[1] Black iced coffee (photo courtesy Nescafe). [2] Iced coffee, light (photo courtesy Peets). [3] With half-and-half (photo courtesy Coffeemania). [4] Thai iced coffee (photo courrtesy Peets). [5] White Russian (photo courtesy DeLonghi).

Many people can’t live without iced coffee. We see them walking around on the coldest winter days, sipping from jumbo cups of it.

For more celebratory occasions, how about spiked iced coffee?

It’s as simple as adding liqueur or a shot of your favorite spirit to a basic iced coffee.

You can turn it into a party experience, too.

PREPARATION TIPS

 
If you’re having guests:

 
Consider a DIY bar with different flavor additions.

________________
*For a millennia before it was a car service, it was an adjective. It still is.
 
 
RECIPE #1: KAHLÚA ICED COFFEE

Just add Kahlúa or other coffee liqueur to iced coffee, black or with milk.

Ingredients For 1 Drink

 
Preparation

1. FILL the glass (or pitcher) with ice and iced coffee.

2. ADD the Kahlúa, stir, and garnish as desired.
 
 
RECIPE #2: THAI ICED COFFEE

Thai iced coffee uses strong, bitter coffee—such as espresso, French roast or Italian roast—which acts as a counterpoint to the rich cream and the sweetened condensed milk. This is a sweet drink: There are no sugar-free versions.

You can even use leftover coffee. While coffee purists may shudder at the thought, the sweetened condensed milk masks any notes they might have detected. Similarly, you can use strong instant coffee.

Ingredients Per Serving

 
Preparation

1. POUR coffee into a mixing container (we use a repurposed glass orange juice bottle).

2. ADD 4-6 tablespoons sweetened condensed milk and optional spices; stir well until dissolved. Refrigerate for one hour or longer to chill.

3. ADD a few ice cubes to two tall glasses and fill with the cold coffee mixture. Top off with the cream. As the cream sinks, it makes an attractive swirl.

After you make the first batch, taste it and adjust the recipe. Add more sweetened condensed milk if you want a sweeter drink, or more cream if you want a richer drink or if the coffee is too strong.
 
Dessert Variation

Add a scoop of coffee or vanilla ice cream; garnish with whipped cream and toasted coconut flakes.

Iced coffee with a shot of vodka: Now there’s an idea for chillaxing on a summer day. If you want a serious cocktail, you can make an old-school Black Russian or a White Russian with these (recipes).

You can make a White Mexican with tequila or a White Caribbean with rum.

If you don’t normally sweeten your iced coffee, leave out the sugar. Adjust the ingredients proportions based on the size of the glass you are using.

RECIPE: RUSSIAN ICED COFFEE

Ingredients For 1 Drink

 
Preparation

1. BREW the espresso coffee. Let cool. Add the sugar and the vodka.

2. POUR into a glass and top with cream. Add crushed ice, stir and serve.

Memorial Day honors the men and women who died while serving in the U.S. military.

Originally known as Decoration Day, it originated in the years following the Civil War (1861 to 1865), which saw the largest loss of life of any American war. An estimated 620,000 soldiers died in the conflict—roughly 2% of the U.S. population, in addition to countless civilians.

By the late 1860s, Americans in various communities had begun holding springtime tributes to the fallen soldiers, decorating their graves with flowers and reciting prayers.

In 1966 the federal government declared Waterloo, New York, the official birthplace of Memorial Day. It first celebrated Memorial Day on May 5, 1866, and was selected because it hosted an annual, community-wide event, during which businesses closed and residents decorated the graves of soldiers with flowers and flags.

Memorial Day became an official federal holiday in 1971. Each year on Memorial Day a national moment of silent remembrance takes place at 3:00 p.m., local time. [source]
 
 
MEMORIAL DAY RECIPES

Even if you’re spending a quiet weekend at home, you can celebrate Memorial Day with a patriotic bite or two. Here’s a group of recipes to bite into.

Some are so easy that all you have to do is put the ingredients together: no cooking.

You can use the same red, white and blue recipes for Independence Day and Labor Day, which honors the contributions that American workers have made to the strength, prosperity, laws and well-being of the country.
 
