Fruit drinks, doubly spiced. Photo courtesy
Prometheus Springs.

There’s a big market of people who love spicy foods. They’ll love these terrific, refreshing, spicy drinks, which make great cocktail mixers as well.

We love every one of the six flavors:

 
In addition to the spices in each fruit, capsaicin—the heat component of hot chiles—is added for double sizzle.

But the drinks are “mainstream hot.” We prefer mild salsa, for example, and found the heat levels to be just fine.

Check out the full review, and perhaps send some Prometheus Springs to a spicy-hot loving friend.

Or, use them to add sizzle to your Labor Day bash.
 
Find more of our favorite beverages: reviews and recipes.
  

But there are other foods in softer packaging—bags of bread, produce bags and such. For these types of foods—anything in bag that you’d twist close—the Fish Clip is the better bag.

The jaws of the fish open wide, then cinch tight and lock in place. It accommodates a broad variety of package necks, including the smallest (like the bread bag) to the largest cereal bag.

The clips are magnetic so they can tread water on the fridge until needed. Or, use them for non-food purposes—on filing cabinets, to neaten cable cords—a more colorful substitute for velcro ties.

Think of them as small gifts and stocking stuffers. You can buy them online at Amazon.com.

A festive party drink: iced tea with fresh
berries. Photo © EugeneBochkarev |
Dreamstime.

Think small: The smaller berries, raspberries and strawberries, work best; you also may be able to find small grapes. If you’d like to add a couple of mint leaves, look for a bunch of mint with smaller leaves.

HOW TO MAKE A BERRY DRINK

1. Berries float in liquid, so you need to layer the ice cubes and berries to anchor the fruit.

2. Add a berry to the glass, followed by a couple of ice cubes to hold the berry down. Keep layering, dispersing the berries evenly around the glass (i.e., not all on one side of the glass).

3. When you’re finished layering, add the liquid and serve.

4. Place a few berries on a cocktail pick as the garnish. When people are finished with the drink, they can use the pick to skewer the berries in the glass.

 
What would you layer? Please share.

Find more of our favorite non-alcoholic drinks and drink recipes.
 
  

We recently purchased a bargain-size package of culinary lavender on Amazon.com. Our intent was to make lavender tea,* which we consume by the potfull.

When a very large pouch of lavender arrived, we had to figure out what to do with all of it. We didn’t want to go the high-calorie dessert route—lavender pound cake, crème brûlée, panna cotta and so forth.

So lavender iced tea was a no brainer. Then we turned to lavender lemonade, a lovely gourmet twist.

When we made a four-cup version of this recipe, all the lemonade was gone in a minute. So this larger recipe makes a bit more than a gallon, or 16 eight-ounce servings—two 64-ounce pitchers.

August 20th is National Lemonade Day. Here’s the history of lemonade.
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*Lavender tea recipe: Steep lavender to taste with the tea leaves; start by making just one cup of tea with 1/4 teaspoon per 6 ounces of water, and adjust to strength to taste with a subsequent cup).
 
 
RECIPE #1: LAVENDER LEMONADE

Ingredients

Make lavender-infused lemonade for a gourmet twist (photo © Edith Frincu | Dreamstime).

1. BOIL. Boil one gallon of water plus the sugar in a large saucepan.

2. INFUSE. Add lavender and simmer for 15 minutes. If you don’t want to strain it out, place the lavender in a mesh spice ball/tea infuser.

3. ADD. Cool to room temperature. Add lemon juice, strain out lavender and chill.

VARIATIONS

 
 
RECIPE #2: LAVENDER SIMPLE SYRUP

You can make lavender simple syrup in advance; then, just spoon it into unsweetened lemonade or iced tea. You get both sweetener and lavender flavor at once!
 
Ingredients

 
Preparation

1. COMBINE the water and sugar in a saucepan and bring to a boil, stirring until the sugar fully dissolves.

2. ADD the lavender buds and simmer for 15 minutes. Strain out lavender and let the syrup cool. Keep in a tightly-capped jar (no refrigeration needed) and use it to sweeten plain iced tea, hot tea, unsweetened lemonade and cocktails.

3. CONSIDER making extra bottles to give as gifts.
 
 
MAKE LAVENDER WATER, TOO

You can also flavor water with lavender. Simmer the lavender in water for 15 minutes, cool and refrigerate.
 
 
MORE LEMONADE TIPS

Benne wafers are small brown-sugar cookies seasoned with sesame seeds. They’ve been popular in the South since the 18th century. How did sesame, which many Americans associate with Asian cuisine, end up in the American South?

Before we get to the cookies, here’s:

A HISTORY OF SESAME

The plant, Sesamum indicum grows wild in Africa; some varieties also grow wild in India. Today, thousands of varieties are cultivated in tropical regions worldwide. The seeds grow in the pods (the fruit) of the plant.

Sesame seed is the oldest oilseed crop known to man, domesticated more than 5,000 years ago. It has one of the highest oil contents of any seed. The seeds are also rich in calcium, iron, vitamins B and E and zinc, high in protein and cholesterol-free.

The nutty, buttery taste, which becomes even nuttier when toasted, led to the use of sesame seed by cuisines around the globe.
Now on to America:

In Colonial times, a small amount of benne—the Bantu word for sesame—arrived in Charleston, possibly in the pockets of enslaved Bantu who considered the seeds to bring good luck (irony noted). The seeds were planted, and by the 18th century the crop became cultivated extensively throughout the South.

BENNE WAFERS EMERGE

According to Southern Sisters Bakers, which makes benne wafers, when plantation owners had large parties, they sent their guests home with benne wafers as a good luck party favor.

Benne wafers have a richer, less sugary flavor than many cookies, thanks to the use of brown sugar instead of hite sugar. Some recipes add 1/4 teaspoon salt for a subtle salt counterpoint; the salt adds nuance and also makes the wafers pair well with cheese. If you like sesame honey crunch—those small rectangular candies of sesame seeds in a base of honey (we love them)—you’ll like benne cookies.

You can get a gift tin with a Charleston watercolor on the lid from Byrd Cookies.

If you want to bake your own benne wafers, here’s a recipe. Like chocolate chip cookies, oatmeal cookies and many others, there are endless recipe variations. You can search online to find one that best suits your tastes.
 
Find more of our favorite cookies and cookie recipes.