If you’re craving warmth without the bore of coffee, check out these warming morning drink recipes.

Researchers at Yale University and the University of Colorado have suggested that physical warmth and emotional warmth are actually linked, and in fact the temperature of your beverage can influence your trust and tenderness toward the people around you. Maybe that’s why we sip on warm beverages more often in the winter.

4 Warming Winter Drink Recipes

1. Spiced Warm Apple Cider

Ingredients

1/2 gallon apple cider
1/3 cup dark brown sugar
2 sticks cinnamon
1 0ne-inch chunk fresh ginger, peeled
3 whole cloves
8 sliced apples

Method

1. In a 3-quart saucepan, combine cider, sugar, cinnamon sticks, allspice berries, ginger, and cloves.

2. Heat to a simmer and allow to cook 20 minutes. Strain into a punch bowl and garnish with orange slices. Serve warm.

Serves 6.

2. Aztec Hot Chocolate

Ingredients

4 cups organic whole milk
One 3.2-ounce disk Mexican chocolate, chopped
1/2 tsp chipotle chile powder
1 cinnamon stick
1 tsp vanilla
1 tsp cinnamon

Method

1. Bring the milk to a simmer in a large heavy saucepan over medium-high heat. Add the chocolate, guajillo chile, cinnamon stick and vanilla bean.

2. Reduce the heat to medium-low. Simmer for 10 minutes, whisking constantly to develop some froth and completely melt the chocolate.

Serves 4.

3. Soothing Ginger Tea

Ingredients

4 tsp cardamom pods, crushed
4 1/2 tsp fennel seeds
5 cups water
1 piece (6 inches) fresh ginger, peeled and sliced into thick slices
1 Tbsp. raw honey

Method

1. Toast cardamom and fennel in a saucepan over medium-high heat for 1 minute.

2. Add water and ginger. Reduce heat, and simmer until it reaches the desired strength, 10 to 15 minutes.

Recipe: Martha Stewart

Serves 5.

4. Chocolate Cappuccino

Ingredients

1/2 cup whipping cream
3 Tbsp. powdered sugar
1/2 cup finely chopped organic dark chocolate
8 cups very strong coffee or espresso
Chocolate curls for garnish

Method

1. Beat whipping cream and powdered sugar with an electric mixer on low speed until soft peaks form.

2. Spoon 1 tablespoon of chopped chocolate into a coffee cup and add hot espresso. Top with whipping cream and chocolate curls.

Serves 8.

Related on EcoSalon

11 Ways the World Drinks Coffee

Personality Types Revealed in a Cup of Coffee

Hot Chocolate the Ulitmate Comfort Drink Then and Now

Images: Elana’s Pantry, awduthie, Cinnamon Vogue, eblaser

The post 4 Warming Morning Drink Recipes Instead of Coffee (We Dare You) appeared first on EcoSalon.

Amp up your summer ice cubes with these 10 cool ideas.

A scorching Summer calls for cool beverages – preferably iced. But where’s the fun in run-of-the-mill ice cubes? Sure, they cool things down, but they also dilute many an iced coffee or a cocktail, which is not okay. This is where flavored ice cubes enter the scene – they’re easy on the eyes and add more taste than water ever did. Impress guests (and yourself) with these 10 flavored ice cube ideas.

Coffee

Cool down your coffee without diluting it! Freeze coffee that you would normally drink hot and throughout a sizzling week, use the cubes in your daily cup or blend them into a smoothie for some extra coolness and caffeine.

Herbs

Wow a crowd by adding chopped herbs to an ice-cube tray. Cool water with cubes infused with chopped mint leaves and dried ginger and bring extra taste and sophistication to the table.

Coconut Water

Coconut water has an electrolyte balance similar to human blood, so it’s super nourishing. Add coconut water ice cubes to an smoothie or glass of water in place of regular water ice cubes for a refreshing energy kick.

Colorful Fruit

For a beautiful presentation, add raspberries and blueberries or slices of pineapple, mango, and other sweet fruit to an ice-cube tray. They not only make a glass of water look festive but also leave it with a fruity hint that intensifies with each sip.

Edible Flowers

This one is mostly for show. The summer is all about outdoor barbecues, pool-side treats, and nature. Ice cubes with colorful edible flowers sprinkled in simply fits the bill.

Lemon Juice

Save the slice. Freeze lemon juice, and cool down on a blistering Summer afternoon with a tall glass of water with lemon ice cubes.

Old Wine

Old wine can be salvaged! Freeze remaining wine into cubes and melt them on the stove top into recipes that call for wine. And don’t dilute that sangria with water ice cubes, use red wine ice cubes instead to retain the alcohol level (very important) and taste.

Wheat Grass

It may be one of the healthiest juices on earth, but it sure doesn’t have a shelf life. Wheatgrass in its liquid state goes rotten quite quickly. Freeze the juice into cubes and use them in smoothies or use them to cool fruit and vegetable juice, all the while offering you some blood-cleansing benefits.

Milk

Milk ice cubes can be added to a hot cup of coffee or tea to cool it down but bring up the richness of the drink.

Chocolate

Melt dark chocolate, let cool to room temperature, and freeze into cubes. Toss the frozen chocolate cubes into a glass of milk. As the chocolate melts, you have yourself an increasingly richer chocolate milk that is as fresh and cooling as it is decadent and delicious.

Aylin Erman currently resides in Istanbul and is creator of plant-based recipe website GlowKitchen.

The post 10 Things to Turn into Ice Cubes appeared first on EcoSalon.

The frappuccino gets a major health revamp.

