Category Archives: beverage

Water Deluxe with a variation

beverage

Hello!

Today’s recipe is an excellent summer recipe. Possibly even comparable to the double-coolmint chocolates. It requires a few more ingredients, but it takes a bit less time. So, yeah. This is an excellent Summer drink:

Water Deluxe

Ingredients / Required Serving Implements

  1. 1 Cup of desired size
  2. Lemon Juice
  3. Ice (optional. I generally haven’t used this, but it should work.)
  4. Straw (semi-optional)

Instructions

  1. Put ice and water into the cup
  2. Pour an appropriate squirt of lemon juice into the cup, according to taste preference. Just enough to make it slightly tangy works.
  3. Stir around (Why the straw is only semi-optional. A spoon would also work)
  4. Let sit for a few minutes to let flavors combine
  5. Enjoy (non-optional).

Variation 1

  1. In addition to the lemon juice, cut or shred a small amount of ginger.
  2. Place the ginger into the cup of the original recipe Water Deluxe.
  3. Stir
  4. Enjoy

Coffee Mod: Cinnamon

beverage

Hi!

So. I don’t know about you, but I’m a big fan of certain types of coffees. Including some flavored coffees. One of my recent favorites is a non-sweet “cinnamon-roll” type of coffee.

And so I decided to try to make my own variation. It turned out pretty well!

Basically, I’ve been putting about a 1/4 tsp of Cinnamon into an individual-brew cup. (I have some of those reusable k-cup pod thingies.) And then I’ve been brewing the coffee. And voila! It tastes like cinnamon coffee.

You should try it!

Have a great evening!

Mocha Meltdown Madness

"Gourmet", About A Buck, beverage, dessert, , ,

Hi, readers!

It’s getting on towards the end of the quarter for me. At some point I’m going to need to do a series of posts on the interesting snacks I’ve experimented with, but I don’t have the time.

I do have the time, though, to share a fairly quick coffee drink recipe with you. It’s a white-chocolate, chocolate, peppermint drink I’m calling “Mocha Meltdown Madness” for a few reasons.

A) Alliteration. Duh.

2) Chocolate. I’m getting towards (2ards? Meh) the end of the quarter, which means that chocolate is required to prevent / help with “meltdowns.” Also, chocolate melts. So, it’s a pun.

last) Madness. Why didn’t I think of this before? Why is the end of the semester so busy? Why are all these ingredients in the same cup tasting so good? Madness, I tell you!

Mocha Meltdown Madness

Ingredients

  • 1-2 ounces of milk (per 10 ounces of coffee, up to you.  It depends on the size of your mug.) Cream would be better, but hey- grad school budget. (negligible price / not worth the time of estimation.)
  • 10 ounces of coffee, thereabouts. (About 30 cents, according to my Dad’s calculations. Or free, if you get someone else to buy the coffee for you.)
  • About 1 TBSP white chocolate chips (negligible cost)
  • About 1 TBSP bittersweet chocolate chips (negligible)
  • 5-6 drops peppermint extract / a bit less than 1/4 tsp. (If you don’t like peppermint that much, even though it helps with concentration so it’s practically a necessity / healthy for students, use less.) (negligible)
  • A small capful of vanilla (optional). Or a big capful. But that’ll change the flavor. Obviously.

Directions

  • Heat milk, either in microwave or saucepan/skillet/stovetop-safe-thingy until it is hot enough to melt your chocolate
  • Add the chocolate chips, peppermint, and vanilla
  • Stir/whisk together until blended
  • Stick in microwave again, to ensure that your coffee stays hot for as long as possible. I use about 45 seconds on 20% power. Or use whatever setting you would for melting chocolate.
  • Pour coffee into mug, stir again.
  • (Optional: If you have whipped cream, put on top. Peppermint sprinkles would make a nice garnish. However, since this is a recipe by a graduate student, the original recipe does not have anything like that. After all, I choose not to afford cream on a regular basis. So, no whipped cream… for a regular thing.)
  • Test it. If necessary, or if merely desired, add more chocolate chips. White chocolate chips makes the drink sweeter, whereas bittersweet makes it more, well, chocolatey.
  • (nonoptional) Enjoy.

Total price? Probably less than a buck. But does it matter? Nope. It is SO. WORTH IT.

I hope you enjoy!

My Grape Juice Turned Into a Smoothie

beverage, dessert,

Hi readers!

