HAPPY 4TH OF JULY TO MY AMERICAN FRIENDS!
Last week we were hit by a heat wave that gave me the idea for the following post.
How does your body react to high temperatures? Are you thirstier? Is your hunger level the same? Do you crave spicier or saltier food? Do you reduce your intake of sugar and fat?
It is the first time I have ever paid attention to my body signals and those questions and I can answer all of them in the affirmative. My body asks for more liquids in any form, salt, spices, less carbs and fat.
Normally I love to drink too much of that fizzy sweet beverage invented in the States in the late 19th century. But not when temperatures soar, I’d far rather have a glass of homemade iced tea with no sugar added.
Here is my favourite iced tea recipe of this week:
Late Bloomers Iced Tea
1.5 l water
1 sprig peppermint
1 sprig verbena
1 sprig bee balm
5 cardamom seeds (slightly punched so they open up)
pinch of salt
3 slices of organic lemon
Pour boiled water over all the ingredients and let it steep until the tea is lukewarm. Pour through sieve and store in fridge.
If you prefer some sweetness you can add honey.
My breakfast habit changes in summer: whereas I normally eat bread or cereals with fruit I now crave yoghurt with something salty and spicy added to it. Why not try this:
Bloomers Summer Breakfast
1 cup Greek natural yoghurt
½ cucumber grated (I prefer the small variety called nostrano, they are tastier than the greenhouse grown snake cucumber)
2 TS Dukka, my favourite nut and spice mixture
Pinch of sea salt
Mix and adjust seasoning to your liking.
I am not a cook or nutrionist by profession, this is the way my mother and grandmothers cooked: seasonal and natural products (lest alone did they ever hear about genetically manipulated food), freshly prepared. Maybe this is why I am drawn to la cucina italiana, you will rarely see a big fridge in an Italian household because they daily shop for fresh products and consume it the same day.
What are your eating habits? Do you eat and drink differently according to seasons? What is your favourite summer drink? What are you having for breakfast in summer?
PS: For all my photography friends: I am still using my iPhone app CP Pro in the WYSIWIT (what you see is what I took – kudos to Kaarina) and used different filters for the above photography.
Comments 61
Yes, according to seasons it has to be for me. We don’t barbecue much during the summer because of the extreme temperatures outside (it is 109 degrees right now!) and coffee is exclusively for December or for days when the wires needs to be recharged!
As for Iced Tea, I just bought three packets of the instant version! Lemon flavor! 🙂
@Hajra Hi Hajra, Is it not strange: we barbecue in summer (but our temps will never exceed 35° C) and in winter we stow the grills away, the humidity and the snow would get to them.
Coffee anytime for me. Have you ever tried the way we used to drink coffee in Israel: espresso with vanilla ice cream – heaven!
The instant version of iced tea: ist it the one which is soluble in cold water? My daughter has just given me some free samples. Imagine what’s in there!
@Late_Bloomers Yup; have tried it! Indeed yum!
Yes, its soluble in cold water. And I add tons of ice into it!
@Hajra You are so much like my daughter! Love you!
@Late_Bloomers Loving you right back! 🙂
Hi Barbara! Just popping in before the Hangout! Mmm! I do like to cook differently for the seasons but our breakfast is raw fruit – which does change when we can salvage the occasional strawberry from the mice who tunnel in our patch or otherwise find fresh fruit at the market! The iced tea sounds nice! Once I had some iced coffee that was soooooooo delicious. I must check and see if I still have the recipe! It was a delicious treat!
@Hajra if you’re online – come and join us at the Hangout!
Lori
@Lori I missed it… 🙁
I hate time differences!
@Hajra @Lori Hajra, next time (in two weeks: 18th July) you will be there, will you not? It was really great and you would have so much to add to it!
@Late_Bloomers @Lori I will try my best. Its usually dinner time when you guys do a hangout! Maybe I will talk to you guys with my dinner plate!
@Hajra @Lori No problems, as long as you share what you are eating!
@Late_Bloomers @Lori Promise. Your sure it wont be too spicy for your tummy. I am Indian you know!
@Hajra @Lori Hajra, maybe bragging but my Indian friends think I am a reincarnation of an Indian woman!