While it is high in calories, sodium, and cholesterol, it’s really the sugar content that blows one of Starbucks’s beloved beverages out of the water. Starbucks’s Caffe Vanilla Frappuccino Blended Smoothie contains 310 calories per 16-ounce serving, in addition to 3 grams of fat, 2 grams of saturated fat, 10 milligrams of cholesterol, 220 milligrams of sodium, and 67 grams of sugar.

Sugar will go straight to your head, give you a short-term high, and then leave you lethargic and glum. It spikes your blood sugar levels, leads to weight gain, is nutritionally empty, contributes to candida, and, to put simply, is actively bad for you. If you are going to consume sugar, get it from something a bit more decadent and lasting than a down-in-a-hot-second drink, regardless of how delicious it may be!

My version of a vanilla Frappuccino smoothie is sugar-free, save for the optional chocolate syrup glaze and whipped cream, using a few drops of zero-calorie, low-glycemic stevia instead. The recipe also goes a step further by replacing cow’s milk with almond milk. Almond milk is a mere 40 calories per 8-ounce serving and avoids the common issues that arise when ingesting dairy, such as hard-to-digest proteins, hormones, depletion of enzymes and vitamins through pasteurization, saturated fat, synthetic chemicals, and a boo-ing cow.

Cutting corners in so many other ways, it’s up to you whether you want to indulge with a topping of whipped cream and chocolate syrup. You can find vegan variations of both in your local health food store.

Enjoy!

Sugar-Free Vegan Vanilla Frappuccino

Ingredients:

• 1 cup coffee cooled
• 1 cup almond milk, soy milk, rice milk, or skim milk.
• 1 banana
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 2 handfuls of ice
• 1 tablespoon cocoa powder
• 4 drops of liquid stevia, or 2 packets of powdered stevia
• Whipped Cream (optional)
• Chocolate Syrup (optional)

Directions:

Combine all ingredients in a Vitamix and blend until smooth.

Bon Appetit!

Aylin Erman currently resides in Istanbul and is creator of plant-based recipe website GlowKitchen.

Image: Starbucks

The post Nutritional Breakdown: Vanilla Frappuccino appeared first on EcoSalon.

Let’s get social.

As we said in our recent Friday 5, drinks bring out the sociable sides in our personalities. In historical times feasts brought us together – nowadays it’s more likely to be an array of coffee flavors, or a bottle of something rich and cheeky. In celebration of the great bring-people-together power of beverages, we uncork our archives, take a sip and toast your good health.

Coffee reduces muscle pain. After a hard workout, a cup or two of coffee has been shown to reduce muscle soreness (in women, anyway) more effectively than naproxen, aspirin and ibuprofen. (But don’t replace your water thermos with coffee).

20 Surprising Facts About Coffee

Now hitting the shelves is ZICO pure coconut water. An all natural, 60-calorie alternative. ZICO contains the five essential electrolytes, magnesium, and more. One box of ZICO has more potassium than a banana (15 times more than most sports drinks) to prevent cramping and promote recovery.

A Natural Fitness Drink: Coconut Water

“You could consider me the goddess of organic wine because of my longevity,” says a tres enthusiastic Veronique Raskin of The Organic Wine Company in San Rafael, Calif. “I’ve been at it for 30 years so I should know a couple of things.”

The French native and head cheerleader for the benefits of organic helped uncork the notion of drinking naturally-farmed grape back in 1979. That’s when she brought the first shipment to the U.S. from her family’s 200 year-old vineyard, Bousquette, located in the Languedoc region which borders Provence in the south and produces one-third of France’s grapes.

The Trail to the Tastiest Organic Red Wines from a Certified Grape Goddess

It’s the future, a greener, more enlightened time. You drop in on your local coffee vendor – let’s call it McStarMart – ready for a cup of exquisitely roasted bean-juice to kick start your day. You’re standing quietly in the queue, and – something odd is going on.

People are reaching into their pockets and bags and briefcases, and they’re pulling out mugs of all shapes and kinds. When they reach the counter, they pass them to the barista, who fills them up with their beverage of choice.

There are no disposable cups.

In The Future, We All Carry Mugs

Not only does red wine make steak extra-flavorful, it may reduce cancer-causing compounds naturally found in meats. Frying and grilling meat at high temperatures turns sugars and amino acids of muscle tissue into carcinogenic compounds, but marinating steak in red wine for at least six hours before cooking can reduce two types of carcinogens by up to 90 percent. Use about a cup of red wine, a cup of olive oil and the seasonings of your choice like garlic, parsley and peppercorns.

20 Unusual Uses For Wine

I’m convinced mulled wine was invented as a handwarmer in the depths of winter. It first pops up in the history books around 400 CE, although its European medieval name of Hipocris harks back to Hippocrates, the Ancient Greek “father of medicine” – and it’s not hard to imagine Celtic Mead being dangled over the fire for an extra-warming kick. Nowadays, mulled wine is a popular winter drink across much of northern Europe. For example, in Sweden it goes by the splendid name of glögg.

Hot Wine? Mull It Over

Like other Swedes I’m used to buying glögg already spiced at the Systembolaget, which is the one and only company that can sell liquor in Sweden. Systembolaget has an impressive selection of wine from all around the world and they have over 40 different kinds of glögg, both with and without alcohol. There is even a white glögg which is commonly served cold as an apertif at parties around Christmas. With a selection that great it’s hard to even think of making your own unless you’re a Swede living abroad. Being one of those people, I started making my own and can’t ever imagine going back. At Christmas I want my own glögg. And the glögg has to be done with some drama by caramelizing the sugar.

Glogg: Swedish Traditional Mulled Wine

Images: PoYang, Vegan Feast Catering, Sarah Jane, Johanna Kindvall, photoskate and delphaber.

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