[1] Boxed Water™ is an environmentally-friendly alternative to plastic water bottles (all photos © Boxed Water).

[2] In addition to plain water, there are four fruit flavors.

[3] Go dino with Jurassic World-themed cartons.

[4] Boxed Water is available in several sizes.

There’s reason to celebrate with Boxed Water™.

 
Some people live greener by using refillable water bottles. Others don’t.

Americans throw away 35 billion empty water bottles a year. Of those, only 12% are recycled.

Eighty-eight percent of plastic water bottles end up in landfills—more than 2 million tons of discarded water bottles—where it takes up to 1,000 years for every single bottle to decompose!

Along the way, the plastic leaches pollutants into the soil and water supply [source].

And then there are the oceans: More than 8 million tons of plastic bottles in the sea each year [source].

The Boxed Water™ brand has committed to maximizing sustainability and minimizing its environmental impact.
 
 
ABOUT BOXED WATER

Boxed Water cuts way back on plastic water bottle waste. The average American downs about 31.8 gallons of bottled water each year [source].

Every carton supplies the purest quality water with a clean, crisp taste.

 
 
BOXED WATER FLAVORS & FUN

In addition to plain water, Boxed Water is available in flavors:

 
There is also “Jurassic water”: five different cartons with dinosaurs from the Jurassic World franchise. In addition to being items of envy in the schoolyard, we also like these as party favors.

Whichever variety appeals to you, Boxed Water is a way to help eliminate single-use plastic bottles and do your part to help the planet.
 
 
GET YOUR BOXED WATER

Head to BoxedWaterIsBetter.com or Amazon.

*TDS, total dissolved solids, is the amount of organic and inorganic materials dissolved in the water. These include metals, minerals, salts, and ions. As an aside, for people who purchase spring water and mineral water, the amounts and types of minerals and salts create the flavor nuances of the water. Here’s more about TDS in your water.

Unless you drink a glass of straight vermouth, there’s no easier way to celebrate National Vermouth Day than this Vermouth Spritz recipe. (The holiday is also known as World Vermouth Day.)

A vermouth spritz, you say? But isn’t vermouth used in a Martini?

The number-one use of white vermouth in the U.S. is in a Martini. For sweet (red) vermouth, it’s the Manhattan.

In world standings, the Manhattan is the 5th most popular cocktail, and the Dry Martini is the 6th most popular. Here are the Top 10 cocktails.

Vermouth is a fortified wine that is flavored and aromatized with botanicals. Red vermouth is made from red wine; white vermouth has a base of white wine.

There are a number of different vermouth styles: sweet and dry, red and white, amaro (with added bitters), chinato with added chinchona (quinine) and often gentian (a root), alla vaniglia with vanilla, and others. Vermouth houses typically make a variety of styles.

The botanicals include a mix of barks, flowers, herbs, roots, seeds, and spices that are proprietary to each producer.

The botanicals are macerated in the wine for aroma and flavor; then, the wine is often fortified with distilled alcohol).

> The history of vermouth.

> Beyond cocktails: Uses for vermouth.

> Vermouth and tapas menu.

 
 
RECIPE: VERMOUTH SPRITZ

For a dry cocktail, use white vermouth; for a sweet one, use red vermouth. If you’re an olive fan, you can use an olive garnish with the dry vermouth.

If you prefer, you can substitute a grapefruit, lemon, or lime wedge for the orange wedge.
 
Ingredients Per Drink

[1] A dry Vermouth Spritz made with white vermouth (photo © Trattoria Italienne | New York City).

[2] A sweet Vermouth Spritz made with red vermouth (photo © Gintonica | The Distillery | London).

1. FILL a highball glass or a large wine glass with ice. Add the vermouth and top up with the soda water.

2. GARNISH with an orange wedge.

[1] Recchiuti Peanut Butter Pucks, the best peanut butter cups you’ll find (photos #1, #2, #3, #4 © Recchiuti Confections).

[2] What’s inside the pucks: homemade peanut butter.

[3] Peanut Butter Pearls, for when you only want a tiny taste.

[4] Casting pearls before palates.

[5] The original salted caramel dates back to France in the 1970s (photo © Chocolat Le Roux).

[6] Our favorite salted caramel is the Lavender Sea Salt Caramel from Lillie Belle (photo © Lillie Belle Farms).

[7] Inside a chocolate-covered caramel (photo © Alma Chocolate).

