Lime Green Tea Detox Drink

Recipes for "detox drinks" are all over Pinterest right now. The one that recently caught my eye was for Iced Green Tea with Lime, by FitSugar.com, because I had the ingredients on hand and ready to go. Usually when I see these recipes, that's not the case. Now truthfully, I don't like green tea. I know it's packed full of good stuff and is supposed to make our insides wonderful, but it just doesn't taste right to me. By itself, I think it almost tastes fishy. I love lime, though, so I was willing to give a green tea and lime mix a try.

 This was really yummy! The lime took the fishy taste out of the green tea, and drinking it iced was really refreshing. As far as being detoxifying, well, I made enough trips to the bathroom that The Big One asked, "Are you serious?" when I got up to pee again. So I guess that counts as detoxifying.

Here's how you make it.

The first step is to make a big ol' pot of green tea. I didn't measure, but filled a 1 1/2 quart saucepan about 3/4 of the way full and set it to boil. In the meantime, I took four green tea bags (I used Tazo's China Green Tips Green Tea) out of their packages and tied the strings together.

Once the water had come to a rolling boil, I removed the pot from the stove top and dropped the tea bags in. You can let them steep 5-10 minutes, or do like me and walk away, completely forgetting what you're doing, letting them steep for a good half hour before you remember. While the tea is steeping you can wash and quarter a lime or two, and squeeze their juice into a 2 quart pitcher.

Once my tea water was nice and green, I removed the tea bags and gave them a good squeeze to get the "tea juice" out. I'm not really sure what else to call it. Then I poured the brewed tea into the pitcher with the limes, carefully and over the sink. I topped off the container with lots of ice, and gave it a good shake. I didn't add any agave or sweetener like the Fit Sugar recipe calls for, but you may want to if you like it sweeter.

If you're like me and just can't do green tea straight, here's an alternative way to get those antioxidants.

My favorite breakfast #1

This is one of my favorite go-to breakfasts. Doesn't it look yummy? It's a combination of Kashi Go-Lean Crunch, Fiber One Original, unsweetened vanilla almond milk, and blackberries.

Fiber One may look like old people cereal when it's sitting there on the shelf, and I'll admit it's not the most exciting by itself, but when paired with the Kashi the light crunch of the Fiber One "twigs" compliments the tough crunch of the granola clusters very well. The Kashi is very crunchy, enough so that I've read some complaints about it, but I find it's just right when eaten with milk. It's packed with protein, and it's sweet enough that the the unsweetened almond milk is just fine. Berries add a nice natural sweetness, too.

Of course, being boxed cereal, it's quick and easy to grab in the morning, as a snack, or even lunch. The fiber and protein are pretty filling!

Best of all, it's a healthy choice. For 1/2 cup Kashi Go-Lean Crunch, 1/2 cup Fiber One originial, 1/2 cup Almond Breeze Unsweetened Vanilla Almond Milk, and 1/4 c fresh blackberries, here is the nutrition breakdown:

My favorite chocolate chip cookies

I love cookies. Of all the sweet baked goods, they are easily my favorite. No offense to cake, brownies, and pastries. They're all nice, too. But there's just something about cookies.

Of course, the queen of all cookies is chocolate chip. Who can say no to a chocolate chip cookie? I can't even imagine offering one to someone and having them say no. Reason of allergy excluded, it's just not within the realm of possibility.

This is my favorite chocolate chip cookie recipe. I've been making the same one for years. I don't remember where I got it from originally. While I've pinned a million "best chocolate chip cookie" recipes on Pinterest, and looked at pictures of what the ideal cookie is "supposed" to look like (not like mine), I haven't tried another recipe or technique. I just like these. And I like them just the way they are.

These cookies are soft and not overly chewy. They don't crumble and they practically melt in your mouth, especially if you're getting one just off the cooling rack. If you manage to not eat them all immediately, they can be frozen and later thawed out to be almost just as good a fresh. They are easy to take to a party or give as a gift. And if all that's not enough, they also are simple to make and bake up quickly. The Little One has mixed them up before with just minor assistance, and I've made them with a class of 5 nutty six year old boys. So even if you are not baking inclined, don't be afraid to try these. I'm even including notes, in parentheses, in case you've never baked a cookie before in your life.

