The Simple Secret of Iced Tea

So apparently based on the response to a simple Facebook status update about sipping my Caramel Pear Rooibos home made iced tea, everyone wants to know how to make home made iced tea... and it's actually very easy.

Basically all you have to do is:

1. brew your favourite tea,
2. add your choice of sweetener to your taste (while the tea is still hot so that it dissolves easily),
3. then cool and refrigerate until it's ready to drink!

Et voila! it really is that simple!

The secret to the fancy schmancy exotic flavours (caramel pear) wasn't anything I personally home brewed or added to my tea... I just bought the already fancy flavoured tea, which you can get at any tea shop (or just use whatever tea bags you have at home).

The caramel pear rooibos is from David's Tea, which Anita introduced me to in Ottawa. Luckily they have a location in Vancouver and they sell online as well. I highly recommend it! I walked out of there with three kinds of tea including Read My Lips (chocolate mint black tea), and one of their divine summer Luscious Watermelon fruit teas. All of them iced really well. Just going in to smell all the different teas is a treat in itself!

They have a collection of iced tea recipes, including alcoholic ones, like Spiked Strawberry or La La Long Island Iced Tea (oh that brings me back to the days of my frosh year)! The Watermelon Pops look delish too!

When I first read about how to make iced tea (can't remember where, but it was in a couple of places, from a display in a tea shop to a website), the directions were to doubly steep the tea (twice the amount of tea leaves), then add ice to cool it down.

Umm, is it just me, or does that seem like a waste of good extra tea leaves, only to be watered down? I suppose I'd try the iced method if I was in a pinch, but so far it's been easy enough to brew a jar and refrigerate it so it's ready to enjoy whenever I am thirsty or a guest shows up for an impromptu visit! Or, it's excellent in a blended fruit drink too!

Bonus Tea Tip: Rooibos tea is apparently rich in minerals, making it an excellent sports drink, helping to replenish your body after a workout. It sure tastes better than Gatorade in my books!

Summer Sippin' in the Sunshine

The perfectionist in me is also a huge procrastinator, so I've been waiting for "enough time" to post my last few rounds of recipes...Apparently I just need some accountability, which usually at work takes the form of deadlines. But for fun stuff, apparently all I need is to post it on my Facebook and get people asking for it!

So here goes... all are themed for some summer lovin'. And, as per usual the Justine-key-criteria, all are super duper easy, ready to be served in a pinch with spontaneous visitors, provided you have the ingredients on hand! :)

Hot Chocolate from Thomas Haas: Okay so this one is not really a summer drink, and it's not homemade so I don't have the recipe, but it does go with the theme of drinks. I can't help but plug how amaaazing the hot chocolate was. And what an inspiring place to have a creative work meeting... Leah and I felt like we had a little vacation during the time we were there.

LYCHEE-PEACH SMOOTHIE

Ingredients:

• 1 can of peaches
• 1 can of lychees

Directions: Blend both cans of fruit including all the juices. Pour and enjoy.

Notes: Lychees are extremely versatile and go well with other fruits. Lychee blueberry is another one of my favourite combos, which makes an excellent pie.

There are multiple routes to achieve the frosty refreshing cold effect:

• Add some ice before blending. (This option dilutes the flavour a bit with the added water. The below two options preserve the concentration of the fruit.)
• Refrigerate the cans of fruit before blending.
• Freeze the fruit (or purchase already frozen fruit) without the juices. Then blend the frozen fruit pieces with the liquid unfrozen juices.

BLUEBERRY TEA SMOOTHIE

Ingredients:

• 1 cup of frozen blueberries
• 1 cup of iced tea
• sweetener, to taste

Directions: Blend and enjoy.

Notes: You can experiment with different kinds of frozen fruit. And the possibilities are endless for the kinds of tea you could use... rooibos, green tea, black tea, fruit tea, oh my! Home made iced tea is the best in my opinion though.

CREAMY TOFFEE SHAKE

Ingredients:

• 3 tbsp of Caffe d'Amore Vanilla Smoothie Mix
• 1 cup of ice
• 1/2 cup of milk
• 1/4 cup of Skor bits

Directions: Blend and enjoy.

Notes:

• Try this also with Oreo cookies... yum-a-lum! Or I suppose any crunchy candy like Smarties or Reese Pieces would be a good bet too!
• You can buy the amazing Caffe d'Amore mix at Superstore which works magic in turning any liquid drink into a happenin' shake or smoothie. They also have a coffee frappe version if that's more your fancy.
• You can substitute cow's milk with almond or soy milk, though the drink mix powder does have dairy in it.