[8] A fine chocolate bar with crunchy sea salt (photo © Cárdenas Chocolate).

[9] Salted caramel chocolate tart from Gramercy Tavern. Here’s the recipe from the New York Times (photo © Jim Wilson | New York Times).

We like everything made by San Francisco chocolatier, Michael Recchiuti. While we have enjoyed many a box of beautiful bonbons, artisan chocolate bars, and chocolate-covered caramels, we also love his take on peanut butter cups.

His Peanut Butter Pucks are a wonderful treat.

If you’re a fan of Reese’s but think there could be a more glorious peanut butter cup—one made with superior chocolate and better peanut butter—Recchiuti’s Peanut Butter Pucks may be a dream come true.

Don’t concern yourself that Recchiuti Peanut Butter Pucks are pricier than Reese’s: You only live once!
 
 
RECCHIUTI PEANUT BUTTER PUCKS

Peanut Butter Pucks are made with organic Valencia peanut butter folded into Recchiuti’s artisan dark milk chocolate and finished with a sprinkle of salt (photos #1 and #2).

Why Valencia peanuts? The Valencia has a sweet flavor and is the peanut of choice for all-natural peanut butter. An exclusive peanut, it accounts for less than 1% of U.S. peanut production.

More than 80% of the peanuts grown in the U.S. are a variety called runner peanuts. They are the peanuts used to make most of the peanut butter and PB confections like peanut butter cups. Here’s more about the four different types of peanuts grown in the U.S.

As for the pinch of salt: Salt is popularly used to enhance the flavor of artisan chocolate and caramels. See a broader explanation in the section below.

Each puck is .78 ounces (a Reese’s PB cup weighs .74 ounces).

Get your Peanut Butter Pucks here.
 
 
RECCHIUTI PEANUT BUTTER PEARLS

If you don’t want an entire Peanut Butter Puck, Recchiuti has packed the flavor into a little round nugget, the bite-size Peanut Butter Pearl (photos #3 and #4).

These dragees*, with a bit of crunch from the hard sugar coating, can be a daily indulgence with a cup of coffee, or for special use, e.g. as a garnish on ice cream, cakes, or cupcakes.

The little bites are a perfect ratio of peanut butter to chocolate.

Get your Peanut Butter Pearls here.

> The history of peanut butter.

> The history of peanut butter cups.

> The history of peanuts.

> The history of chocolate.
 
 
PEANUT & PEANUT BUTTER HOLIDAYS

More occasions to treat yourself to Peanut Butter Pucks and Peanut Butter Pearls:

 
 
SALTED CARAMEL & SALTED CHOCOLATE

The salted caramel, which became a hit in the U.S. at the beginning of this century, was popularized in 1977 by the French pastry chef Henri Le Roux. In the 1960s, after apprenticing at his parents’ pastry shop in Pont-l’Abbé, a commune in Brittany in northwestern France, he went to school in Switzerland to study candy making.

He returned to Brittany to open a confectionary store, Maison Le Roux, in the commune of Quiberon. This original store has been joined by a number across France, including four in Paris.

Brittany is known for its fine salted butter, and in an attempt to offer something different, Le Roux devised a salted butter caramel with crushed nuts, using Breton demi-sel (lightly salted) butter instead of the unsalted butter used to make conventional caramels.

The result: caramels au beurre salé, caramels with salted butter.

The crushed nuts were Dauphiné walnuts, Piedmont hazelnuts, and Valencia almonds.

His caramels were named the “Best Confectionery in France” (Meilleur Bonbon de France) at the Paris Salon International de la Confiserie in 1980. Salted caramels took off across France. Here’s more of his story.

In the late 1990s, the Parisian pastry chef Pierre Hermé introduced salted butter and caramel (i.e., salted caramel) macaroons. By 2000, high-end chefs started to add a bit of salt to both their caramel and chocolate recipes, including salted caramel sauce for ice cream and other desserts.

The concept jumped across the pond, and salted caramel became the trend in the U.S. and elsewhere. Just about every artisan chocolatier sold fleur de sel caramels, using the special French sea salt. Fine chefs quickly adopted the concept and began combining sea salt with a variety of sweets, including caramel and chocolate.

As with many food trends, salted caramel quickly became an obsession of foodies. American chocolatiers made them enrobed in chocolate. President Barack Obama mentioned a fondness for Fran’s Salt Caramels, covered in chocolate and topped with French grey salt or smoked salt.