Ingredients:
1 c butter, softened (Leave the two sticks of butter out on the counter for about an hour, or until reaching room temperature. You should be able to dent the butter with your fingers, but it shouldn't be melted.)
1 c white sugar
1 c light brown sugar
2 eggs
2 t vanilla extract
1 t baking soda
2 t hot water
1/2 t salt
3 c flour
2 c chocolate chips

Instructions:

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

2. In a large bowl, cream butter and sugars.
("Creaming" means mixing butter and sugar up very thoroughly until they are fully combined and light and fluffy. Use both sticks of butter and both the brown and white sugars. This is best done with an electric mixer, but can also be done by hand with lots of beating with a fork. Watch as the mixture changes, and once it gets to light yellow and fluffy stop mixing. Over mixing can make butter and sugar separate, but this takes awhile so I wouldn't stress over the possibility of over-mixing very much.)

3.  Beat in eggs, one at a time.
(Crack an egg, pop in in the bowl, then stir it up until combined. Repeat.)

4. In a tiny bowl or measuring cup, mix hot water with baking soda and salt. Add the mix to the large bowl, along with vanilla extract, and stir to combine.
(This is a tiny amount so I usually use a 1/4 cup measure to combine the water, baking soda, and salt. Just make sure to measure carefully and mix thoroughly.)

5. Mix in flour, one cup at a time, to make a dough. Stir in chocolate chips.
(This is pretty self explanitory. Dump a cup of flour into the bowl, mix it up, and then repeat x2. Same thing with the chocolate chips.

6. Drop rounded tablespoons of batter onto a greased cookie sheet.
(There is such a thing as a cookie dough scoop, which will help make nice, evenly sized cookies, but it's not needed if you don't have one. Just use a tablespoon or even a kitchen spoon to scoop out a ball of dough, and plop it on the pan. Leave the dough as balls. It will flatten and spread into a cookie shape as it bakes, so there's no need to smoosh the balls into circles. Also, because of the baking and spreading, make sure to leave space around each cookie so they don't end up baking together into conjoined twins. I usually space my cookies in rows of three and two, like the super-sophisticated drawing below.)

7. Bake in preheated oven for 10-11 minutes. Remove cookie sheet from oven and let cookies cool on pan for 5 minutes, then move to cooling rack to finish cooling.
(This step is key. Only bake them for 10-11 minutes. They will not look done, and you're going to be tempted to put them back in the oven. Don't. Trust me. The cookies will continue to bake from the heat of the pan for those 5 minutes they are sitting there, and when they are finished cooling you will have something that is soft-baked and delicious.)

8. Enjoy.

Makes approximately 4-5 dozen cookies.
(The exact yield is going to depend a lot on the size of your dough balls and how much dough you eat while baking. Obviously, smaller cookies = more cookies. Now, the dough does have raw egg so you probably shouldn't eat it and all, but, I've eaten a lot of raw dough and haven't died even once.)

Nutrition Information:
(For a yield of 4 dozen, from CalorieCount.About.com)

I'm labeling these as an "under 200 calorie" recipe because each cookie is under 200 calories, but clearly they are not a health food and have no redeeming qualities beyond taste. And happiness.

Teaching Earth Science with Food - Rock Cycle Shortbread

This month we've been working on Earth Science, and last week we talked about the three main types of rocks and the rock cycle. What better way to bring our week's discussion to a close than with food? I saw a couple examples online of edible rock cycles, but they generally involved making three separate kinds of things for the three different kinds of rocks. The Big One was understanding the types of rocks, but was a little sketchy on the cycle of one type of rock becoming another, so I wanted to come up with something to put it all together into one cycle. What I ended up with was a science baking demonstration I'm calling Rock Cycle Shortbread.

Ingredients 
1/3 cup chocolate chips
1/2 cup (1 stick) butter
1/8 cup granulated sugar
1/8 cup brown sugar
1 cup flour

Step One - Igneous rocks

To demonstrate the creation of igneous rocks, we used chocolate. I started by melting the chocolate chips in a double boiler. The melted chocolate served as our lava, which we then poured onto a piece of greased aluminum foil, and then let cool into a "rock".

Step Two - Sedimentary rocks
 
Before starting this step, I set our "deep Earth" (oven) to preheat to 300 degrees Fahrenheit.

To demonstrate the creation of a sedimentary rock, we added various kinds of "sediment" to a large bowl. First, we subjected our igneous rock and our stick of butter to erosion via a grater, making some nice chocolate and butter sediments. We then measured out our granulated sugar sediment, brown sugar sediment, and flour sediment. I let the kids get nice and messy, using their hands to simulate the movement and compaction of sediment by rivers and streams. After rolling the mix all around, we came up with some flaky sedimentary rocks. 

