Cool off with minimal calories. Photo
courtesy Sparkling Ice.

So we kept making bottles of seltzer with our Soda Stream, and mixed lots of our favorite new 5-calorie Lipton Tea and Honey To Go Stix Iced Tea Mix (in the Blackberry Pomegranate flavor) into individual bottles of cold water.

Then, we made our first diet ice pops of the season. All you need is ice pop molds and your favorite flavor of diet soda (we prefer fruit and root beer).

This tasty recipe uses calorie-free Black Raspberry Sparkling ICE with fresh raspberries. If you’re not counting calories, you can also use regular soda, juice or kefir.

The chopped fruit helps to bulk up the thinness of the soda.

Ingredients

 
Preparation

1. In a bowl, stir together soda and chopped raspberries.

2. Ladle mixture into ice pop molds and insert handles.

3. Freeze for at least 2 hours or until frozen.
 
The other Sparking ICE flavors can be adapted to pops as well: Coconut Pineapple, Kiwi Strawberry, Lemonade, Lemon Lime, Orange Mango, Pink Grapefruit and Pomegranate Berry. The line is certified kosher by OU.

The over-21 crowd can add a half teaspoon of gin, tequila or vodka per pop. Don’t add more without testing, or your pops may not freeze.

Dried morel mushrooms are available year round, but there’s nothing like the splendor of fresh morels—one of the most flavorful mushrooms, earthy and woodsy.

A perennial favorite of French chefs for the depth of flavor they give to almost any savory dish, morels grow wild in the woods from April through July. They are available in dried and canned forms year-round.

Morels have an unmistakable, honeycombed, hollow, cone-shaped cap which can be blonde, dark brown, grey or tan. The stems are white. The mushrooms range in size from two to four inches high.

One of the simplest recipes: Clean and soak the morels, cut them in half, then dip them into beaten eggs and then into seasoned flour (salt and pepper). Fry them for two minutes on each side, then drain. You can also freeze them this way.

Should you end up with more morels than you can use (what a luxury!), here’s a simpler way to freeze them, courtesy of TheGreatMorel.com.
 
After washing and soaking, dust with flour, place on a cookie sheet and freeze solid; then transfer to a in freezer bag. The flour keeps the mushrooms from sticking together in the bag.

[1] Instead of Caesar dressing with a raw egg yolk, try a poached egg. This variation also uses a long strip of Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese‡ as a form to contain the salad and a dotted garnish of Parmigiano cream sauce. Beautiful! (photo © Payard).

[2] Bibimbap. The egg yolk is broken and mixed in with the other ingredients—vegetables and meat (photo © Minche11 | Pexels).

[3] Classic Caesar Salad (photo © Safe Eggs).

[4] A different take on Caesar. Hearts of romaine are cut in half, not torn. The recipe is below (photo © Parma Ham Consortium).

It borrows its key idea from bibimbap, the signature Korean dish (photo #3).

Bibimbap (BEE-bim-baahp) means “mixed rice.”

 
Chef François Payard adapted the bibimbap concept to a poached egg atop a Caesar salad, creating a delicious riff that also allays concerns of eating the raw egg yolk* in classic Caesar dressing.†

So gather your romaine, grated or shaved Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese, croutons and anchovies.

 
> National Caesar Salad Day is July 4th. The date was chosen because this popular salad was first served on July 4th, 1924.

> The history of the Caesar Salad.

> Here’s the original Caesar Salad recipe. Leave out the raw egg yolk and top with the poached egg instead (or a hard-boiled, soft-boiled, or deviled egg if you prefer.

> The history of Parmigiano-Reggiano Cheese.

> The other Italian grating cheeses (not authentic Caesar ingredients, but just as tasty).
 
 
 
 
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*If you’re not comfortable eating raw eggs, get Safe Eggs, which are pasteurized raw eggs.

†The original recipe used only lemon and olive oil to dress the salad. Anchovies, Worcestershire Sauce and creamy Caesar dressing were later additions. Here’s the original Caesar salad recipe.

‡Use a vegetable peeler on unaged Parmigiano-Reggiano.

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