The company makes bottled tea, lemonade and a lemonade-tea mix with an emphasis on all-natural flavors. The sweetener is organic cane sugar rather than high fructose corn syrup.

The 17 New Leaf options include four lemonades: Black Cherry, Homemade (Original), Strawberry and Tiger, a half lemonade/half tea blend (also known as an Arnold Palmer, after the golf great who popularized it).

People who do not enjoy the tartness of traditional lemonade will be pleased by the smooth lemoniness of New Leaf. It’s made to be as gentle as a soft drink, with almost no hint of ascorbic acid—even though the products are made with lemon juice concentrate.

It’s easy to tell which of the New Leaf bottles is lemonade: Look for the stripes on the bottle!

If you’re looking for a bottled tea, New Leaf will oblige with:

• Black Tea in Lime and Mint, Sweet Tea and Unsweetened
• Green Tea in Ginseng and Honey, Mango and Plum
• White Tea in Honeydew and Strawberry

Lemonade turns over a new leaf. Photo
by Katharine Pollak | THE NIBBLE.

• Blue Tea (oolong) in Lemon, Peach, Raspberry, Diet Lemon and Diet Peach

Learn more at NewLeafBrands.com.

Find our favorite soft drinks in our Soft Drinks Section.

Find reviews of juices and ades in our Juice Section.

Celebrate National Lemonade Day. Photo
and recipe courtesy Smirnoff.com.

Celebrate National Lemonade Day, August 20th, with adult lemonade. You’ll love this recipe from Smirnoff Vodka; we made it even more blueberry by adding fresh blueberry purée.

In addition to Smirnoff Blueberry Flavored Vodka, you can find Stoli Blueberi, Pinnacle Blueberry and other brands.

BLUEBERRY LEMONADE COCKTAIL

Ingredients For 1 Drink

 
Preparation

1. FILL a tall glass with ice. Add vodka, lemonade and optional blueberry purée. Stir well.

2. Garnish with fresh blueberries.

• Caramel sauce (called Caramel Cream) in salted vanilla or chocolate
• Caramel candies made with salted butter or chocolateThe candies and creams (sauces) are made in California in the traditional French method, slowly cooked in small batches in a copper kettle.

  Our favorite in the line is the Chocolate Caramel Cream. It isn’t easy to find chocolate caramel sauce.

  You can learn more and purchase products at Le-Caramel.com.

• Find more of our favorite dessert sauces.
• Check out the different types of dessert sauce in our Dessert Sauce Glossary.

Chocolate caramel sauce is delicious on
desserts or right from the jar. Photo by
Katharine Pollak | THE NIBBLE.

Our favorite mixing bowls are available
at Amazon.com.

We use these stacked melamine bowls in THE NIBBLE kitchen. Who cares that they have a spout: They add bright color to the table when filled with salad, pasta, soup, sides and especially, chips, popcorn and other snacks.

Stainless steel, glass and ceramic (pottery) mixing bowls also do handsome double duty at the table.

If you need to give a house gift to new homeowners, give them something they’ll really use. Consider a set of good-looking mixing bowls. Check out:

• Cheerful solid color melamine mixing bowls from Trudeau
• Festive melamine confetti-pattern mixing bowls from Zak Designs
• Sleek, shiny stainless-steel mixing bowls from CHEFS
• Simple but elegant glass mixing bowls from Bormioli

Like vodka, it’s a grain-neutral spirit—in this case, distilled from barley, brown sugar, buckwheat, rice or sweet potatoes, instead of the potatoes, wheat or rye most often used for vodka. Like vodka, it isn’t aged, and thus it can be infused with a variety of flavors.

But it has half the calories of vodka, and a fine artisan vodka is smooth with no burn—great for sipping.

Shochu dates back at least to the 16th century. It is most often used in mixed drinks, but some artisan shochus are smooth enough for straight sipping.

We recently tried Haamonii “ultra premium” shochu, smooth as silk. The Haamonii Lemon Shochu is a special treat: It has the nose of lemon-infused vodka, and the palate of a sweet lemon-vodka cocktail.

• Read the full review to learn all about shochu, ways to use it and of course, cocktail recipes.
• Check out our Cocktails & Spirits section for more of our favorite drinks.

Haamonii shochu is indeed harmonious.
Photo by Katharine Pollak | THE NIBBLE.