Survival Atole

A very nourishing whole-grain drink, served hot.  It's delicious and comforting, and perfect for a cold day!

The recipe here would make enough to serve probably a hundred!  USE THIS AS A RATIO GUIDE.  Our teacher was using Tablespoons of ground, toasted grains to make enough for everyone in the class to have a taste.

Survival Atole
4 pounds wheat
2 pounds rice
2 pounds garbanzo
2 pounds millet (or more wheat if not available)
2 pounds peanuts
2 pounds lentils

Toast each seed or grain separately in a skillet, and grind separately into powder in a blender.

Combine desired amounts of ground grain/beans/etc. in a pot with water and a cinnamon stick.  Add milk or condensed milk or powdered milk, and heat.

(I'm sorry this recipe is vague- I think it's just to taste.)

Oat Horchata (Agua de Avena)

A delicious oat and milk drink, flavored with cinnamon.  Be sure and serve over lots of ice, this is really refreshing!

Oat Horchata
2 cups oats, soaked
Cinnamon
Half Gallon milk
sugar to taste
ice

Blend soaked oats, with soaking water and a stick of cinnamon or about a teaspoon of ground cinnamon.  Combine with milk, sugar, and ice, and serve.  This makes a lot of horchata.

Make Your Own Drinkable Yogurt

Have you seen the drinkable yogurts at the store?  Perhaps in technicolored packaging, meant for kids?  Super simple to make!  They're only thinned-down yogurt, after all.  I hesitated to post this- it's so basic, but such a quick and easy and NUTRITIOUS snack.  (Probiotics, low fat, good protein...it's nutritious, right?)

I like to plop some yogurt into one of those plastic tupperware shakers- you know, the kind with a big ol' star insert and a flip top lid?  Pour in milk, and then whatever flavors look good that day.  Today it was honey and a bit of thin jam, I just used the liquid-ish portion of my favorite plum jam and left the fruit chunks behind for another day's sandwich. I make my own yogurt, and it's pretty tart, so that's why the double dose of sweet.  Plus, I'm pregnant.  I just really like sweets, OK?

This makes an easy and quick breakfast, or an afternoon snack.  A spoon and a big cup would probably work just as well, but you'd have to work a little harder to get the lumps out, and I don't like to work that hard!

I actually prefer my yogurt this way, it gets rid of any texture issues left over from my childhood.

Chocolate Syrup

Our family is on a quest to banish all processed foods.  Lofty?  Yes.  Snobby?  Possibly.  Feasible?  ...I'll get back to you on that one.

In that vein, I noticed that we were running low on a family staple- our Costco-tub of Nesquik was almost gone!  If you know my husband and daughter, you know this is a tragedy of epic proportions.  Now, a new tub of Nesquik doesn't cost all that much.  But have you seen the ingredients list?  Sugar, cocoa, salt, and a bunch of stabilizers and preservatives (aka corn and soy derivatives.)  Sugar, cocoa and salt I DEFINITELY keep on hand, why couldn't I make my own?

I found out quickly it was difficult to stir cocoa powder into a glass of milk- it kept beading and lumping and sticking to my glass and spoon.  However, I did find this recipe online for chocolate syrup- almost the same ingredients, and definitely easier to stir into a glass of milk!  (Multiple sites have this same recipe, so I'm linking to the first site that pops up when I google "chocolate milk syrup recipe." :)

The syrup is rich and 'dark', like Hershey's syrup.  It's almost a little too dark for my tastes, but Wonder Daddy thinks it's perfect.  (duh...it's chocolate!)

I haven't done a cost breakdown on this, but that's only because I have a five pound bag of cocoa powder in my pantry right now.  Yes really- I found it at our local Cash N' Carry, and the price was too good to resist (somewhere around $2 a pound.)  So for right now, this DEFINITELY beats the pants off that tub of Nesquik!  This takes about 5 minutes, and makes 20 ounces.

Chocolate Syrup

1 cup cocoa powder

2 cups sugar

1/4 teaspoon salt

2 cups cold water (or 1 for a very thick sauce)

1 teaspoon vanilla

Whisk cocoa powder and sugar together until the lumps are gone.  Add water and salt and mix well- cook to a boil over medium heat.  (I let it boil a minute or two to make it thicker.)  Add vanilla and let cool before pouring into jars.  Or alternatively, a splash of mint extract is really nice- just a touch, a little goes a long way!

Store in the refrigerator (it will thicken when chilled.)

Chinese Iced Tea

Behold, floral, yummy BLISS. I have no idea why it's taken me so long to make this, but I know I'll be making it again soon!!

Chrysanthemum tea is very popular in Hong Kong, both for its health benefits and for its great taste. As you can see in the photo above, it's nothing more than water and dried flowers. Kinda pretty, isn't it?

Chrysanthemum tea is served unsweetened in most tea houses and dim sum parlors. However, it can also be bought in little boxes, like our juice boxes, complete with straws and enough sugar to satisfy even the pickiest of third graders. The second beverage is what I was setting out to recreate.

(One warning - when I finished steeping my tea, it was a lovely, rich yellow, just as I was used to. When I returned to the tea a few hours later...it hard turned a rich, emerald GREEN. Even the flowers, still sitting in the strainer in the sink, had turned green. Just didn't want anyone to get scared when their iced tea goes leprechaun on them!)

Aunt LoLo's Iced Chrysanthemum Tea

You'll need:

A soup pot full of water

1/2 cup dried chrysanthemums (available at any Chinese grocery or medicine shop)

Rock sugar, to taste. (I used a block about the size of my fist...I suppose that would be about 1 cup of white sugar?)

Combine everything in your pot, cover and bring to a boil. Reduce to a simmer, and simmer until everything tastes right and the sugar is dissolved, about 7-9 minutes.

Pour the contents of your pot into a metal sieve placed over a large heat-safe bowl. Allow the tea to cool, and then put it in a pitcher in the refrigerator.

The flowers can be re-used if you like: refill your pot with water, put the flowers back in with sugar, and make a second pot of tea. I wouldn't recommend waiting too long between batches - you don't want your flowers to mildew! I made up two pots, and by my calculations it cost me about $2, total. I made this tea very sweet, in homage to my Alabama heritage, but you can add as little or as much sugar as you like. Also, this tea is very good for you. It is "cooling", meaning that if you are "heaty", as a result of lack of sleep or over indulgence in junk foods, this tea will help to balance that out. Symptoms of being too "heaty" are a swollen tongue, canker sores, bad breath and breakouts on your face.

Lemonade

Mr. Bear requested that I post this recipe immediately, as today's lemonade was some of the best he's had.

Could it have been the hour of forced labor he'd just gone through, taking photinias out of the yard with Dad and a chain saw?

Did he know it had three ingredients?

Regardless, here is the recipe- it's straight from the back of our bottle of Real Lemon, which is what I served today. I made it a few weeks ago with fresh-squeezed lemon juice, and it was AMAZING. But, so sad...I drank it all before anyone else got home!

Fresh Lemonade

Ingredients:
1 cup lemon juice
1 cup sugar
6 1/2 cups water

Optional:
berries (frozen or fresh raspberries or strawberries work well)

1. Mix lemon juice and sugar in a pitcher
2. Add water
3. Serve cold.

If desired, throw some berries in the bottom of your glass, muddle slightly with a spoon, and pour the lemonade over everything. This is my favorite! Mint might also be nice, but you may need to use a straw or strain it out. I've heard that lavender is nice, but I think you'd have to boil the lavender, sugar, and lemon juice together to make a flavored simple syrup and then strain before adding the water. And Aunt LoLo can tell you to NOT add the hot mixture to your favorite pitcher, and then pour ice cold water into the mix. Broke that sad little pitcher right down the middle!