PURE WATERMELON SLURPEE (sorry no photo!)

Ingredients: 1 watermelon

Directions:

1. Cut the watermelon into cubes about the size of an ice cube tray (2 inch cubes).
2. Refrigerate half of the cubes.
3. Put the remaining half of the cubes on a flat sheet separated slightly and place in the freezer, so that the cubes do not freeze in one giant mass which makes for easier blending.
4. Once the cubes are frozen, place equal parts of frozen and refrigerated cubes and blend until smooth.

Notes:

The trick with this (or any other icy fruit blended drink) is not to add too much (if any) additional liquid/water, as it can dilute the flavour of the already subtle watermelon. The melon has enough liquid in it already, so you only need to take advantage of its natural juice by freezing it.

Enjoy!!!

Berry Tasty Bars: Long Run Fuel Marathon Chunks

Despite the fact that I watch a total of only 1.5 hours of television each week, there are indeed perks to having a sister who works for a television station. Media outlets often sponsor large events happening throughout the city. This means they get "free" sponsor tickets to use, which are conveniently up for grabs via contests.

So I wanted to go the Wellness Show, but of course I was too cheap to shell out the money for tickets. Conveniently I asked if she could enter the draw and win me tickets. Luck was with her again, and she won! Turns out the tickets were worth every dime we paid; they would have even worth every cent we would have paid had I not been so cheap and bought the tickets for real. There were tons of samples and we left quite full.

Of all the goodies we tasted, the category most represented by far was the oodles of energy and protein bar samples. Of the many we tried, I can't say any of them were decent enough to warrant me wanting to remember the name nor spend the effort to make a purchase. The textures were not very appealing, to say the least. The flavours were even more disappointing -- enticing flavours like "Cookies and Cream Delight" or "Chocolate Peppermint Stick" were overly-sweetened and artificial. I might as well have a real cookies and cream chocolate bar or chocolate peppermint patty for the same amount of calories.

Normally energy bars are not even a product I would be looking to consume. (There was the one time, prompted by a sale, that I bought a pile of Clif bars, and treated them like granola bars. Not a good idea when granola bars are one of my choice items to consume on a carb-sugar-craving-binge. Anyway, that time doesn't count! ;)

But since I was inspired by my sister to start running, I began a hunt for home made recipes for energy bars that tasted like real food to fuel my longer runs. I found success with two recipes, both quite different.

The first one is a three-grain based bar that I'll just link you to from here, because I pretty much followed the recipe, other than doubling the cocoa and eliminating the coffee since I'm just a boring hot-water drinker. Quite delicious and chewy -- and I like to chew everything, from ice cream to frozen baked goods. When I was still in high school, my mom once asked me to stop running down to the deep freeze because I was eating all her frozen muffins she was saving for later. Oops.

The second one is a fruit-and-nut bar I'll post here, because I altered about half the ingredients. You can see the original recipe here. As usual, I like to look at the broad strokes of a recipe and improvise where I can. I love this recipe because it's so simple, and you can swap out any number of adjustments to suit your taste.

Long Run Fuel Marathon Chunks

Ingredients

• 1 cup dried fruit (I did mostly blueberries, with a few cherries thrown in)
• 1 cup raw nuts (I used raw cashews)
• 1/2 cup nut butter (I used my all time favourite hazelnut butter, adjust for desired consistency)
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 2-3 tbsp of liquid sweetener (I used agave, but you can use honey or maple syrup too, adjust for desired consistency)
• 1/3 cup raw sunflower or pumpkin seeds

Directions

1. Combine all (save the sunflower seeds) in a food processor until well mixed.
2. Turn the mixture into a bowl and fold in the sunflower seeds.
3. Remove and press into an 8X8 foil covered pan.
4. Refrigerate overnight.
5. Remove and cut into small chunks.

Notes and Cautions:

According to the original blogger, this can be tough work for your food processor if you use larger fruit like pitted prunes or apricots (I would imagine pulsing would help ease the work, but learn from my errors which resulted in a morgue of small appliances -- if it starts to overheat or smell burnt, just stop or risk killing it!). Smaller fruit like berries worked like a breeze.

I used my silicone baking mat to press the mixture flat after wrestling with a sticky and uneven spoon. You could replicate the same effect by pressing down on parchment paper. I've also seen some other bloggers make similar recipes by shaping the mixture into balls.