So. I ended up going to a highly aerobic dance club tonight. (Seriously, I completely understand how some types of dance can burn about 500 calories an hour.) (And no, it wasn’t Zumba- it was Charleston. A WHOLE lot of fun!)

And after I got back, I thought that I really wanted grape juice. After all, I’ve got some frozen grapes in the freezer and a vitamix. Shouldn’t be too hard, right?

Unfortunately, ingredients just kept on popping up their heads saying “ooh, put me in! I’d be great!”

So the end result looked like this:

A fruit smoothie that was originally supposed to be grape juice.
Uh, “Grape Juice!” Yup, sure… 😀

And it’s REALLY, REALLY GOOD. 

So, here’s the recipe for:

Not Quite Grape Juice… at all

Ingredients

  1. 3 jumbo ice cubes (minimal charge)
  2. About 4-7 frozen strawberries (No more than 1/8 of a $2.00 bag, so about $0.13. Tops. Probably close to 7-10 cents.)
  3. About 6 frozen grapes (minimal charge.)
  4. About 1/4-1/3 Cup Milk (Maybe 5 cents?)
  5. (Optional) About 1-2 TBSP half & half (Maybe 5 cents?)
  6. A splash of vanilla (minimal)
  7. 1-2 tsp honey (MAYBE $0.05?)
  8. A shake of cinnamon (minimal)

Total cost: absolutely no more than $0.30. Probably much closer to $0.10. So, basically negligible. Especially if you already have the ingredients on hand. 🙂

Directions

  1. Start off by planning on having grape juice.
  2. Turn that idea into strawberry-grape juice.
  3. Realize you have milk, and could make something icecreamish
  4. Scratch the ice cream idea, because you want a beverage
  5. Add the ice, strawberries, and grapes into the vitamix
  6. Add the milk and half & half anyways, and decide to turn it into a smoothie
  7. Realize that vanilla would go nicely
  8. Add said vanilla
  9. Go, “Ah! I can make this ‘healthy’!” and add a shake or two of cinnamon
  10. Realize that both the cinnamon and vanilla will need sweetening
  11. Put in a bit of honey
  12. Blend until smooth

Serving: About 1 Cup.

Simpler Directions

  1. Put ingredients into the vitamix
  2. Blend until smooth
  3. Enjoy
  4. Or don’t. Really, it’s up to you.

I hope you have a tasty drink/smoothie/thingy!

Fun with Rice “Milk”!

beverage, rice,

Hi there!

I’ve been having a bit of fun with rice. And my blender. And honey and cinnamon and vanilla. And you now basically have the “recipe” I was going to give you. Oh well, here it is anyway!

1 Cup of Rice Milk(ish) Stuff!

Recently, I’ve been wanting something sweet (but not smoothie) to drink. So, I decided to explore the world of rice milk. I’m rather glad I did. I grew up with having Horchata every once in a while, and I love that stuff. What I’ve been making is not horchata, but it’s reminiscent, and so makes me happy.

Ingredients

  • 1/3 Cup cooked rice. (I did not add salt or anything. I just cooked up about 3 cups of rice, took 1/3 of a cup, and put the rest into the fridge to be used at a later time.)
  • A bit less than 2/3 cup water.
  • 1/2 tsp vanilla
  • Cinnamon to taste
  • About 1 tsp of honey. (I did not measure this.)

Throw all of those ingredients into your blender. (I used my vitamix.) Blend until smooth. Chill, and enjoy.

Isn’t that easy? It’s also really inexpensive. A five pound bag from walmart supposedly costs a bit less than $3. (For the sake of ease, let’s call it $3.) According to various answers around the internet, there’s about 2.5 cups of uncooked rice per pound. There are therefore about 12(ish) cups of rice in a five pound bag. (Yes, I’m severely rounding. I’m making it cost more, though, and it’ll still be really inexpensive, so forgive me. 🙂 )

So in this case, each uncooked cup of rice would cost about $0.25. A cup of uncooked rice turns into about 3 cups of cooked rice. So the rice for this serving was about 1/9 of $0.25. Call it about $0.03. (Again, rounding errors factor into this.) The water was free, I bought the vanilla in bulk so a 1/2 tsp is sooo not worth calculating the cost of, and the same goes for the cinnamon and honey.

Even so, let’s add a penny. So, we’d get to about $0.04 for a very tasty drink treat. Not bad, from my perspective! Less than a nickle!

I hope you enjoy!