@Late_Bloomers @Lori Then I promise to bring something spicy! 😉
@Hajra @Lori By all means, would you like to bring your spicy recipe via a GP on Late Bloomers? I would appreciate it very much!
@Late_Bloomers @Lori I would love to! But I am so busy with my upcoming college that I find blogging very tough to catch up to. Right now I have promised 5 people guest posts… 🙁
Once I have something I will ask whether you are ready!
@Hajra @Lori Hajra, no pressure! Just tell me when you are ready!
And now I am cooking spaghetti all’aglio, olio e peperoncino, very spicy!
@Late_Bloomers I am tempted… 🙂
@Late_Bloomers @Hajra @Lori 🙂 Whoaa.
@Hajra I like that! 😉
@Hajra @Late_Bloomers It would be great if you could make it Hajra! Mark your calendar! I try to send out an email reminder, but don’t depend on it, just in case! Dinner plates welcome!
@Hajra @Lori We missed you!
@Lori @Hajra Hi, Lori! Great hangout, thank you so much, our hangouts mean a lot to me and there is always so much to be gained by it, not only the laughter shared but the openness and the trust built make us bond!
Slugs or mice, I love them all!
Do share the recipe of your iced coffee, I am thinking of having a weekly GP of favourite recipes, would you like to start the dance?
@Late_Bloomers @Lori @Hajra That sounds like such fun!
@Vidya Sury @Lori @Hajra Vidya, this would be lovely if you could make it to the next Hangout, it starts at 12.30 EST, what time would that be in India? What’s the difference: 10 hours (?), I hope not too late. We cover different time zones from early morning coffee (!) to a happy hour glass of wine, the late night coffee is still missing!
@Late_Bloomers @Lori @Hajra Hmm…12.30 EST would be ten and a half hours ahead for me…that’s 11 pm at night. Certainly not impossible, considering I sleep 12-ish. 🙂 Its a thought to look forward to! Yay!
@Vidya Sury @Lori @Hajra YAY!
@Late_Bloomers @Hajra The Hangout was fun! I looked for the recipe and seem to have misplaced it. I’ll have to GOOGLE to find a good one. I’m not really great at Guest Posts, though I will support @Vidya Sury or @Hajra or anyone else who does one!
@Lori @Hajra @Vidya Sury Good morning to you, Lori! Hey, no easy way out! Tell us what you will do with all your dried peppermint or the sage you have planted. How is it coming along?
@Late_Bloomers @Hajra @Vidya Sury Good morning Barbara! The sage is very small but growing. I check on it often 😉 The peppermint has already been dried, ground up and put in a spice bottle. That’s all I’ve got so far 😮
Come by LFI later this morning and answer a very deep question 😉
Curious?
@Lori @Hajra @Vidya Sury Very much so!
You are sooo healthy Barbara…Now i feel guilty about eating cakes and biscuits even during summer…Sigh.
@JSJ2020 Muriel, LOL, you are not serious, are you? And in any case why should you deny yourself some pleasure? And, btw, you do not know what I eat at 10pm or later, do you?
I am especially attracted by the photo and its different treatments 😀 I love how the seasons bring their natural bounty to us – summer is for mangoes and watermelons, while winter is for other fruits. Right now I am seeing a lot of peaches of different varieties in the market. Spring is the time when we get raw mangoes and a whole lot of other things whose English names i do not know – which we pickle to enjoy during the rest of the year.
Year around, my favorites are tomatoes, cucumber, yogurt, apples and bananas. Dates, yes. Both kinds. And coffee? Every single day for as long as I live.
So nice to be here, Barbara!
@Vidya Sury Really, coffee, in the heat… I find it very tough to gulp it down unless and until I have AC around! 🙁
@Hajra @Vidya Sury Oh, Hajra, you do not know the pleasures of coffee drinking at all times, do you? But my daughter is the same, she does not like coffee and she would probably only drink it in one of her very complicated and very delicious concoctions of some cocktail!
@Late_Bloomers Coffee for me is just the best way to wire my nerves. That is all. Or during the winters, I prefer a boiling hot cup of tea…. the Indian version of tea.
