fête à fête

Summertime is officially here, and the best way to celebrate is with a lovely drink. Here's a delicous white sangria recipe from Heidi Swanson's new cookbook, Super Natural Cooking: Five Ways To Incorporate Whole & Natural Ingredients Into Your Cooking. Give it a whirl - it might inspire you to experiment with healthier alternatives in your bar and kitchen!

White Sangria with Agave Nectar and Drunken Peaches

Makes 1 large pitcher, enough to serve 6 to 8

2 or 3 peaches, peeled, pitted, and cut into eighths
3 cups seedless grapes of mixed colors, halved
1/ 3 cup agave nectar
2 (750-ml) bottles sauvignon blanc
½ cup apricot brandy
1 (1-liter) bottle sparkling water

Combine the peaches, grapes, agave nectar, wine, and brandy in a 1-gallon jug. Stir gently so the fruit doesn’t break up, then chill in the refrigerator for a few hours or, even better, overnight.
Serve in tall glasses, making sure each has a nice assortment of the wine-soaked fruit; top each with a generous splash of sparkling water.

Reprinted with permission from Super Natural Cooking: Five Ways to Incorporate Whole & Natural Ingredients Into Your Cooking by Heidi Swanson. Photographs by Heidi Swanson. Copyright 2007. Published by Celestial Arts.

Enjoy!

Tagged as: fashiontribes.com, Food and Drink, Gourmet and Gourmand, Natural, Seasonal

Posted by Tami Yu at 2:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

To salute hard-working dads everywhere, Sonnema VodkaHERB has created a couple herbaceous martinis so our favorite dads can kick back and relax this Father's Day. Using a premium herb-infused charcoal distilled vodka from Holland, the noticibly smooth finish is what fathers will definitely appreciate.

The VodkaHerb Martini

Method: Muddle the cucumber in the cocktail
shaker and add ice. Add the Dry Vermouth
and VodkaHerb and shake with ice.
Doublestrain into the ice-chilled glass.

Ingredients: 2 slices of cucumber
80 ml Sonnema VodkaHerb
10 ml Dry Vermouth
Garnish: 1 slice of cucumber

VodkaHerbitan

Method: Shake with ice and double strain
into the ice-chilled glass.

Ingredients: 60 ml Sonnema VodkaHerb
5 leaves of Thyme
10 ml Maple syrup
35 ml Cranberry juice
Garnish: A branch of thyme

Happy Father's Day!

Tagged as: fashiontribes.com, Food and Drink, International, Lifestyle, Liquor and Spirits

Posted by Tami Yu at 3:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Perfect for a Father's Day gift, nationally acclaimed mixologist Tony Abou-Ganim has recently launched an informative DVD, "Modern Mixology: Making Great Cocktails at Home" that demonstrates what every drink enthusiast needs to stock a home bar. From recommending the proper bar tools (and showing viewers how to use them) to dishing out expert tips and secrets on executing the perfect cocktail, Tony's DVD also has a special feature on demonstrating the most popular cocktail recipes. Easy to follow and fun to watch, you can view each cocktail recipe at your own pace. Soon you will be confident at whipping out cocktails, becoming the star host of your parties.

Available at www.Themodernmixologist.com or Modernmixologydvd.com; you can also purchase Tony's bar tools (TAG BAR) at www.ultimatebarchef.com

See you at the bar,

Tagged as: fashiontribes.com, Food and Drink, International, Lifestyle, Liquor and Spirits, Parties

Posted by Tami Yu at 1:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Super fun for both kids and adults, the new baking gadgets from Williams-Sonoma are just some of the latest baking innovations for amateurs and experts alike. Not only are these great for summer entertaining, kids will have a blast navigating the kitchen with their summer baking projects:

The Backyard Bugs Cakelet Pan is the most adorable thing I've laid eyes on this season - it's quickly becoming the reigning favorite cake pan in my kitchen. This cute baking pan features four pairs of your favorite garden critters (bees, butterflies, ladybugs and dragonflies), all perched on a leaf-shaped mold. Remember to use the attached vanilla cake recipe, as it will churn out 16 delicious cakes for decorating. The sturdy cast aluminum construction allows even heat distribution, ensuring perfectly browned cakes each time. Another big plus is the superior nonstick coating, which guarantees an easy release between each batch.

