June 18, 2012
10-Second Recipes: Sophisticated Sips for Just Cents

(10 seconds each to read and are almost that quick to prepare)

By Lisa Messinger
Food and Cooking at Creators Syndicate

When one is said to have ice in their veins, it's not always meant as a compliment. However, during summer, it's a different story. Refreshment is key and the cooler your choices the better. Beverages, though - even when they are accompanied by health-themed product labels about fruit juices or teas - are often loaded with calories from added sweeteners. Sure, you could just brew up some iced tea (research shows it's loaded with antioxidants) and leave it at that, but will taste buds (including those of household kidlets) used to more pronounced flavor take the bait? Actually, easy homemade variations are packed with flavor and often cost less to prepare than the pricey competition. Some simply super sips that follow include a vitamin C-packed fresh citrus juice soda, a green tea-fresh herb cooler and a sugar-free root beer float with a surprise straw.  Consider topping off some of the beverages with a fresh fruit swivel stick made from choices like seedless grapes and chunks of pineapple, peaches and cantaloupe, or ice cubes frozen from pure fruit juices or flavored teas.

Fun fare like this also proves food and beverage preparation can be easy, nutritious, economical, fun - and fast. They take just 10 seconds each to read and are almost that quick to prepare. The creative combinations are delicious proof that everyone has time for tasty home cooking and, more importantly, the healthy family togetherness that goes along with it! Another benefit: You effortlessly become a better cook, since there are no right or wrong amounts. These are virtually-can't-go-wrong combinations, so whatever you - or your kidlet helpers - choose to use, you can't help but draw "wows" from everyone - no matter how thirsty (or choosy!) they are this summer.

Creative Cranberries
To sugar-free, caffeine-free cola, add cooled, brewed apple-flavored tea (like apple-cranberry or apple-cinnamon) and no-sugar-added 100 percent cranberry juice or juice blend.

See Some Vitamin C
Squeeze into sugar-free, caffeine-free lemon-lime soda, fresh lemon, lime, grapefruit and tangerine or tangelo juices. Mix in finely chopped lemongrass and fresh ginger. Add crushed ice for slushy effect.

Go Green
To cooled brewed green tea, add sugar-free blueberry syrup or sugar-free maple-style syrup, finely chopped fresh mint and finely chopped thyme.

Berry Blast
In blender, pulverize strawberries, raspberries and blueberries, and add sugar-free natural sweetener like stevia. Put in freezer, stirring slightly occasionally until somewhat icy. Stir into ginger ale or flavored sparkling water.

Floating on Flavor
To sugar-free root beer, add a scoop of sugar-free vanilla ice cream for a root beer float. Cut the top and bottom off a stick of sugar-free licorice and use as a "straw."

QUICK TIP OF THE WEEK:  Specialty convenience products often cost more than homemade and may be filled with ingredients you wouldn't have added. Lots of us are so used to them that we may never have attempted to create our own. However, taking products that many of us have on hand and combining them can result in economical, flavorful treats, like a "sweet 'n' sour" salad dressing, dipping or cooking sauce mixed together from pure fruit apricot or berry spread (next to sugar-free jams usually in the jam aisles of supermarkets), light (lower-sodium) soy sauce, and bottled French, Russian or "Catalina"-style salad dressing. 

Lisa Messinger is a first-place winner in food and nutrition writing from the Association of Food Journalists and the National Council Against Health Fraud and author of seven food books, including the best-selling The Tofu Book: The New American Cuisine with 150 Recipes (Avery/Penguin Putnam) and Turn Your Supermarket into a Health Food Store: The Brand-Name Guide to Shopping for a Better Diet (Pharos/Scripps Howard). She writes two nationally syndicated food and nutrition columns for Creators Syndicate and had been a longtime newspaper food and health section managing editor, as well as managing editor of Gayot/Gault Millau dining review company. Lisa traveled the globe writing about top chefs for Pulitzer Prize-winning Copley News Service and has written about health and nutrition for the Los Angeles Times Syndicate, Reader's Digest, Woman's World and Prevention Magazine Health Books. Permission granted for use on DrLaura.com. 

Posted by Staff at 7:03 AM