In 2008 the flavor leapt into the mass market, first with Häagen-Dazs salted caramel ice cream and Starbucks salted caramel hot chocolate (and subsequently, coffees).

Next came hundreds of products, found everywhere from supermarkets to small stores to big discounters: salted caramel added to everything from protein bars to vodka [source]. The flavor has retained its popularity.
 
 
What About Salted Chocolate?

Pierre Hermé is credited with being the first to make salted chocolate. He sprinkled fleur de sel on chocolate, also in the late 1990s. Later came his scrumptious chocolate and sea salt cookies.

As with salted caramels, artisan chocolatiers in the U.S. and beyond followed suit. Top pastry chefs added crunchy crystals of sea salt to everything from chocolate caramel tarts to molten chocolate “lava” cakes. Magazines printed recipes for salted chocolate chip cookies.
 
 
Why Are Salted Sweets So Popular?

Salt is a natural flavor enhancer that brings out the flavor in all foods, including sweet foods. That’s why you’ll always see a pinch of salt in recipes for cakes, cookies, and pies.

In confections, salt adds a counter-dimension to the sweetness of both caramel and chocolate and suppresses the bitterness of dark chocolate.

Salt balances out flavors and brings out subtle nuances. An easy example to test is how critical to adding flavor to the water used to boil foods like pasta, potatoes, and rice.

While we don’t regularly salt our food, we never boil a pot of water without a tablespoon or two of it.
 
 
________________

*A dragée (drah-zhay) originally referred to sugar-coated, so one did not have to swallow a “bitter pill.” Today, it refers to a small piece of candy enclosed in a hard sugar shell. Jordan almonds are a classic example, and at the other extreme, so are M&M’s. The tiny hard gold and silver balls made from sugar, that are used to decorate cakes, cookies, and confections, are another example of dragées. They are coated in edible gold or silver. Dragée’s origin word, in ancient Greece, tragema, refers to dried fruits or other sweetmeats.

Today’s recipe celebrates St. Patrick’s Day: a traditional Irish apple pie called an amber apple pie. The recipe is below.

Apples have been an important source of food in Ireland for thousands of years. Apple trees are one of the few that grow well in the difficult Irish climate.

While crabapples are the variety native to Ireland, other varieties have been cultivated for centuries including Ard Cairn Russet, Lady’s Finger of Offaly, and Kerry Pippin.

An Amber Apple Pie has a filling of grated apples cooked down into a sweet purée, and the top is fluffy meringue.

The recipe is from Allie Roomberg of Baking a Moment for Stemilt Apples.

You can use a store-bought crust, or Allie’s favorite recipe for homemade pie crust.

Fill it with a sweet apple filling that’s made with Granny Smith apples, egg yolks, sugar, and lemon juice.

Once it’s baked and cooled you can top it with an airy toasted meringue.

The recipe below calls for Granny Smith apples, but Allie used Pink Lady. “Both are great options and hold up well in the oven,” she says. “Pink Lady apples just make for a slightly sweeter tasting pie.”

> The history of apples.

> The history of pie.

> The history of St. Patrick’s Day.
 
 
BAKING A TRADITIONAL IRISH APPLE PIE

Apple Amber Pie is little more than grated apples cooked down into a sweet, silky purée and topped with meringue.

It all begins with a good pie crust. You can use store-bought or use my favorite recipe for homemade pie crust from scratch (photo #2). Just roll it out to a little larger than your pie dish, trim off the excess, crimp the edge, and give it a head start in the oven.

Fill it with a sweet apple filling that’s made with Granny Smith apples, egg yolks, sugar, and lemon juice. Once it’s baked and cooled, it’s topped with an airy toasted meringue.

While the recipe calls for Granny Smith apples (photo #3), Allie used Pink Lady. Both are great options and hold up well in the oven, Pink Lady apples (photo #4) just make for a slightly sweeter-tasting pie!

 
 
RECIPE: AMBER APPLE PIE (IRISH APPLE PIE)
 
Ingredients

[1] Amber apple pie with a meringue top (photos #1 and #2 © Allie Roomberg | Baking A Moment).

[2] Allie’s favorite a href=”https://bakingamoment.com/simply-perfect-homemade-pie-crust/” rel=”noopener” target=”_blank”>pie crust recipet.

Granny Smith Apples[/caption]
[3] Granny Smith apples (photos #3 and #4 © Good Eggs).

[4] Pink Lady apples.