cold brew iced coffee soooo good!

Boy has life been busy lately.. working, hanging out with friends, seeing family, gardening, cooking & of course spending time with Trevor.

It's pretty much summer here in Pittsburgh. We are greeting ready to transplant our plants into their forever homes.. our new big garden. We are quite excited to experiment with a real garden at our new place. (oh yeah we moved to a bigger, better place for cheaper! yay!) I have a feeling we are going to have more produce than we know what to do with.. good thing we have family, friends, & co-workers that will gladly help us out.

I have eight kale plants & they are producing a ton of leaves. It's been a lot of fun gardening. Trevor is really into too.

Anyway the reason I decided to blog real quick was to post a iced coffee recipe. After experimenting with a ton of recipes & methods this is the best way I've found to do it.

Cold Brew Iced Coffee

1 1/2 cups coarsely ground coffee
2 cups  cold water
one french press or cheese cloth or cone filter
(this is the ratio you will want to follow if you'd like to make more or less coffee)

We use a french press it is the easiest and cleanest way we've found to do the ice coffee but you can also use cheesecloth or a cone filter.

The idea is to steep the coffee in cold water for 8 - 12 hours either in the fridge or on the counter, we do the latter. If you are using a french press make sure to stir the grounds around ensuring all the grounds are wet. When the coffee is done steeping push down the plunger & wa-la! You have iced coffee. It is a concentrate so you will need to use a 1:1 ratio. One part coffee & one part water or milk (if you like lattes) You can easily use water as your ratio & add cream, milk or sugar like you would with normal iced coffee.

Now if you don't have a french press never fear you can still make iced coffee... simply steep the grounds in a bowl with a cover using the same method as I described above. Then after 8 - 12 hours simply pour the mixture over cheesecloth or cone filter (this gets a little messy) into another bowl or pitcher.

It will keep for two weeks in the fridge. I usually store it in a glass pitcher or mason jar. It's so easy to make & we go through a lot of it. I simply put it together before we go to bed & by morning we have iced coffee. Which has been nice on these hot days


Any questions, let me know! happy brewing!!

chai tea & other ramblings...

Trevor & I (but mostly Trevor...) are watching stand up comedians on netflix.. I'm laughing because he's laughing. He loves stand up comics. I however think a few jokes are funny but I rarely laugh out loud. We are so different yet so alike. 

Like chai.. we both love chai! I like it spicy & he likes it sweet. figures.
For a few weeks now I've been wanting to try out this recipe...after all of our moving craziness passed & Trevors new job transition. I finally had some time to give it a try today.
What I love about this recipe is the ability to tweak it however you want.. you can make it sweet or spicy or tea-y. My first try turned out great! This recipe isn't an exact science just ratios that you can adjust as you want.

Chai ConcentrateYields: 1 batch of concentrate, approximately 4 cups
tweaked it from this recipe 

4 1/2 cups water

8 bags black tea – I used orange pekoe

2 bags cinnamon  cardmon tea (I used this instead of whole cardamom since I didn't have any)

2 cinnamon sticks

2 vanilla bean, split in half (or 1 tablespoon of vanilla extract added at the very end)

1/2 cup raw cane sugar (you can add more or less depending on how sweet you like your chai) you can also use other alternatives

6 pieces of candied ginger or you can use 3" pieces of fresh whatever you have available

10 whole cloves (I used ground)

1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg

2 whole star anise pods

1/2 teaspoon of whole black peppercorns

1 teaspoon orange zest

1/2 cup ginger juice from making candied ginger (which is what I used as ginger & in gingersnap cookies I made recently) 

1 tablespoon raw honey more or less depending on your sweet tooth

Prepare the teabags by removing any tags if there are any and tying them all together. Prepare the spices, vanilla bean and orange zest by laying them in your cheesecloth, I leave my cinnamon sticks out to make the little pouch of spices a bit more compact. Tie the cheesecloth pouch shut with a small piece of kitchen twine. If you leave the cinnamon sticks out, just tie them together with kitchen twine.

