Bake. Eat. Pose. Photo courtesy
TheKitchenYogi.com.

Yoga cookies, anyone?

Two entrepreneurs—one a certified yoga instructor and the other a marketer/package designer—have translated their love of yoga and healthy eating into The Kitchen Yogi. Their first products are cookie cutters in the shape of three yoga poses.

Each cookie cutter comes with a healthy cookie recipe and instructions for doing the pose (perhaps while the cookies are baking?).

The cookie cutters are $7.50 each or three for $20.00 (if you want one, you’ll want all three). Buy them online at TheKitchenYogi.com. Ten percent of profits go to animal welfare organizations.

You can make make healthy Valentine cookies for your yoga-enthusiast friends by adding a small candy Red Hot heart (available in bulk here) to each cookie.

If you don’t want to bake, BakedIdeas.com makes the cutest gingerbread people (year-round) performing 10 yoga poses: Down Dog, Lotus, Plow, Tree, Triangle, Savasana, Spinal Twist, Warrior I, Warrior III and Wheel. You never saw a happier bunch of cookies.

Baked Ideas also sells its cookie cuttters boxed with the gingerbread recipe for $32.50, in either the Down Dog Group or the Lotus Group.

Pose. Eat. Enjoy.

But with convenience comes salt, one thing that few people need more of.

The American Heart Association recommends 1,500 milligrams of sodium (salt) per day. But the average American’s salt intake is more than twice that: 3,436 mg sodium daily.

A single teaspoon of salt contains approximately 2,000 mg of sodium. If you think that this doesn’t apply to you since you don’t salt your food (or add just a slight shake of salt), it’s the processed food—canned, prepared and frozen meals or components—that make us consume more salt than deer at a salt lick.

Just look at the sodium content on the nutrition labels of big-sodium canned foods, which include such seemingly innocent products such as condiments, mixes, soups, tomato sauce and any prepared foods or meals.

If you’re using canned vegetables for
convenience (or preference), look for No
Salt Added and Low Sodium varieties.
Photo courtesy Del Monte Foods.

Single items sold by fast food restaurants can typically have 2,000 mg of sodium. And many other restaurant meals are also packed with hidden salt.

No matter how young and healthy you feel now, control your salt now and you won’t have to pay the piper later—in the form of hypertension (high blood pressure) and other conditions.

Del Monte Foods and Green Giant both have reduce-salt and no-salt-added options, as do many healthy and organic brands. If you can’t find enough reduced-salt options in your supermarket, check out the nearest natural foods store.

Here are sodium-level definitions from the American Heart Association:

 
Instead of salt, add flavor to foods with your favorite herbs or spices. The line of Mrs. Dash herb and spice blends makes it easy.

Here’s more useful sodium information from the American Heart Association.
  

The Twisted Swan, a layered cocktail from
Maestro Dobel Tequila.

Today, for your consideration, we present The Twisted Swan: a sinister and sexy layered cocktail from Maestro Dobel Tequila that evokes The Black Swan.

THE TWISTED SWAN

Ingredients

• 1-1/2 ounces black raspberry liqueur*
• 1 ounce premium blanco/silver tequila
• 1/2 ounce amaretto liqueur
• Chocolate drink rimmer (or pulverize chips or a semisweet chocolate bar in a spice grinder)

*Raspberry liqueur is also delicious with white wine and sparkling wine. Pour a bit in the bottom of the glass or flute before you add the wine.

2. Shake tequila and amaretto with ice. Strain into glass.

3. Shake vodka with ice and layer into glass. Serve.

We’ll have more cocktails that honor your favorite films in time for your Oscar party (February 27th—plan ahead).

How should you store lemons, limes, oranges, grapefruits and other citrus fruits?

Since fruits typically keep better in the fridge, many people toss a lemon, lime, orange or grapefruit into the produce bin as soon as they bring it home.

But that’s not the best way to store your citrus.

Citrus is warm weather fruit. In the cold, the juices and the peel both dry up.

It won’t happen in a day or two, but it can happen if you store them for two or three weeks.

For maximum juiciness and flavor, keep that lemon, lime, orange or other citrus at room temperature for up to a week.

They look great in baskets on the counter or the dining table.
 
 

If we haven’t used a lemon or lime by then (rare in our kitchen!), we quarter or halve the fruit and freeze the pieces in bags.

Then, when we need some juice—whether for a quick cup of tea or a recipe—we microwave a frozen wedge for 10 seconds. The juice tastes fresh as new.

If we’ve used half a lemon, lime or orange, we’ll keep the other on the counter overnight. It will be just fine the next day.

We keep our citrus in basket on the kitchen counter. When we get a lot of it—a gift carton of grapefruit, for example—we pile the fruit in a basket or bowl that doubles as a centerpiece on the kitchen or dining room table.

There’s a related reason not to refrigerate citrus: There’s less juice when you squeeze or eat cold citrus.

Which brings us to more citrus tips:

 
Citrus is good for you: full of the antioxidant vitamin C. Don’t be a stranger to fresh citrus.

[1] Even after you cut a lemon, lime or orange, keep it on the counter, not in the fridge (photo of Key limes © Baldor Food).

[2] If you’ve squeezed half a lemon, cover the surface of the other half and leave it out (photo © Caroline Attwood | Unsplash).

[3] Ditto with grapefruit. If you prefer, you can put it in the fridge to chill it 20 minutes before you’re ready to eat it (photo © Texas Citrus).

[1] A memorable cup of sage tea: healthy, organic and kosher (photo by River Soma | © THE NIBBLE).

[2] Fresh sage (photo © Good Eggs).

[3] Dried sage (photo © Marietta Spice Mill).

Last year, strolling through the farmers market at San Francisco’s Ferry Building, we met a farmer who grew fresh sage and turned it into sage tea.

It was splendid, but we lost her card and never ordered any.

Good karma brought a tin of Rishi Tea’s organic Bergamot Sage Tea, a blend of sage, peppermint, bergamot and lemon thyme. It may be even more splendid!

Rishi organic teas are also certified kosher.

While the expert tea blenders at Rishi have worked long and hard to come up with a stellar blend, it’s easy to make your own hot or iced sage tea.

Sage has long been an herbal remedy for sore throat and mild gastrointestinal upset, but we now drink sage tea daily because it’s soooo refreshing.

You can also create a blend by adding basil, lavender, mint, or other sweet herb.

Or, you can make a variation of an Arnold Palmer: half iced tea, half lemonade. See the variation below.

An Arnold Palmer is a cold drink, but there’s no reason why you can’t turn it into a hot one.
 
 
RECIPE: SAGE TEA

Ingredients Per Cup

 
Preparation

1. POUR the boiling water over the sage. Steep to the desired strength and straining out the leaves. (You can use a tea ball/spice ball for dried tea.)

2. SERVE with optional sweetener and lemon.

3. ARNOLD PALMER VARIATION: To each glass of iced tea, add the juice of 1 lemon (we add the grated rind as well). Drink plain or sweeten to taste.
 
 
> The history of tea.

> Tea terminology: a photo glossary.

> A year of tea holidays.