With all the luscious fruit coming into season, it’s time to make easy fruit sorbet.

You don’t even need an ice cream maker. You can make granita in a plastic container or the bottom of a metal ice cube tray.

Unlike ice cream and frozen yogurt, sorbet is dairy-free, fat-free, cholesterol-free, vegan and free of the eight major food allergens (eggs, fish, milk, peanuts, shellfish, soy, tree nuts and wheat). If you limit your sugar intake, when you make your own sorbet you can substitute low-glycemic agave nectar or the non-caloric sweetener of your choice.

SORBET RECIPE
Use this template to make any fruit sorbet recipe: apple, berry (blackberry, blueberry, raspberry, strawberry), citrus (grapefruit, lemon, lime, orange), melon (cantaloupe, honeydew, watermelon), pear, tropical fruit (kiwi, mango, pineapple) and stone fruit (apricot, cherry, nectarine, peach, plum).

Ingredients

 
Preparation

1. BRING the water and sugar to boil, then lower heat and simmer for five minutes.

2. REMOVE from heat and cool completely. Combine with the fruit purée.

3. PLACE in an ice cream maker and follow the manufacturer’s directions.

4. FOR GRANITA: If you don’t have an ice cream maker, make a granita. Put the mixture in a plastic container and place in the freezer. When it begins to freeze, stir every 10 minutes to break up the ice crystals, until completely frozen, for approximately one hour.

A global cookie ambassador. Photo courtesy
DoubleTree by Hilton.

DoubleTree by Hilton launched its Cookie CAREavan in New York City by giving away 50,000 free cookies. It’s the first leg of a national 50-city road tour.

So if there’s a DoubleTree in your town, there’s a delicious free cookie coming to you soon.

The cookies are packed with chocolate chips, walnuts and rolled oats, and are nicely flavored with lemon juice and cinnamon.

Since 1986, the cookies have welcomed guests to the hotel. Today, at each of the more than 200 DoubleTree hotels and resorts on five continents, the cookies are baked fresh every day—to the tune of 30,000 chocolate chip cookies every month and more than 10,950,000 each year. The company is on its way to giving out its 300 millionth cookie.

One might say that the cookies are goodwill ambassadors to countries that aren’t familiar with them—from China and Costa Rica to Tanzania and Zanzibar.

DoubleTree has also donated more than one million cookies to deserving people (doctors, nurses, police and firefighters) and special groups (orphanages, food banks and shelters).

Hotel guests like the cookies so much that they are available online. You can treat yourself or send a tin for Father’s Day, at DoubleTreeCookies.com (or telephone 1.888.916.0097).

The cookies are certified kosher (dairy) by Star-D.

Follow the cross-country tour to find out when the Cookie CAREavan may be coming to your city.
  

This fun and tidy way to serve honey dispenses single servings to anyone who wants some in their tea, on biscuits, on pancakes and so forth.

Honey also dissolves more readily than sugar in cold drinks such as iced tea and lemonade.

Oregon’s Nature’s Kick Honeystix makes honey sticks in a nice selection of varietal honeys: blueberry blossom, buckwheat, fireweed, meadowfoam, orange blossom, pumpkin blossom, raspberry blossom, white sage and wildflower.

There are also flavored honey sticks: cinnamon, lemon, lime and mint.

Each straw contains about 2/3 teaspoon honey: enough for one six-ounce cup of tea (excluding the milk).

A natural product loaded with beneficial vitamins, minerals, amino acids and antioxidants, honey in stick form can also serve as a nutritious, on-the-go energy snack.

 
FATHER’S DAY HONEY GIFT IDEA
Take a look at these gift crates with three different flavors of spreadable cream honeys:

A Fenway Park tin filled with yummy
baseball shortbread. Photo courtesy
Cooperstown Cookie Co.

The rich, traditional shortbread cookies are handmade in the regulation size and shape of baseballs (3″ diameter). Fresh, light and fragrant with butter, they melt in your mouth.

The cookies are all natural with no preservatives or additives—just flour, butter, sugar, pure vanilla extract and a pinch of salt.

Unlike some shortbread recipes that can be a bit al dente, you can give a tin of these to Grandpa (or a kid with braces) without worrying about damage to the dental work.

Each tin—available with the logo of any Major League Baseball team—includes a tricky baseball trivia question. This gift will make the day of a baseball nut; and anyone who loves good shortbread will be thankful that proprietor Pati Drumm Grady put her family shortbread recipe to such good use.

“Julep” is a Middle English term for a sweet drink, derived sometime between 1350 and 1400 C.E. from the Arabic gulab (pronounced julab), which refers to rose petals steeped in water.

The mint julep originated in the American South in the 18th century, where it was made with bourbon or with genever (aged gin). The gentry served their mint juleps in silver or pewter cups, but a tall glass does just fine.

Today the gin has disappeared as an option. The ingredients of a mint julep are bourbon, mint, sugar and crushed or shaved ice—similar to a Mojito, which uses rum instead of bourbon.

Here are two recipes for mint juleps.

If you don’t like bourbon or want a change, here’s a variation of the mint julep from New York City’s 21 Club, called the South Side Cocktail. It uses a white spirit (gin, tequila, vodka, white rum) plus the addition of lemon juice.
 
SOUTH SIDE COCKTAIL RECIPE

Ingredients For 1 Drink

1. Place all ingredients in a shaker, and shake vigorously to bruise mint leaves.

2. Strain into a chilled collins glass filled with ice.

As today is also Memorial Day, we toast to all who have fallen while, defending our country.

MINT JULEP HISTORY