I skipped this cheesecloth & used the mesh strainer. 

*If you don’t wish to use cheesecloth, you will just add all of your spices directly to the pan when the time comes and strain them out after.

Add the water and sugar to a medium sized saucepan and bring to a boil over a medium-high heat. Once boiling, reduce the heat to a simmer and put in the tea bags, cheesecloth pouch and cinnamon sticks. Simmer for 20 minutes.

Remove the pan from the heat strain the concentrate through a sieve or just remove the tea bags, cheesecloth pouch and cinnamon sticks. At this point if you want a bit more sweetness you can add a tablespoon of honey, stir to dissolve. I don’t always do this, but it is a really nice touch. Additionally, if you didn’t use a whole vanilla bean, add your vanilla extract now. Stir to combine.

Allow the mixture to cool before pouring it into an airtight jar or container. This amount fits perfectly into a 1-quart mason jar. Store in the refrigerator for up to one week.

chicken squash stew & other foods..

Last week I made chicken squash stew soup my dear friend stevie made it & recommended it a few months ago. I had some squash to use up and since it's national soup month & all I felt like it was appropriate time to try this new recipe out. It was quite tasty. I didn't follow the recipe to the letter (do I ever?) We don't like olives so they were out immediately. I also decided to do a whole chicken in the crock pot I loosely followed this recipe. 

You don't have to do a whole chicken to make this soup, but I decided to because it offers the possiblity of more meals. After I made this soup I went on to make chicken stock, chicken egg rolls & intended to make chicken & bisquits as well but That didn't happen. next time! 

The soup/stew was very tasty & very filling. I have a rosemary plant leftover from the summer that is still kickin, I used that in the chicken I slow cooked. It gave the chicken broth & soup very good flavor, if you have access to any fresh herbs I highly recommend using them. 

In other news, I just made these today & won't know until tomorrow if like them, but they were easy to put together and look tasty. I have never tried chia seeds before so here goes nothing! From what I've read and heard they are fairly tasteless but offer lots of fiber & protein. I had all the ingredients on hand except the chia seeds which I picked up for a reasonable price at trader joes. 

I decided to try two flavors first (something I know I like in normal oatmeal seemed like a good start) blueberry maple & apples & cinnamon. I am going to take one to work tomorrow, hopefully I like it or I might be hungry ;) 

It seems like there is an easy ratio in this recipe for the base ingredients & leaves room for creative flavors. Frozen fruit or fresh seem to be suitable & I used regular yogurt instead of greek. I don't really care for the way greek yogurt tastes. I omitted the added sugar since I used regular yogurt (vanilla) which tends to have more sugar than greek. I'll let you know how it goes. 

cast of characters

the base ingredients are as follows from this wonderful & informative blog. 

Ingredients

• 1/4 cup uncooked old fashioned rolled oats
• 1/3 cup milk (soy, regular milk, almond I am sure would work fine)
• 1/4 cup yogurt (which ever is your preference) 
• 1-1/2 teaspoons dried chia seeds
• 1/2 teaspoon spice (if you are using any) 
• 1 teaspoon sweetner if you choose to - honey, maple syrup seem like popular choices)
• 1/4 cup fruit - frozen or fresh 

Directions
In a half pint (1 cup) jar, add oats, milk, yogurt, chia seeds, spice and sweetner of choice. Put lid on jar and shake until well combined. Remove lid, add fruit and stir until mixed throughout. Return lid to jar and refrigerate overnight or up to 2 - 4 days. Eat chilled.  

 finished product.

hello world.

Hello World.

It's a new year, I'm sure you've heard. Things are different but very much the same. Things are changing, but not quite yet. It's the waiting game.. & I am anticipating what God has next.. Praising him in the hallway.

 

Stay tune.. Tomorrow (or sometime soon..) I am going to try to blog about a few recipes I have tried lately.