Good Drinking

Lattes To Warm Your Bones

Who else is jazzed about latte season?

As much as I love iced tea and coffee all summer, I also love me a good hot drink, and now that it's cool outside I find myself turning toward some of my favorite standbys, like my favorite tea latte, which is a London fog. I make mine super simply, with sweetener and cream, but I do buy Earl Grey with lavender in it, which makes a huge difference.

I'm on the lookout for a yummy new favorite, and I think I might give this honey chamomile tea latte a try next. The honey and cinnamon together sound incredible! I also want to try a few other lavender teas, but I'd love to hear what kinds of teas and lattes you enjoy.

Tell me about the teas you buy, looseleaf or packaged, and how you prepare them. What's your absolute favorite, and what's your go-to on a cold day? Share your tea treatments in the chat!

Klat Categories:

Food & Beverage

Shaker & Spoon

Do you subscribe to a cocktail club?

There are so many great subscription boxes available today that it's hard to choose one. If you love making cocktails, Shaker & Spoon cocktail club might be just what you need. Each month you'll get the ingredients to make custom cocktails, complete with recipes and unique inspirations created by chefs.

Each month has enough ingredients to make a total of 12 drinks, four each of three different recipes. From herbs to flavorful syrups and other incredible additions, you'll find yourself making all kinds of drinks you've never tried before. Many have just been invented, so it's pretty exclusive, too.

Do you subscribe to any cocktail boxes? Which one do you think is best? Share your links in the chat!

Boozy Brews and Boos!

What are you drinking this Halloween?

Halloween is here and it's time to get those spooky drink menus all organized and ready! Do you have your pumpkin syrups (these are my go-to sugarfree ones!), your apples, your black salt? If your answer is no, better get a move on! Those are all fantastic ways to make your drinks more apple-peeling! Seriously, though, swirls of apples cut on the side of a drink look really cute, as to pieces of oranges this time of year.

If you need some inspiration, this red wine margarita looks incredible. These monsteritas are SO fun and spooky, perfect for any party, and I've always been a fan of simply using dry ice to make any drink look a little spooky.

What are your drink menus this Halloween? Share them in the chat!

Klat Categories:

Food & Beverage

Alcohol

Lemon Elderflower Drop

Share your recipes!

Lately I'm obsessed with Jordan's Skinny Mixes, and for good reason: they are calorie-free, carb and sugar-free and taste incredible. If you don't do artificial sweeteners, unfortunately they don't have a lot of natural sweeteners, but I'm hoping that their collection grows. In the meantime, I'm grateful for the swaps, especially the really flavorful blends like Unicorn, which is blue raspberry flavored and my favorite.

Next I want to try this lemon elderflower syrup, which is supposed to be great in a simple recipe with two shots of vodka as a Lemon Elderflower Drop, as seen here. They have a bunch of drink recipes on their website (as well as food ones, believe it or not) but this "flavor infusion" line really has me curious. They also have Blueberry Lavender and Strawberry Rose, which makes me want to get them all and just spend the weekend experimenting! If you do love lemon drinks like I do, they also have Lemon Raspberry syrup.

What kinds of drinks are you preparing this week, and what kinds of syrups do you use? Share them in the chat!

Klat Categories:

Food & Beverage

Recipes

Alcohol

Color-Changing Cocktails

Just in time for Halloween!

Have you ever had a color-changing cocktail? It's a feat of magic and a feast for the senses, but it doesn't have to be complicated. Empress 1908 gin contains peaflower, which gives you a really easy way to turn your drinks blue! The trick, of course, is to make sure you pour it right in front of your guests to change the color of your drink before their eyes. At the link, you can find out how to make other colors, too.

There are all kinds of ways to make fun effects in your drinks, though. Have you ever tried using food coloring in alcohol or juice, freezing it, and then using that as an ice cube that melts and changes the color of your drink? It's not instant but it's still a nice visual.

What other fun drink effects do you know? Share your tips and tricks in the chat!

Klat Categories:

Food & Beverage

Alcohol

Pumpkin Spice Drinks

They're heeee-eeeere...

It's pumpkin spice season! Are you here for it? If not, no worries, but no shaming, either. While you might already love a good PSL (pumpkin spice latte) and other yummy flavors, did you know that there are plenty of PS cocktails you can make, too? From the pumpkin spice martini to the bourbon pumpkin smash, the general pumpkin spice cocktail to apple pumpkin beer cocktails, there's really something for everyone (who likes pumpkin!) to try.

