Often, the food holidays are established in months that make little sense—National Plum Pudding Day in February, when plum pudding is a Christmas tradition.

Another example is National Gingerbread Day—which is today, June 5th. Why isn’t it in the fall, a more popular time for spice cookies; or in December, the month for making gingerbread men?

Truth be told, a spice cookie can be just as tasty with a cold drink on a blazing summer day. So our tip of the day is: Don’t constrain yourself—enjoy your favorites year-round.

Beyond gingerbread cookies, you can celebrate with gingerbread cupcakes, iced gingerbread bars, a bundt cake or a chocolate gingerbread cake.

GINGERBREAD COOKIES
Gingerbread cookies are traditionally made in shapes—flowers, hearts, trees and so forth. They can vary by size and can be iced and decorated. The medieval German Lebkuchen Guild made gingerbread into an highly-decorated art, crafting fancy shapes, decorated with sugar and gold. The tale of Hansel and Gretel, published in 1812, vastly increased the popularity of gingerbread cookies and other gingerbread treats, such as gingerbread Christmas cards (but not gingerbread men—see Food Trivia, below). How about making gingerbread beach balls and other summer designs?
 
GINGER COOKIES
Ginger cookies are soft, molasses-type cookies that are flavored with ginger and other spices. They are larger than, and otherwise differ from, gingersnaps.

GINGERSNAPS
Unlike the fancier gingerbread, a gingersnap is a small, thin, plain round cookie; but it retains the hard, smooth texture of a gingerbread cookie. Like a gingerbread cookie, it breaks with a “snap.” Gingersnaps contain a larger amount of ginger, and thus are spicier than the chewier ginger cookies.

FOOD TRIVIA
Credit for the invention of gingerbread men is given to Queen Elizabeth I—because we don’t know the name of the palace baker who came up with the idea during her reign (1558 to 1603). Her Majesty bestowed “portrait” gingerbread cookies upon important court visitors, decorated in their likenesses. Gingerbread men and animals became popular Christmas tree ornaments.

RECIPES
Make gingerbread cookies, cakes, cupcakes and bars year-round:

Use your favorite tea bags to brew
iced tea. It’s easy! Photo by Katharine
Pollak | THE NIBBLE.

Brew your own iced tea.

It’s easy to buy bottles of ready-brewed tea, but why pay dollars when you can enjoy it for pennies—and be kind to the environment at the same time?

We picked up two boxes of flavored tea bags from Salada: Pomegranate Berry and Tropical Mango. First we enjoyed them hot.

Then, as the weather quantum-leaped into summer, we enjoyed them iced, brewing the tea in our favorite Breville Tea Maker (you can easily boil water in a tea kettle and brew the tea in a large mixing bowl).

The fruit gives a natural sweetness to the tea, so no extra sweetener was necessary.

We love the flavor of these fruity iced teas, and we also love the math:

*We used two tea bags to brew tea that filled 3.5 16-ounce bottles, or 35 bottles worth from one box of 20 tea bags. At $1.59/bottle for ready-made tea, our $3.00 box of tea made $55.65 worth of $1.59 bottles.

Brew your favorite tea flavors—we also brew jasmine, lemongrass, plain black and green teas, among others.

Here are step-by-step instructions for how to brew iced tea.

The original food pyramid, launched by the USDA in 1992, included the four food groups stacked in the shape of a pyramid with the number of recommended servings a person should eat from each group in a day. The widest part of the pyramid depicted the foods that should make up most of the diet (cereals and grains). The top of the pyramid, indicating the group that should be eaten in small amounts, was fats.

In 2005, the USDA revised the pyramid, expanding the number of food groups to six and adding a person walking up steps on the side of the pyramid to emphasize the need for exercise.

But it wasn’t popular with some nutritionists; and it for sure had no visible impact on the increase of child (and adult) obesity rates.

The new guideline, MyPlate, is a dramatic departure: a simple visual so that people can eat healthy at every meal. The visual has four colored sections representing fruits, vegetables, grains and proteins. Next to the plate is a smaller circle representing dairy products.

Now, instead a huge plate of pasta with a small salad or a large piece of meat and potatoes with a few broccoli florets, one can look at the plate and see that at least half of it should be grains and vegetables. (Pasta is a grain—but that grain shouldn’t occupy 100% of the plate.)

On ChooseMyPlate.com, the USDA emphasizes several important nutrition messages: eat smaller portions, make at least half the plate fruits and vegetables and avoid sugary drinks.

Here’s the advice from the USDA (none of it is news):

Balance Your Calories

 
Eat More Healthy Foods

 
Foods to Reduce

When was the last time you made a dessert using fresh apricots?

For most of us, the answer is: never.

So here’s a quick and easy recipe for Balsamic-Glazed Apricots With Ricotta Clouds.

If you think that “caramelized apricots” and “honey balsamic glaze” require a lot of work, this video will show you that both are done in a snap.

So take advantage of fresh apricots now in season and turn out a delicious, crowd-pleasing dessert.

Expeller pressed oils (also known as cold pressed oils) are those that have been extracted from fruits (avocados, olives, etc.), nuts, seeds and grains by expeller pressing.

A completely natural process, the source material has been squeezed in an expeller machine—an old-fashioned mechanical press. Some types of oils may then be refined using a steam filtration process.

The best oils are produced this way, and only oils produced this way are 100% natural.

Expeller pressed oils are typically more expensive because the pressed olives, nuts, etc. yield only about two-thirds as much oil as they would with chemical extraction.

Producers choose a lower yield and a pure product, rather than soaking the fruits/seeds/grains in chemicals, which can leave residues in the oil.

Expeller pressed oil are 100% natural, free of chemical solvents, additives and preservatives. Because they are less volatile, they evaporate less when heated; so you can use less when cooking. This can offset the higher price.

Another benefit: oils with a high level of saturated fat, such as coconut oil, contain fewer triglycerides than common vegetable oil (and thus have less saturated fat) when they are expeller pressed. Canola oil becomes lower in saturated fat than chemically extracted olive oil, and higher in Vitamin E, Omega 3 and Omega 6.

What is chemically-extracted oil?

If you don’t purchase oils that are labeled expeller pressed or cold press, your oil has been processed with hexane, a petroleum derivative (also known as a petro-organic compound). It is then further processed with phosphoric acid and other additives.

Now that you know, the choice is yours!