But usually it has to be something cold!
@Hajra Indian version of tea: is it Chai Masala?
@Late_Bloomers Oh yes. Or cardamom tea.
@Vidya Sury Vidya, so happy to welcome you here! I enjoy your posts so much and I will most certainly start a happy jar! What a wonderful idea to remember all your happy thoughts of gratitude!
Ah, and how well I remember the delicious mangoes I ate in India, the small yellow variety called Absolom (?), can you imagine I took loads of them home in the plane?
I absolutely love Indian food and cook it all year round. I love spicy food and find it very soothing especially during summer.
Vidya, happy you like to be here and feel welcome to come back anytime. Thank you, Barbara
@Late_Bloomers 🙂 Thank you! My Mum was a great cook and a very creative one, Barbara. I used to tease her about the kitchen never being far from her thoughts. And now, I am pleased to say I am a lot like her. These days I am crazy about experimenting with all kinds of “stuffed parathas” – (Indian flat bread stuffed with veg/cheese/paneer combinations). What fun it is – and I have a son who’s aiding and abetting with me to concoct strange combis that will turn out just fine.
Absolom….maybe you mean Alfonso? 😀 Those are very popular. My favorite is the “Banganapalli” special to Andhra Pradesh, although I love all mango varieties. In Bangalore where I live now, there’s one called “Chakkara kutty” which literally means chakkara = sugar and kutty = little, but used endearingly to mean little one. These are the size of table tennis balls (yeah, can you imagine?) and taste very sweet. I am about to drool!
🙂
@Vidya Sury 😉 Drooling is the word of the hour …. and yes, of course, it is ALFONSO, thank you! I love your description of your mum “about the kitchen never being far from her thoughts” and how similar you are. Like having finished a meal and already talking about and planning the next, is it not?
Chakkara kutty, what a lovely name, it calls for cuddling! Here in Europe we rmainly get the big green and red mangoes from Brazil, harvested long before their prime to survive transport, they do not have much taste and sometimes they have this obnoxious petrol smell to it. You cannot evoke memories by eating the same fruit in a different climate. Mangoes need hot climates and the sweet juice sticking to your fingers!
@Late_Bloomers And to think our neighbors have mango trees in their garden! I admit to I am jealous, because they don’t believe in sharing 😀 During my school days, we’d enjoy wandering in friends’ gardens with guava trees and mango trees. Could never wait for them to become ripe.
And by the way, “chakkara kutty” is a term of endearment. 🙂 We also say “Vella katti” which is a piece of jaggery, “karoombu thundu” – a piece of sugarcane. But I like the chakkara kutty best!
@Vidya Sury How I love the sound of the words and it reminds me of that time I spent in India in Kerala, softly sung words which sound like mantras. The dialect (German) I speak is rather harsh and not so pleasant to the ears.
What language are you speaking? Does “kutty” and “katti” both mean little? Ah, I can learn so much from you – thank you!
@Late_Bloomers 🙂 My mother-tongue is Tamil and I speak most of the Indian languages plus a couple of foreign ones too.
So! Kutty is colloquial for small in Tamil. In Kerala, Malayalis refer to girls as Kutty (which is why you’ll recall many women there have Kutty attached to their names). Katti is a lump in Tamil. The same word has a different meaning in Hindi. Sometimes, a word in one language has an opposite meaning in another.
Hugs!
Well, sounds tasty indeed. I usually…..er, uh always drink coffee in the morning and then it’s water, agua (nectar of the gods) for the rest of the day including with meals. It’s hot quite often in Florida and the water helps keep me hydrated and I’ve heard it’s good for you too……….:).
Hola.
@bdorman264 Ah, Bill, you are a man after my own heart, I always drink coffee in the morning all year round. Well, I also drink coffee in the afternoon and at night, it never keeps me from sleep.
I grew up on tea and water for a beverage, maybe freshly pressed apple juice in autumn, in my youth (and in our home) there were no fizzy drinks and it was a complet no go to drink anything in public. Times have changed …
I trust the weather is better now in Florida so you can enjoy some golf rounds this weekend! Always good to see you!
