" iced tea because I like the tart taste of the raspberries and lemons together, but you can use whatever sort of iced tea you want.

When Nate makes the lemon simple syrup, he likes to shake it in a martini shaker with ice to cool it down more quickly. I, personally, can wait the 1/2 an hour it takes to cool down, but if you are impatient like he is, go right ahead and shake away.

Ingredients
1 box Celestial Seasonings "Raspberry Zinger" tea bags
1 gallon + 1 cup filtered water
2 lemons
1 cup sugar


Fill a pitcher with 1 gallon filtered water (I have a very handy iced tea pitcher with a lid and a spigot, but any sort of pitcher will do. Just be sure to cover the top while the tea is steeping, so no bugs or dirt get it).



Immerse 1 box Raspberry Zinger tea bags to water. Set in a sunny place, and let steep a minimum if 4 hours.



Meanwhile, mix 1 cup filtered water, 1 cup white sugar, and the juice of 1 lemon in a small saucepan. Heat over high heat, stirring constantly until the sugar dissolves into the water, and the mixture is clear. Remove from heat, and let cool. Can be stored in the fridge indefinitely (we keep ours in an old salad dressing bottle with the labels removed).



When tea is finished steeping, remove tea bags from water. Slice up 1 lemon and add to tea.


Store in the fridge indefinitely. Enjoy!

Homemade Lemon Verbena and Mint Lemonaid

You know that old saying, that when life gives you lemons, make lemonaid? Well life gave us lemons.

Literally.

So we made some lemonaid.

The recession being the big ugly uncle it promised to be, a restaurant owned by some folks we know just went out of business. We visited them the other day, and their house was jammed with a wild mishmash of kitchen innards: refrigerators, an assortment of tongs and other tools, a large box of every flavor of syrup under the sun - everything you could possibly think of that you might need to run a restaurant kitchen. And on the front step? A very, very large box of lemons.

So we took a big bag home. And then they sat on the counter for what seemed like FOREVER. I just couldn't make up my mind! There are so many wonderful things to do with lemons, it's totally ridiculous, but the OPTIONS! were! paralyzing! me!




Then I found myself in the grocery store earlier this week, parked in front of a big frosty freezer case. It's been SO hot lately, it felt good to let the icy air gush over me as I looked for a non-lethal can of frozen juice mix. When you've got a diet restriction like me, it's important to read the labels on EVERYTHING processed so no-one sneaks one past you and you end up eating something that will, you know, kill you. All I wanted was, you know, something kind of natural? Something that didn't have corn syrup, citric acid, and yellow food coloring as the three main ingredients? Something with actual JUICE in it? And you know what? I don't know if it's just that I shop at the ghetto grocery store of Huntington Beach, but there wasn't a single can of juice there that fit the bill. Not a single one! Maybe if I went to the hoity toity grocery store by the harbor I might find fancier frozen juice (if they even deigned to carry such a product) but they sure didn't have it here.

And then it hit me like the side of a barn. HELLO? You only have about 20 pounds of lemons sitting on your countertop. Makes some lemonaid from LEMONS already!

So I did.

But I couldn't resist fancying it up, so I crushed up some lemon verbena and some mint leaves and added them in too. And you know what? It was good. Really good. Much better than corn syrup + citirc acid + yellow food coloring. And probably about a million times healtier what with all those vitamins and minerals and stuff (I don't think it's coincidental that food that TASTES better also happens to be better FOR you!) So next time you're contemplating a frosty can of lemon flavored liquid corn syrup, put the can back in the freezer case and walk to the produce department and buy some LEMONS. You can do it!




Homemade Lemon Verbena and Mint Lemonaid
Makes 1 gallon


You probably want to use at least one organic lemon if you want to leave the peel on and slice one up and let it float around the top all pretty. However, I didn't. And look! We're still alive and have not yet sprouted additional limbs!

I grew the lemon verbena and mint myself - I bought this fun little mint container at my local Trader Joe's a few weeks ago - it has lemon verbena, sweet mint, and pineapple mint in it. I love it! Growing fresh herbs yourself is so easy. Can you grow weeds? Because if you can grow weed, you can grow herbs. Really, they're nothing but fragrant, tasty weeds. I can't even fathom why they charge so much for them at the grocery store. The things are impossible to kill and it costs less to buy the whole living plant than cuttings from them. Grow your own in a pot in the windowsill. It's nice!


ingredients
17 lemons
2.5 cups of sugar
cold filtered water
1 lemon verbena sprig
2 mint sprigs

a 1 gallon container (I like my iced tea jug)


method



Reserve one lemon for garnish. Juice 16 lemons using an electric juicer or hand juicer. Discard or compost peels. Pour lemon juice into 1 gallon jug.




Thoroughly wash remaining lemon to remove dirt and/or pesticides. Slice crosswise into 1/4 inch slices and add to lemon juice in jug.




rinse 1 sprig lemon verbena and 2 sprigs mint in cool water. Remove leaves from stem and discards stems.




crush lemon verbena and mint with a mortar and pestle, or with your fingers.