Step Three - Metamorphic rocks

Finally, to get a metamorphic rock, we needed some heat and pressure. I explained that while the real rocks would be heated and pressurized at the same time (we'll save the classes of metaphoric rocks and different formation mechanisms for a later lesson), we would have to do it in parts for our demonstration. We started with pressure, simulating the pressure of being deep in the Earth by pressing our sedimentary rocks hard into an ungreased 8"x8" baking pan. We then put the pan in our preheated "deep Earth" and allowed the pressurized rock to bake for 30-35 minutes.

I scored the rock into squares while it was still hot, then once it was cool we broke it apart to see if we could see any layers or textures in it. 

In the end, while they were no culinary masterpiece, these shortbreads were pretty darn tasty. Cutting the 8"x8" pan of shortbread into 16 pieces makes each final metamorphic rock equal 108 calories, which is not overly terrible, either. Best of all, of course, is that The Big One was able to explain the demonstration accurately to a number of family members, so I think he really got it this time.

Chocolate Chip Cookie Pancakes

I like making things from scratch. I may not have the most amazing top-quality ingredients in my house, or be a classically trained chef, but making things from their simplest parts (or those available at the grocery anyway - I'm not even close to self-sufficient) just tastes better than pre-mixed boxed things.

Here, for example, we have pancakes. The boxed powder stuff has its purpose, sure. It's quick and easy and hey, it's not bad tasting. But it's not real pancakes. This weekend I made the kids these Chocolate Chip Cookie Pancakes, which is just a basic pancake recipe very slightly doctored up, and they were delighted. They told me it was "much better than the old recipe", which was not so much a recipe as it was a panel on the side of a box. It's true, they are better. And guess what? They don't take that much longer, either. You might get a few extra measuring spoons dirty, but it's totally worth it.

Chocolate Chip Cookie Pancakes

Ingredients
1c buttermilk (or 3/4c milk + 2 T vinegar or lemon juice)
1c flour
2T sugar
1t baking powder
1/2t baking soda
1/2t salt
1 egg
2T melted butter (or vegetable oil)
1t vanilla extract
chocolate chips
cooking spray

Steps
1. Measure buttermilk and set aside. Or, if using regular milk, mix with vinegar or lemon juice and set aside to sour.
2. In a large bowl or measuring device with spout, whisk together flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. Set aside.
3. In a separate bowl or measuring device with spout, whisk together buttermilk or soured milk, egg, melted butter or oil, and vanilla extract.
4. Add liquid ingredients to dry ingredients and whisk until all lumps are gone.
5. Heat a griddle or frying pan on medium heat. Spray with cooking spray. Pour pancake batter onto pre-heated griddle to desired pancake size. Sprinkle desired amount of chocolate chips onto upright side of pancake. Cook until edges begin to dry slightly and small bubbles form in middle of top. Flip with spatula. Cook pancake until underside is brown.
6. Remove from pan. Serve!

Yield - about 8 medium-sized pancakes
(Adapted from "Fluffy Pancakes" by Kris on allrecipes.com)


I made 8 pancakes with this recipe, using 2% milk soured with lemon juice, vegetable oil, and a total of 16 grams of mini chocolate chips. Putting this into the LoseIt! app on my phone gave me a count of 136 calories per pancake.

Right after I made them, I thought I should have experimented with subbing brown sugar for some of the white sugar. I bet that would have given an even more 'cookie' taste. I will play with that next time, and update with how that went.

Now, the steps in pictures. I know my pictures are not great, but I can't get better if I don't practice, right?

The making of Chocolate Chip Cookie Pancakes

If you are prepared enough to have buttermilk on hand- good for you. I was not, and didn't have vinegar, either, so I used milk soured with lemon juice.

Dry ingredients assembled and my helper whisking them up. That's the souring milk sitting to the side, there.

Liquid ingredients assembled, my helper whisking them up, and the final batter. I had pulled out butter to use, but ultimately measured out vegetable oil instead, simply because I was too lazy to melt the butter.

Preheat the pan and spray it with cooking spray. We like to call the first batch the 'tester batch', as they usually end up ugly while we wait for the pan to heat.
Have your chocolate chips at the ready while you're preparing your pan. I used mini semi-sweet chocolate chips because I had them handy, but regular sized or whatever you like will do.
See how nicely light browned the first side is after flipping? I find that looking at the bubbles can be a little deceiving - these seem to bubble a lot! - but waiting for that slight drying around the edge is more helpful.

Pancakes!
I like to eat them plain, as the chocolate is plenty of sweet, but you could add syrup, fruit, whipped cream, powdered sugar, or whatever you typically enjoy on pancakes.

The Big One is asking me if he can have them again this morning.

Update:
I tried them wit half brown sugar and half white and didn't really notice a difference. So, use whatever you'd like.