Cool Delights to Refresh You

Nothing is better on a hot summer day than a cool drink or treat. If you are tired of your usual beverages or snack fare, give these ideas a try:

• Prepare chilled kebabs of fruit from ripe, seasonal varieties and add them to a glass of seltzer or chilled soda water.
• Make green or flavored iced tea and add a bit of fruit juice or spearmint leaves for a bit of added zip.
• Make juice spritzers with a splash of diet ginger ale or soda water. Maybe try cranberry juice (very healthy), or grape juice for a colorful refresher.
• Try making a smoothie. Use vanilla yogurt, vanilla ice cream, or vanilla yogurt as the base, then add a mix of delicious fruit. Some good combos are mango, coconut, pineapple, bananas, strawberries, rasberries, or orange.
• Make popsicles in "mocktail" flavors such as pina colada, sangria or margarita. Great for happy hour relaxing or parties.
• Serve fizzy limeade or lemonade by using seltzer instead of water in your usual recipe.
• Mix up fruit slushies. Combine ice cubes and fruit (lemon, lime or melon work well) in a blender with a sweetener.
• Give your ice cream maker a workout--only experiment with sorbets.
• Add more ice than usual to your diet soda. Diet Coke in particular taste better a little thinner, and with a slice of lime or lemon added to it.
• Try your Grandmother's sun tea. Set a large canister of water outside in the sunlight with 5 or 6 tea bags floating on top. The end result will be a deliciously brewed solar tea. You can experiment with different flavors, such as apple teas.
• Add fresh picked (or freshly bought) healthy berries to plain yogurt for a do-it-your-self health snack. Blueberries are especially full of anti-oxidant vitamins.
• Freeze your chocolate bars or mochas for a quick, cool dark chocolate pick me up if the weather is so hot that your usual snack has gone into melt down mode.