refreshing red grape spritzer
The cool rainy days of June are no longer. July in Colorado is without a doubt the hottest month of the year. The temperatures have been hovering in the 90’s and I simply cannot drink enough water to feel hydrated.
Alas, I came across this recipe for a grape spritzer and it sounded so refreshing. It called for white grape juice (from a bottle). Which is fine. But, if I am choosing to milk this recipe for the biggest bang of nutritional value, the first thing I think of is red grapes - and actually crushing the grapes with my blender instead of using store bought juice.
Grapes are a cooling food, alkaline in nature and are chock full of antioxidants. Yes, they contain the highest percentage of sugar when compared to other summer berries (funny enough - grapes are considered a type of berry). But, it doesn’t change the fact that they are very good for you and have for thousands of years been used to treat a wide range of ailments (including cancer) due to their therapeutic/cleansing properties.
Word of caution. (Conventional) grapes are one of the most highly-pesticided fruits. For my family, if organic grapes are unavailable we simply go without. Domestically, organic grapes are not “technically” in season until early September. I shamefully admit I broke my own “buy local” rule when I purchased these imported grapes.
2 cups organic grapes, blended with
1 tblsp freshly squeezed lemon juice
strain juice using a cheesecloth or nut milk bag
then add
8 oz Hansen’s club soda and
6 drops (not droppers) liquid Stevia
pour over ice then garnish with
some fresh grapes and some organic mint
This recipe is inspired by the New York Times original recipe as well as the stunning photos of 




This past weekend, I made these noodles. Our Memorial Day weekend was very nice but it was rainy and the weather was rather cool - the entire weekend. It’s supposed to warm up quite nicely this week so this was probably the last time we’ll have a dish with ginger in it until the weather turns cooler in October. Ginger is a warming food: if you ever are chilly eat a piece of ginger and it will help to heat you up from the inside out. It is not recommended to consume ginger in the hotter months - for our bodies are plenty warm enough during that time…and require cooling foods instead.
Necessity is the mother of invention they say. In the case of cooking, sometimes the best recipes come when you least expect it. I was out of sandwich bread the other day. The morning got away from me and I didn’t have enough time to bake a fresh loaf before lunchtime. The day before, I had picked up some 7 inch rectangular Kinnikinnick pizza crusts from the frozen section at Vitamin Cottage. At the store, I was so thrilled to see that these were safe for us to eat because often times their gluten free products are neither soy nor casein free. I cut them into triangle shapes, tossed them with some extra virgin olive oil and some freshly chopped rosemary and baked them. To be honest, before I tasted them I was half-heartedly expecting them to be hard and inedible (like so many other gluten free pizza crusts out there). However, these are soft and chewy - yet crispy at the same time. A few hours later, they had yet to become hard - I stored them in a glass storage container after they cooled. {Kinnickinnick has 