 
MEMORIAL DAY BREAKFAST RECIPES

 
MEMORIAL DAY SIDE & MAIN DISH RECIPES

 
 
MEMORIAL DAY SNACK RECIPES

COULDN’T BE EASIER: [1] Yogurt plus berries. For fun, cut star-shaped toast with cookie cutters (photo courtesy Smuckers). [2] American Flag fruit skewers (photo courtesy [the former] Stix Mediterranean Grill | NYC). [3] Layer white sangria or pink lemonade in a pitcher with berries. You can find the recipe on the Svedka website). [4] Cocktails or mocktails, from Cosmos and Pomtinis to pomegranate juice mocktails (photo courtesy The Clean Dish).

WHO WANTS DESSERT? [5] Add a simple cupcake garnish (photo courtesy Go Bold With Butter). [6] Ice cream with sauces, berries, even a blue macaron serving as the top and bottom of an ice cream sandwich (photo courtesy Vandal | NYC). [7] Just bake the layers, and top with red, white and blue (photo courtesy Good Eggs).

 
 
MEMORIAL DAY DESSERT RECIPES

 
 
MORE MEMORIAL DAY RECIPE IDEAS

We love the convenience of one-pan dinners. This one, from Good Eggs, makes yogurt-marinated chicken with spring veggies.

If you marinate the chicken two hours before (overnight, it takes just 15 minutes to prepare plus 8 minutes to cook. You should make the yogurt sauce at the same time.

Note that with chicken, dairy-based marinades, such buttermilk or yogurt, do the best job of tenderizing. They are only mildly acidic, so don’t toughen meat the way strongly acidic marinades do.

Don’t like turmeric? Substitute cumin or paprika. You can also add onion, lemon juice and ginger.

The chicken gets charred to smoky. You can stuff the chicken and vegetables into pita or serve the pita on the side.
 
 
RECIPE: YOGURT-MARINATED CHICKEN THIGHS WITH SPRING VEGETABLES

Ingredients

Gauge the amounts based on how many servings you’re preparing.

 
For The Yogurt Sauce

 
Serve With

[2] Boneless chicken thighs (photo © Maple Leaf Health and Hospitality).

[3] Ground turmeric (photo © True Food Kitchen).

1. PRE-MARINATE the chicken and make the yogurt sauce: Whisk together the yogurt, mint, oil, lime juice and salt. If too thick, add 1 to 2 tablespoons of water. Use a Microplane to finely grate garlic into the bowl. Stir, taste and adjust salt and lime juice as needed.

2. PREHEAT the broiler. Trim the spring onions and asparagus and slice into 1-inch pieces. Slice the zucchini in quarters lengthwise, then into into 1-inch pieces, so they’re similar in size to the asparagus pieces.

3. LINE a large baking sheet pan with aluminum foil and drizzle with 1 tablespoon olive oil. Spread the oil with the back of a spoon (or your fingers) to coat, and fill the pan with chicken and vegetables in a single layer.

4. DRIZZLE the chicken and vegetables with olive oil. Use your hands to coat the vegetables in olive oil and sprinkle with salt and pepper. Broil for 7-8 minutes, until the chicken is a cooked through and a bit charred. While the broiler’s on…

5. WRAP the pitas in foil, and place in the oven on lower rack to heat. Serve the chicken and vegetables in pita with the yogurt sauce; or serve the yogurt on the side as a dipping sauce.

Here’s a video.

[1] White wine with a scattering of lilac blossoms (photo courtesy Tay Tea). [2] Decorate desserts and other foods. Check out these recipes from Brit.co.

We received the top photo from Tay Tea, a lovely tea salon in Delhi, New York, some three hours northwest of New York City. The proprietor spent years as a blender of premium teas, and departed from owning tea salons in New York City to the country.

Fortunately for her fans, she sells her teas online. The blends are beautiful to look at, and you can’t make a wrong choice.

Back to the lilacs:

Lilac blossoms are edible, though they smell better than they taste, so are best used in small amounts as a garnish (only use those that have not been sprayed with pesticides). They typically blossom in April and May.

According to an article on Care2.com, you can “drink in the beauty and aroma” by making a cold-water infusion.

 
MORE WAYS TO CONSUME LILACS
You can also:

 
Check out these nine lilac recipes, from cocktails to desserts.
 