Sure, it can be as easy as pouring your favorite booze into a PSL, or even getting one of the many addictive zero-sugar pumpkin syrups available to stir in your cocktail, but adding that real pumpkin puree sure makes a difference to me. I'll go for the zero-sugar on most days, but every few weeks I have to have that real pumpkin flavor!

What kinds of pumpkin goodness are you serving up this fall? Share your recipes in the chat.

Klat Categories:

Food & Beverage

Alcohol

Liquor

One Last Tropical Taste Of Summer!

Share your recipes

Summer's almost over, and while fall is my favorite season and I'm definitely ready for it, I have to say that I always miss the summer flavors and scents. Watermelon is one of the best tastes of summer, so this watermelon-lime cooler is the perfect drink to relax with this weekend during one of the final weekends of summer 2019. It's super easy to make and features one of my favorite ingredients: mint!

This list of end-of-summer drinks has a lot more recipes. Apricot and rosemary? That sounds like heaven. And if I don't make that cherry lemonade this summer, it's going on next summer's bucket list!

What are you drinking for your final cocktails of the summer? Share your favorite recipes or new ones you're making up in the chat.

Klat Categories:

New Flavors At Southern Breeze

Check out these sugar-free teas

Many of us need to choose beverages that are sugar-free, but sometimes you just crave some flavor in addition to your tea or water. Southern Breeze is one of my favorite tea companies because they sell cold brew tea bags that are not only flavored, but already pre-sweetened. That means you can pop one in your water bottle for instant flavor and just go! If you like tea cocktails, you might want to try these out because it's much easier than carrying around sweeteners, let alone brewing tea, waiting for it to cool and icing it to go with your drink.

Southern Breeze has had several delicious flavors in the past, ranging from Original and Half and Half (with lemon) to Raspberry and Peach. Raspberry is definitely my favorite, but it's probably going to move over soon since they just launched a whole new set of teas that I couldn't be more excited to try! Last year they surveyed customers to see which flavor should win between Blackberry (which I voted for), Mango and Mint, and yesterday they announced that ALL THREE have now launched for National Tea Day! I can't wait to try them all, and I'm sure they'll all be fantastic in low-calorie cocktail recipes.

Will you be trying any of the new flavors? Which ones do you like already? Share your thoughts in the chat!

Klat Categories:

Food & Beverage

Back-To-School Cocktails for Parents

Do you celebrate with a drink?

As someone who teaches year-round, I don't get "breaks," which I've often thought to be a good thing. Not only do I love what I do, but I think breaks would throw off my groove and make me just want more breaks! All kidding aside, many parents find themselves exhausted after a summer of no school, looking forward to their kids going back and even traveling to Disneyland alone!

With that in mind, you may wish to enjoy some of these back-to-school drinks while your kids are at school this year. Maybe you even want to celebrate your kids making the team, getting the grade or just having time with their friends that they've missed this summer. Maybe you want to celebrate your own down time, or more time to work/go back to work. For whatever reason, you could give these Scientist Slushie, Class Mom and Gym Class Hero cocktails a try. You could probably even make many without booze to celebrate with your kids after school!

What drinks are you enjoying this week? Share them in the chat!

Klat Categories:

Food & Beverage

Alcohol

Liquor

Peach Lemonade Recipes

Which one is your favorite?

August is ALL about peaches for me. Even though my kid and husband aren't into them, they humor me, go peach picking with me on the first of the month and generally support my love of all things peachy. Now that my aunt has a peach tree in her yard, you can bet it's even sweeter! The two of us love us some good peach drinks, but I think peach lemonade has to be my favorite.

I love any kind of lemonade, from blackberry sage to lavender, but I think it's especially good when you make it with peaches. Of course, frozen peaches are much easier to work with when you're blending up drinks, so you can always freeze them or buy them frozen, too. This recipe is super easy for a quick peach lemonade, and you can easily alter it to make it into a cocktail, too. If you're out of peaches, you can always go with a peach syrup, but I really think using real peaches makes it SO much better. My favorite way is to make lemon shake-ups or a really good, fresh lemonade, then just blend my peaches in.

What is your favorite way to make peach lemonade? Share it in the chat!

Klat Categories: