Russian Iced Tea

This is another Jodi recipe, and I drank a lot of this stuff on my recent visit to Seattle.  This is a drink Jodi remembers from her childhood, but could never quite reproduce on her own, until she was at a bake sale at a local Russian Orthodox church, where the mixture was being sold.  She tasted, she thought about it, and now she has successfully recreated it at home.

Here is the recipe.

Russian Iced Tea

2 parts Tang

1 part sweetened lemon instant tea

1 part unsweetened non-lemon instant tea

1 part super fine sugar

ground cloves (Jodi says "not sure what a ratio here would be, I think I used about a teaspoon in a giant batch")

This is really delicious and the cloves really make the flavour unique and outstanding.  I also love burnt orange colour of the drink.  I'm not sure how I'll replicate this at home without access to unsweetened iced tea powder, which is something I've never seen before.  But I wonder if I could brew regular black tea and add the rest of the stuff into it to get a similar result.  Summer is around the corner and I am looking forward to experimenting!

Martini Time!

Here is another Pinterest recipe, originally from HERE.

My roommate and I knew we had to get us some of this, and about a month ago, we started. We hadn't intended it to take a month, but stuff happens, schedules change, trips to Seattle happen, and before you know it, you have a jar full of sludge on your hands.

But the sludge started out like this:


And here is the sludge:


And may I present to you the Reese's Peanut Butter Martini:


OMG - this was fecking fantastic! Soooooooo good I can hardly tell you, and certainly worth the wait. We really savoured each sip because it was so delicious. We have 12oz of the "sludge" (which has been strained twice and is way less sludgy now) left so there will be plenty more of these in our future!

More Shrimps on the Barbie

OK, last night I was bored & peckish, but only wanted something quick & light after my meal at The Sunshine Cafe. I also have little fridge room right now and needed to start using up some of my POM juices. So, I decided to experiment with a POM BBQ sauce for some shrimp.

This needs some tweaking, but it was a tasty start:

POM Asian BBQ Sauce

1/4 cup POM juice
2 tbsp hoisin sauce
2 tsp soy sauce
2 tsp rice vinegar
1 tsp honey
1/2 tsp ground ginger
1 garlic clove, grated or crushed

Whisk together. Brush on shrimp on the BBQ.

Like I said, it needed some tweaking. There was something missing, but I couldn't quite figure out what it was. Luckily, I have some left over for another night, so maybe I'll come up with something in the meantime.

I also made a drink with some of my POM juice. I love the POM iced teas, so I decided to mix some POM pomegranate & tangerine juice with some good old fashioned Nestea iced tea mix, and it was pretty good. While I'm generally liking the stuff I make with the POM juice, I'm not keen on the juice itself; it's really strong for me. But it's fun to play around with!

The weather has cooled somewhat, but it's still hot and the cool weather we were promised hasn't materialized, and according to the forecast, it's going to get cooler, but not as cool as we were led to believe, and not quite yet. What is the point of a forecast when they can't get it right? Why do I even listen to the weather guy?