Yum! I love iced tea. I usually try to stick to water and iced tea so I don’t get too dehydrated…the occasional soda is okay, but it just doesn’t quench my thirst like water/tea does!
@annedreshfield Hi, Anne, do you ever drink anything fizzy? I feel doubly bad now about my drinking habit, I know it is not healthy on several levels. From reading American recipes of iced tea there is always an inordinate amount of sugar in it, how do you like you iced tea?
@Late_Bloomers Sometimes, but I know it’s not healthy so if I do, it’s as a treat. 🙂 And yes, you’re right, Americans love their iced tea with lots of sugar in it, and that’s not even the sweet tea from the south! I like tea plain or with some sugar in it…not a lot though. Try to keep things as healthy as possible!
How funny that we both posted breakfast posts! I’m def going to try the iced tea recipe…when it gets warmer here 🙂
@JanineRipper Hi, Janine, is it not? Except for the different seasons! I talked to my cousin in Cairns this week and they have really low temps of 10° C, you can always drink my tea hot and I love the taste of cardamom next to its being healthy and good for your digestion!
I love natural teas all year round and have them hot as a choice no matter the weather 🙂
@tandysinclair Hi, Tandy, you are so right, even in hot climates hot (or lukewarm as suggested in Ayurvedan theray) tea is best. Have a great weekend and I look forward to the next food quiz!
Oh @Late_Bloomers …Barbara….I want to come over and sip that deliciously refreshing ice tea while enjoying the breezes in your yard. You make everything you write and photograph seem so”there”…you can almost smell and taste them. I have not been a good practitioner of listening to my body during our heat wave this last week. Temperatures in the Midwest stayed around 102-104 F for four straight days and we do not have air conditioning in our house. I kept activity to a minimum but on one of those extremely hot days, we took a walk in a nearby town and I kept feeling worse and worse. Finally, I had to go into a shop and sit down while my husband bought me a bottle of water. I was so “woozy” I almost passed out. The cold water and sitting in air conditioning helped and I was able to continue but was very exhausted for the rest of the day. What I learned from this experience was that I was not paying attention to my hydration during the extreme heat. Becoming dehydrated in this weather is something that just sneaks up on you. I now carry water with me when I leave the house. Your iced tea recipe sounds like a much better alternative however! 😉 I’ll be right over 😉
xoxoxo
Claudia
@SocialMediaDDS Claudia, you are welcome and a seat in the yard is reserved for you! How did you know that there is always a breeze there? amazing, it really is the best place when temperatures soar!
This woozy feeling happened to me too, I wonder whether it is only due to dehydration but it really feels awkward stumbling around on the farmer market early in the morning! And you are right, there is only a certain amount of water I can drink but iced tea will do the trick anytime and has the advantage not only of its lovely taste but salt, lemon and spices.
Waiting for you! BTW I keep everybody regaling with the story of your Friday treats, watch out: you might have to welcome a herd of Swiss people heading your way!
xoxoxo
Barbara
I have to admit I am a terrible fizzy drink consumer also but I will definitely try this tea recipe it sounds delicious and I think mint is a fantastic addition to tea and great for your digestive tract as well!
@KellyStallings Hi, Kelly, and welcome to Late Bloomers. lovely to meet another fizzy drink consumer! Today I mixed some clear apple juice (100 % fruit, no sugar added) with the iced tea, very nice combination. You know it is fun to try out different concoctions and I grow all my herbs myself.
I wish you a lovely and healthy week! See you around!
They say cooking according to what’s in season is the healthier route. I agree and I wish I were like that. When it’s really hot, other than being thirsty, I also tend to be cranky. I grew up in the tropics and should really be accustomed to heat but I was never a fan….hated it then, still hate it now. I do appreciate the Southern Sweet Tea though! heheheh….not the healthiest but it sure hits the spot!
@jpage.manuel Hi, Joy, aha, you’ve got a sweet tooth! Maybe you need all the extra energy sugar gives you? For me it is chocolate but only in winter and when the craving hits me … there is no stopping me! I am you opposite: I hate cold climates and thrive in hot temperatures. Strange how we are, no?
Everything sounds so refreshing! Thanks for the recipes!
@sallykwitt You are welcome, Sally, and thanks for stopping by!