Say goodbye to messy pastry bags! Easy to handle and control, the new Mechanical Pastry Bag is a much-needed decorating tool for the home baker. This awesome pastry decorating kit comes with ten professional stainless-steel decorating tips to embellish birthday cakes, cookies and cupcakes galore. Fun to use and easy to clean (dishwasher-safe), the kit also comes with an instruction booklet to ensure perfectly executed swirls of icing.

Check them out at: www.williams-sonoma.com

-See you in the kitchen!

The Sweet Life

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Posted by Tami Yu at 11:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Get a splash of summer fun with the new Bavarian import, XUXU. A 'heavenly kiss,' it's a refreshing vodka drink made with farm-fresh strawberries. Containing 66% fruit puree, this versatile German favorite is great on the rocks, or drizzled over ice cream and cakes. It's also ideal to mix it with sparkling wines and in other fruity cocktails (see recipe below).

XUXU Royale

Ingredients:

6 cl Sparkling Wine (e.g. Blanc Foussy)
2 - 4 cl XUXU

Preparation:

Pour chilled XUXU in a sparkling wine glass and fill it up with sparkling wine.

For more recipes, check out www.xuxu.de

See you at the bar,

Tagged as: Dessert, fashiontribes.com, Food and Drink, International, Lifestyle, Liquor and Spirits

Posted by Tami Yu at 9:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

With the slow food movement and numerous farmers' markets dotting the American culinary map, still there are folks out there that think healthy eating equates to tasteless, bland food with dense textures. Thanks to Heidi Swanson's new book, Super Natural Cooking: Five Ways To Incorporate Whole & Natural Ingredients Into Your Cooking, she helps demystify this unfounded assumption.

It's not as hard as you think to swap out the processed foods lurking in your pantry. Utilizing five ways to encourage a whole foods diet, Swanson explains in great detail on how to buy the right flours, fats and spices, baking with 'alternative' grains like teff and quinoa, choosing color-rich vegetables, working with antioxidant-laden superfoods, and using natural sugars for desserts.

With eighty easy recipes to experiment with, you can try everyday dishes like the Clemenquat Salad, Black Tea Spring Rolls with Mushrooms and Mango Chutney Dipping Sauce, Sprouted Garbanzo Burgers, and Ginger-Amaranth Shortbread. Accompanied by Swanson's absolutely gorgeous photography, one might be immediately compelled to run to the kitchen and try their hand at re-creating her dishes. With such delicious flavors, you will soon kiss the refined grains and sugars goodbye.

Spring Minestrone with Brown Rice

Serves 4.

2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
2 shallots, thinly sliced
1 clove garlic, minced
¾ cup medium-grain brown basmati rice, rinsed
6 cups vegetable stock
1 cup sugar snap or snow peas, trimmed and cut in half diagonally
8 spears asparagus, trimmed and diagonally sliced into 1-inch pieces
½ cup green peas, fresh or frozen
Fine-grain sea salt and freshly ground black pepper

Heat the olive oil in a large saucepan over medium-high heat, then add the shallots and garlic and sauté for a couple of minutes until soft. Add the rice and cook, stirring for 1 minute, then add the stock and bring to a boil. Cover, lower the heat, and simmer until the rice is just tender, 35 to 45 minutes.

Add the sugar snap peas, asparagus, and green peas, and season with a few healthy pinches of salt and a few grinds of black pepper. Simmer for another 2 or 3 minutes and serve immediately; this way the vegetables stay crisp and bright.

Reprinted with permission from Super Natural Cooking: Five Ways to Incorporate Whole & Natural Ingredients Into Your Cooking by Heidi Swanson. Photographs by Heidi Swanson. Copyright 2007. Published by Celestial Arts.

See you in the kitchen!

The Sweet Life

Tagged as: Books, Breakfast, Chefs and Confectioners, Dessert, Dinner, fashiontribes.com, Food and Drink, Gourmet and Gourmand, Lunch, Natural, Organic, Seasonal

Posted by Tami Yu at 12:40 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)