In a medium sauce pan, ombine 2.5 cups sugar with 2 cups water. Bring to a boil, stirring constantly until sugar is dissolved. Reduce to a simmer and add lemon verbena and mint. Simmer 2-3 minutes, until herbs are soft and bright green.




Remove syrup from heat. Add syrup to the lemon juice. Stir to combine. Fill jug the rest of the way with cold filtered water. Stir thoroughly to combine. Serve chilled over ice. Be extra fancy and add a little sprig of lemon verbena or mint. Voila! Lemonaid. Don't you feel accomplished?

Iced Sun Tea with Spiced Simple Syrup

(This is part of the Fight Back Friday event, which you can check out at Food Renegade. Enjoy!

Today being July 1st, Nate and I sat down and took a long hard look at our finances, which we haven't done since...oh... before the baby was born. In March. We've been a little busy around here, what with the mother-killer baby colic, the GERD, the C-section recovery, the postpartum depression and blah blah blah ad infinitum. For the last few months, we've just decided not to LOOK at the accounts, because if you don't look, everything is ok? right? right? And there was always money, so everything was going ok, right?

Ug.

No one here is pretending that a gluten-free diet is cheap, by my God, our food expenses this month were staggering. To put things in perspective, we spent more on food last month than on rent, and rent in Southern California is ridiculously high in comparison to the rest of the nation.





You're probably thinking that it's all the delicious home cooking I do around here, right? Because anyone who cooks with that much butter has got to be going into debt for it, right?

Not even. The problem is, I had a baby who demanded all my waking and sleeping hours be devoted to him, and after getting up 7 times a night to console my screaming infant, I just didn't have the energy to cook. Fitting in showers and the brushing of teeth was challenge enough, let alone whipping up lavish meals ahem, any meals at all. As often as not, the baby would go down to sleep at 5pm, I would start crying, and Nate would order sushi. So really, it was the sushi bill that did the budget in. Damn sushi.

So here we are, July 1st.





This month, we are going on an eating-out "fast." There will be NO eating out this month. I'm happy, the baby's happy, so regular, home-cooked meals should be on the menu again, right? And honestly, I'm really looking forward to it. I'm sick of eating out. I'm sick of sushi, specifically. There's only one little bit to this NO EATING OUT thing that has me quaking in my flip flops and gnashing my teeth and weeping and wailing lamentations.

No eating out, NOT EVEN STARBUCKS.

Not even STARBUCKS?? Woe is me! I love my morning cup of coffee... and my afternoon cup of coffee too. I don't go to Starbucks that often, but to me, a caramel machiatto with whole milk is the perfect reward after a really hard day (and I have had a lot of really hard days lately. Wait, come to think of it, I think the "hard day" excuse is what got us into this mess in the first place).

But you know? I think I'm going to be ok without it. Because I don't think I need a steaming hot cup of coffee during the month of July. It's hot here. I think I need a tall, frosty glass of iced tea with a sprig of mint in it. And thankfully, all you need for that is pitcher, some tea bags, and a little simple syrup, not a $5000 esspresso machine. And then, there is also the satisfaction of sitting in your own backyard, with a tall cool glass of iced tea that YOU made, knowing it only cost pennies instead of dollars. And it's just as good, no BETTER, than the iced tea at Starbucks.




Iced Sun Tea with Spiced Simple Syrup

You could go all plain Jane with this and make plain ol' black tea, with plain ol' simple syrup, but why? It's much more fun to pick a flavored tea and then make the simple syrup to match. Last week we made mango black tea with mint simple syrup, but your own creativity is the limit to what you can make!

For the Tea
1 box of tea bags, flavor of choice (this week we are drinking chai black tea)
a large, covered tea pitcher(I really love the kind with a spigot)
purified water to fill pitcher

For the Spiced Simple Syrup
2 cups water
2 cups granulated white sugar
2 cinnamon sticks
2-3 tablespoons whole cardamom seeds
1 teaspoon pure bourbon vanilla extract (or whatever you have)
1/4 teaspoon allspice


For the Tea
Fill your pitcher with cold, purified water. Add tea bags and cover. Set in a sunny place, and let steep, 3-4 hours. Remove teabags and refridgerate. Serve with ice and simple syrup.

For the Simple Syrup
Add water and sugar to a saucepan, and set over high heat. Bring to a boil, stirring until the sugar is dissolved. Add cinnamon sticks, cardamom seed pods, vanilla extract, and allspice. Reduce heat to low, and let simmer 5-10 minutes. Remove from heat, and let cool. Strain into a glass jar with a lid (I'm using an old spaghetti sauce jar), or leave cinnamon sticks and cardamom pods in syrup for a stronger flavor. Store in the refrigerator for up to two months.

Other flavor variations:
Instead of the spiced syrup mix, you can also try flavoring the syrup with fresh mint leaves, slices of oranges, lemons, or limes, pineapple wedges, apples, or shaved fresh ginger.