THE MYTH OF THE LILAC

The common lilac (Syringa vulgaris), one of 12 species of lilac, is a member of the Oleaceae family, commonly called the olive family.

The family comprises flowering aromatic woody plants that includes, among others, ash, forsythia, jasmine and privet. Lilac is native to Eurasia.

And it has a legend.

(Note that in real life, lilac twigs are not hollow. They can, however, be easily drilled out.)

Pan’s sighs, combined with the wind and the reeds, made harmonious sounds. Hermes, the fleet-footed messenger and god of boundaries and transitions, suggested that seven reeds of different lengths, bound together, could make what we now call pan pipes, an early flute. The flute was called Syrinx in honor of the nymph.

Did Syringa spend the rest of her life as a lilac bush, to avoid Pan? The record is silent; but we thank her for inspiring the flute and other hollow tubes, such as sryinges for medicine and mechanical uses.
  

[2] Idaho red potatoes (photo © Idaho Potato Commission).

[3] Caramelized onions (photo © Pompeian | Facebook).

May 20th was National National Quiche Lorraine Day. We make a quiche every year, to celebrate the holiday. (In our college days, quiche was all the rage and we made several a week.)

There are numerous types of quiche, but we’ve never seen one as imaginative as this gluten-free recipe from Jennie Phaneuf of One Sweet Mess for the Idaho Potato Commission.

This quiche, packed with sausage and caramelized onions, has a crust made from hash brown potatoes, making it gluten free. You may enjoy a potato crust even more than a gluten-free flour crust.

You can also try a cauliflower crust and pack in some brassicas. Here’s a recipe.

You can serve quiche at breakfast, lunch, or dinner—or as a snack with wine or beer. In France, it is often served as a first course with dinner. In the U.S., it’s more common to serve it as a light entrée with a green salad.

Spicy sausage, sweet caramelized onions, and creamy blue cheese get combined with fluffy eggs and baked to perfection.

If you don’t like blue cheese, substitute gruyère.

Instead of purchasing ground sausage, we bought Bilinski chicken sausages (pick your flavor), removed the casings and crumbled the meat.
 
 
RECIPE: SAUSAGE & ONION QUICHE WITH A HASH BROWN POTATO CRUST

Ingredients
 
For The Crust

 
For The Filling

 
Preparation

1. PREHEAT the oven to 350°F. Grate the peeled potatoes and add them to a large bowl. Cover the potatoes with cold water and allow them to soak for 10-15 minutes. While the potatoes are soaking…

2. HEAT a 12-inch cast iron skillet over medium heat. Add the sausage and cook until brown, breaking up the meat as you go, about 8-10 minutes. Remove the sausage from the pan and set aside.

3. ADD 1 tablespoon of canola oil and 1 tablespoon of butter to the same pan. Turn the heat down to medium low and add the sliced onions. Add a generous pinch of salt and pepper to the onions and stir to combine.

4. DRAIN and rinse the grated potatoes. Press down on the potatoes to remove as much of the water as possible. Transfer the potatoes to a clean tea towel and pat them dry with paper towels.

5. ADD 4 tablespoons of canola oil and 1 tablespoon of butter to the same pan. Turn up the heat to medium-high and add the grated potatoes. Season with salt and pepper; stir to combine. Press the potatoes into an even layer in the bottom of the pan. Cook for 8-10 minutes, or until crispy and golden brown.

Using a thin metal spatula, lift up on the bottom of the hash brown to release them from the pan. Flip and cook on the other side for 8-10 more minutes. It’s okay if the hash browns don’t flip perfectly; just arrange them back in the pan and continue to cook. While the hash browns continues to get crispy…

6. ADD the eggs and half-and-half to a large bowl; whisk to combine. Gently season with salt and pepper, because the blue cheese is salty. If you’re using a less salty cheese, you can add more salt.

7. TURN off the heat. Arrange the sausage and onions evenly over the hash browns. Sprinkle the crumbled blue cheese over the top, and then pour the eggs over the entire mixture. Transfer the pan to the oven and bake for 30-40 minutes, or until the eggs are cooked through and the center is set.
 
 
MORE DELICIOUS POTATO RECIPES
 
 
THE DIFFERENT TYPES OF POTATOES