I'm a huge fan of berries and really quite hate prunes or apricots, so the combo I used tasted a lot like a peanut butter and jelly sandwich in a bar form. Super tasty! So tasty I have to restrain myself not to eat too many of these if I'm not immediately planning on going for a run. I did a rough calculation and with the ingredients I used -- these puppies pack about 175 calories per 1.5 inch square. Yikes! Great for a run, but not so good for a couch potato movie snack!

I took these for a test 12 mile run, wearing them in my pack, as a dry run for my race next week. They got a bit squooshy half way through. Next time I think I'll try freezing the chunks and see if that helps.

So there you have it. If you try it out, let me know what twists you added, and tell me how they turned out!

Blueberry Lychee Pie Goodness!

I'm intuitively a better cook than a baker. Cooking welcomes creativity and flexibility. Baking requires scientific precision. My mother drastically alters baking ingredients without thoroughly recognizing how it impacts the overall recipe chemistry. I inherited this trait, yet luckily my baking adventures result in delicious success sometimes.

Like my blueberry-lychee pie experiment. 

Inspiration #1: I love lychees.

My go-to way to enjoy lychees is to blend them in a simple smoothie = one can of peaches including juices + one can of lychees including juices. [Did you get that bonus recipe?] Once I requested a lychee-peach blend at the best bubble tea place in Vancouver. I laughed when the woman obliged, but only after a stern disclaimer, "We don't guarantee it will taste good." I bet the regular Asian clientele doesn't usually order off the proven menu.

The accidental discovery of the fabulous marriage of lychees and blueberries: During one spontaneous visit, I offered my guest a smoothie. I had a can of lychees, but no peaches. What about trying the frozen blueberries? What a delicious surprise!

Lychees are fragrant, but subtle enough to complement other foods, even savoury ones. One Thai restaurant cooks lychees in their tasty ostrich curry!

Inspiration #2: Beyond Savoury, to Sweet Dumplings

Once my neighbour celebrated her birthday with Chinese dumpling wrapping (and gorging) party. We wrapped, pan fried, and ate Chinese savoury dumplings to our hearts' content.

For dessert, at the lead of a non-Asian guest, we filled the leftover dumpling wraps with a sweet filling of fruit. Apparently it's a European dessert. We pan fried them and they were delish!

This year for Chinese New Year, we received a last minute invitation to another neighbour's dumpling party. Desiring to bring food, but too lazy to go shopping, I searched my kitchen. Lychees and blueberries! We wrapped blueberry-lychee dumplings for dessert. We steamed them, but they didn't quite taste right. Pan fried worked better!

So with the leftover blueberry-lychee filling, and knowing deliciousness comes with fried, greasy goodness, I experimented with it as a pie filling.

Guidelines for Blueberry Lychee pie (Use as a starting point, not a precise recipe. I can't part from my fluid artsy ways ;)

Pie crust recipe is found here (thanks to Dilys for pointing me there!)

Filling Ingredients (with possible substitutions)

• 2 cans of lychees, drained and loosely cut into pieces, to your desired chunkiness
• 2 cups of blueberries (fresh or frozen)
• 1/3 cup of liquid (any kind of juice, left from the lychee can; the remaining juices from the can make a refreshing cocktail with a punch of lychee liquer!)
• 2 tablespoons of tapioca starch (or corn starch, any thickening agent)

Sweeten to taste with sugar (or alternative sweeter, like Stevia or agave). I didn't add any sweetener, because the canned lychees contain enough sugar. You could use fresh lychees if you're trying to go sugar free.

If you're gluten free, try a crumble topping, with quinoa or millet flour instead of a wheat pie crust.

The substitutions are endless! Try other fruits, like peaches to go with the lychees. As long as you have about 4 cups of fruit you could change up the ratios and put more lychees, if you want to experiment with stronger lychee flavour.

The Method:

1. Heat the fruit filling ingredients in a pot over medium heat. Slowly stir in corn starch until thickened.
2. Fill pie crust with filling. Cover the pie with a top crust, being careful to seal the edges. Poke the top crust with a few holes using a fork.
3. Bake at 350 degrees until golden brown. Cool to let set. Then Enjoy!

See how un-precise I am? I can't even give you a time to bake, based on your pie format. This recipe made me 10-12 little pie crusts, the size of individual muffins, which I baked for 20 minutes in my convection oven (I pressed the pie dough into silicon muffin liners). But the pie crust recipe is enough for a 9 inch pie. Bake longer for one large pie. That's why I stick with the "golden brown" rule.

Have fun and let me know how it goes!