What better way to start the morning than with café bombón? It's a 1:1 ratio of Eagle Brand to espresso.

2022-11-12: the 1:1 ratio is tasty, but probably sweeter than I need.

2022-11-13: today I tried a 3:1 ratio of espresso to Eagle Brand. Still good. Still quite sweet. Next time I should try to pour the Eagle Brand through the coffee instead of first.

Ginger Blast Tea makes a great summertime cooler
By REBEKAH DENN, P-I REPORTER
Published 10:00 pm, Tuesday, May 16, 2006

Chef Stephanie Speer gave us this account of how to make the Ginger Blast drink that fans remember from the old Green Cat Cafe on Capitol Hill:

Take a quarter-pound of ginger, take all the skin off, and slice it into circles. Cuisinart it "so it's nice and edible." Then mix the puree with four cups of lemon juice, one cup of honey, and a teaspoon of cayenne. "It's as simple as that!"

Speer recommends several ways to serve the blast: Drink it straight as shots, brew it with hot water for Ginger Blast Tea, or mix it with soda water and ice for a summertime cooler.

I have made rosemary elixir and peppermint elixir... and I have a Thai basil plant on my porch... Hm. How would that turn out? So I decided to again adapt the recipe for ginger elixir from Rachel Matesz's cookbook. First I tried it without sweetener. Uninteresting. Then I threw in stevia. Kazing! That worked great! Such an interesting flavor. I will certainly make it again.

Last night I decided to try something different. I had previously made and really enjoyed ginger elixir following the recipe in Rachel Matesz's cookbook, and it struck me that it would be interesting to try with rosemary. I have a rosemary plant growing on my porch, so I gathered some stems from the plant, and stripped off about four loose handfuls of leaves. Threw the leaves into the blender with two cups of boiling water. Pureed. Added two more cups of boiling water. Allowed to sit for half an hour. Once that was cool, I poured the liquid into a pitcher through a strainer and added four more cups of filtered water along with a couple eyedroppers' full of stevia. Refrigerated it overnight. Voila! Rosemary elixir!

This morning I'm drinking my first cup. I like it. The potent herbal smell and flavor is surprising at first. It reminds of the reaction I first had to horehound candy or anise lozenges. It's a bit of a slap in the face if you are not used to it, but it tastes good once you get past the "Mama never made anything like this" phase. I'll doubtless make it again.

I've always loved peppermint Life Savers, so a few months ago I bought a peppermint plant. In retrospect it was a bad food choice: peppermint is too strong for some purposes. Spearmint would work better in most salads. But the other day I recalled the recipe for ginger elixir from Rachel Matesz's cookbook, and it struck me that it would probably work just as well with peppermint. From my plant I gathered, oh, four loose handfuls of peppermint. I stripped the leaves from the stems. Threw the leaves into the blender with two cups of boiling water. Pureed. Added two more cups of boiling water. Allowed to sit. Once that was cool, I threw it in a pitcher and added four more cups of filtered water along with a couple eyedroppers' full of stevia. Regrigerated it. Voila! Peppermint elixir! An entirely decent drink. It's different from our standard pop flavors, so I suspect it will take some getting used to, but it's good.

For my next elixir, I'm tempted to try rosemary. Yes, that seems a dicier attempt, but what the heck.

Years ago on the west edge of Capitol Hill in Seattle there was a place called “The Green Cat Café,” now out of business, which had ginger shots on their beverage list. The shots were a ginger lemon mix with some cayenne thrown in. They were served as shots, cups of hot tea, or as iced tea. I've always wanted to reproduce it. I always drank it as hot tea. I've always wanted to reproduce it. Since I'm in Arizona, I think I'll try to reproduce a cold version of it first, as a variation on Rachel Matesz's ginger elixir recipe. Tonight's ingredients:

• 8 cups water
• 7 tbsp lemon juice
• 3 tsp finely chopped ginger
• 2 chiltepines, ground in a mortar

I liked the result. The lemon overpowered the ginger, so next time around I'll try about half of the lemon juice.

Last night I was thinking about the strawberry squash recipes in my Indian cookbook. I decided to experiment with a strawberry punch. I took 12 oz of fresh organic strawberries and put them through the blender with 4 cups of boiling water, then let them sit an hour. I transferred the result to a pitcher and added four more cups of filtered water. Then I added one quarter teaspon of stevia extract for sweetness.

It was okay. I'll definitely finish drinking it. It doesn't have the sugar punch to it that commercial drinks have, but my taste buds are becoming used to having things less sugary, so that's fine.

Today I'm making a tea from an El Guapo brand spice mix called “siete azahares” (seven blossoms), which is sold in all sorts of stores in Phoenix including the stores that focus on Hispanic customers and in the Mexican spices sections of Gringo stores. The spices are: passion flower, linden flower, rose petals, chamomile, anise seeds, and tila star. (I think “tila star” is lime blossom.) That actually only adds up to six ingredients. Hm. I wonder what the label is leaving out?

Procedure

1. Put packet of seasonings (¼ oz or 7 g) into blender.
2. Add two cups of boiling water. Following standard safety procedures for very hot liquids in blender, began to mix first at lowest speed all the way up to liquefy.
3. Add two more cups of hot water into the spinning blender. Turn off. Let sit for an hour
4. Strain into pitcher. Add two cups of cool water and ¼ teaspon of Stevia

Now that I've tasted it, I'd say there's too much chamomile. Doesn't work for me.

I've been surprised recently to discover low calorie tasty drinks that one can make at home that entirely replace soft drinks for me. First there was iced ginger elixir from “The Garden of Eating.” Then there was a similar version of lemonade from the same book. Both recipes make use of stevia for sweetness. So today I decided to try my own variation on that them. I took ¼ cup of dried peppermint, which I purchase under the name yerba buena in the Mexican spices section of the local grocery store. (Yes, I do know that it should be spelled “hierba buena” to be academically rigorous, but that's not how it was written on the packet.) I put it in a 2 cup pyrex container and then poured boiling hot water over it and let it steep for an hour. Then I strained the liquid into a pitcher and added four cups of cool, filtered water, along with ¼ teaspoon of liquid stevia. Nice. It doesn't have the slap in the face effect of the lemonade or ginger drinks, but a nice drink nonetheless.