Overnight Ice Tea

Lately I’ve been working on drinking more teas along with my daily green smoothies. I have cut down my soda intake tremendously, replacing soda with unsweetened ice tea or coconut water. I’ve always love drinking tea since i was little, but the process of boiling , steeping, and cooling really takes out the fun of drinking tea. The million dollars question I’ve always had in the back of my head when i was little was: why do you need to boil water to make ice tea? Never understood it and also tried experimenting on it but never had the patience to come to an actual conclusion.So I decided to try it out again a few weeks ago, and it worked out perfectly!  I grabbed one of my mason jars, but i think any container will do. I poured a bottle of  spring water and added a bag of Celestial Seasonings  Hibiscus tea along with a Whole Foods Yerba Mate tea bag.  I sealed it and left it in the fridge over night, that morning  i had a perfect jar of ice tea to go. Thanks to the Yerba Mate and its caffeine , i was wide awake with no need for coffee. I’m not actually sure of the specific brewing time, but a few hours will definitely do the trick so this is best if done ahead of time. If you think about it and actually sit down and do the math, which I’m not going to do lol… Its cheaper to make you own ice tea than buying a bottle everyday. On top of that, you can make different flavor combinations that you would never find in your grocery store. For instance i  added a splash of coconut water to the spring water along with my green tea mint flavored teabag. Doing this I get my antioxidants and potassium all at the same time, it’s genius i tell you. If you love ice tea i definitively recommend trying this at least once.

Afternoon delight

After church Sunday afternoon my sisters and i decided to grab lunch and a matinee. Its not everyday we decide on going to the movie theaters but when Denzel Washington is starring, you just cant pass it up. Unless its that train movie that he did, because that my friends was an utter disappointment… but i digress. We hopped in the car and head over to  the mall, knowing we wanted some time to grab some lunch we ordered our tickets first and than headed to Grand Lux.We’ve been to Grand Lux plenty of times as you can see if you follow the blog, but that day I decided to try something new instead of my usual and ordered up the Veggie Burger. This wasn’t your usual frozen Morning star Burger, this was a made from scratch veggie burger. This particular burger had rice,beans and beets and for an extra two bucks avocado.I read the description and thought if anything its going to be a rice and bean flavored sandwich but to be on the safe side i decided to add the avocado and pepper jack cheese.  When our food came out , you couldn’t even tell the difference which burger was which. This sandwich was massive and tasted great, it had a  rice/ bean flavor  which was a bit dry but the avocado really helped with that. I actually preferred this burger compared to others veggie burgers I’ve had, for the mere fact that it tasted like rice and beans and not some flavored “beef” Burger. As weird as it may sound, i find soy products that are meant to taste like meat, have more of a meatier taste or gamey taste than real meat itself. So a veggie burger that taste like veggies/grains  is always a plus in my book. To make a long story short , we enjoyed lunch but  missed the movie due to overcrowding. But with a lunch like that, it really didn’t matter to us. 🙂

 

 

 

Birthday Extravaganza

The weekend had finally arrive!  My Birthday weekend was here and i had nothing planned.  I was up to my neck with assignments that  i had no time to sit down and planned a birthday extravaganza. So Saturday Morning  after all the assignments were submitted,  i told my sister lets go on an adventure Trying new things that we always wanted to try but never got the chance to. While that sounded great we didn’t know where to start, so we just ended up shopping all day lol. When it came to lunch  time, we decided we were going to be adventurous and decided on the Pub. The Pub is a British inspired Restaurant where their bar takes up half the place with all different types of liquors and brews. Even though it was mid day we just had to try out one of their drinks, so i ordered up a “Lucy in the (sky with diamonds)” and fish tacos with chips. While my sister had what seemed to be a raw tuna wrap, if that isn’t  adventurous i don’t know what is .  None the less It was a great kick off to a memorable weekend and couldn’t had planned it any better myself if i could!