More (Smart) Power to you

Cuisinart’s SmartPower Deluxe 600-Watt Blender is sleek, powerful and up to any food chopping, crushing or grating challenge that will help bring out the Master Chef in you.


With just five buttons you can blend ingredients for a Creamy Dill Salad dressing, puree the cinnamon, cream and pumpkin for Pumpkin Bread pudding, or mix eggs basil, peppers and carrots for Frittata Primavera. The ice crush setting enables you to prepare fabulous drinks like Fresh Fruit Smoothies, Frozen Rum Punch or Frozen Mudslide or Café au Lait “Shake.” Recipes for these and more tasty beverages and dishes are included in the manual. Using just five buttons and two speeds—low or high—you can blend, chop, crush, or liquefy until you run out of ideas or ingredients.

The sturdy stainless steel housing has all the features – and all the blending power – serious cooks need. The patented stainless steel blade, large borosilicate glass jar, and Pulse at High or Low speeds will help you conquer te kitchen like a pro.

Cuisinart—the Art of Cuisine

http://www.cuisinart.com/products/blenders/spb-600.html

Iced Perfection

This has been an exceptionally  hot summer for most of us. It is the perfect time for Iced Coffee but if you want your coffee with ice to be as strong and delicious as when it is served hot, and you have a Tassimo Single Serve Brewer,  you are in luck.  New this season are two stand-out selections, both from Gevalia: Black Iced Coffee and Sweet and Creamy Iced Coffee. At first we were skeptical when we received a complimentary sample of each but these brews stand up to ice. Both have a bold taste that won't be diluted by ice and since they are single-serve portions, every cup will be as fresh (and delightfully strong) as the first. Order online at http://www.tassimodirect.com/tassimo/index.aspx  and wake up to a refreshing iced coffee.

                                   

From Tap Water to Soda Water in Seconds

We now how it is. You really like drinking healthier sparkling beverages but lugging the heavy bottles and then storing and recycling them is work. Consider a Soda Stream—the at-home soda maker. Whether you call it sparkling water, soda water, club soda or seltzer, you'll save on lugging, storing and disposing of cases of sparkling water, and you will save money since you can make your own sparkling beverages starting at only 25 cents per liter.

With SodaStream, you control the fizz.  Enjoy lightly carbonated water…or seltzer so fizzy it will tickle your nose.  You can even make your own flavored sparkling water just by adding a few drops of SodaStream's all-natural, unsweetened MyWater flavor essences.
There more than 30 sodamix syrups including dozens of regular, diet and caffeine-free options, including flavors like cola, lemon-lime, and root beer or exotic fruit flavors like orange mango and diet pink grapefruit and energy drink, sparkling iced teas and cocktail mixers. Each bottle of sodamix makes about 12 liters of soda (about 33 cans) for around 25 cents per 12-ounce can.

There are several machine models to choose from. (The Genesis is shown here.) You can order the carbonators from the company and they also offer a CO₂  exchange.

This is a very practical product that makes sense if there are a number of people in your home who love seltzer, soda or other fizzy beverages.
http://www.sodastreamusa.com/

OOBA-licious

Hibiscus. Such an exquisite flower that there are quite few organizations dedicated to its honor—The American Hibiscus Society, the International Hibiscus Society, Fancy Hibiscus.com, exotic-hibiscus.com, among others. These elegant members of the Malvaceae family are lovely to look at.

And drink. We have Hibiscus tea, so why not a sparkling cold refreshing beverage just in time for the warmer weather? OOBA, an acronym for “One of Botany’s Advantages” (plus it’s fun to pronounce) is here. Choose from OOBA Hibiscus, Hibiscus & Orange and Hibiscus & Lime. There are no artificial colors or flavors and the passionate ruby color is from the extract of the Hibiscus flower, hibiscus Sabdariffa. The flowers are hand-harvested from around the world and shipped to California where it is made into a rich extract and then combined with pure water, sweetened and then gently carbonated.

If you prefer an even lighter beverage, add some selzer or for a twist on the spritzer, try a splash of wine. Or go to http://www.oobabeverage.com for some interesting drink variations.

And it might be very good for you. Take a look at the article Hibiscus Tea May Cut Blood Pressure, published by WebMD last November,

http://www.webmd.com/heart/news/20081110/hibiscus-tea-may-cut-blood-pressure

Antioxidant, Vitamin C, and Great Taste--- Cheers!

Teas As You Please, and Help Plant Trees

Honey Vanilla Chamomile, Mint Magic, Sweet Apple Chamomile, Tropic of Strawberry, Country Peach Passion, Bengal Spice.

Vanilla Strawberry Rose, Perfectly Pear White Tea, Powerfully Plum White Tea, Chocolate Raspberry Bliss, Almond Sunset Dessert Tea, English Toffee, India Spice Chai, Decaf Sweet Coconut Thai Chai, Honey Vanilla White Chai…..These are just some of the tantalizing 90 tea concoctions from Celestial Seasonings.

So many varieties--An actual blend master, Charlie Baden, oversees the development of new blends. And every one of them is a box full of the promise of a satisfying, tantalizing aroma and taste all infused into a health-full beverage—herbal or not. Even the packaging is delightfully inspiring. Celestial’s bestselling tea in the entire specialty tea category is Sleepytime. Says a company spokesperson: “People can’t get enough of the tea and the Sleepytime bear!”

Celestial Seasonings earth-friendly approach to making tea includes a focus on sustainable harvests, ethical trade practices and minimal packaging, which saves more than 3.5 million pounds of waste from entering landfills annually.

All this is great but add a little something for the environment and you have the perfect blend of personal enjoyment and responsibility. By simply purchasing tea or clicking on a mouse, Celestial Seasonings tea drinkers can support the planting of trees in developing countries and help promote environmental and economic sustainability around the world. Celestial has partnered with the non-profit Trees for the Future to support the planting of more than one million trees in developing countries. These trees promote economic and environmental sustainability in nations where it is desperately needed.

If you love tea and respect the environment, all you have to do is purchase Celestial’s all-natural teas between now and March 31, 2009. You can also visit www.celestialseasonings.com/trees, where can participate in a free, interactive, Web program that turns “virtual trees” into reality.

There are regional favorites and so many varieties that even some very good things must come to an end so on their website is a page --
http://www.celestialseasonings.com/products/discontinued.html showing discontinued teas but also suggesting replacements for your retired favorites.

So sip and click.

Tea with Pizzazz

Here is a beverage that has the kick of soda but the benefits of tea—and flavors to delight. TeaZazz is a sparkling tea available in four varieties—Green Tea Lemon, Green Tea Mint, Peach and Original.

It has a dual personality-- mixer or a stand-alone refreshing soft drink.

Also nice is that each bottle contains 2.5 servings, 20 to 25 calories and 6g or less total carbs.

Teazazz the company was founded about two years ago in California by two enterprising women who merged their business backgrounds and experiences in the entertainment and pharmaceutical industries to create a healthier beverage that was fun to drink.

Suggested retail price for a 20 oz bottle is $1.69 As of this writing it is available on the West Coast or by ordering online at www.drinkteazazz.com

Kaffe, Café, Coffee

There is little else like that first waft of fresh coffee in the morning. There are many excellent coffee brands to choose from and many methods of preparation—drip, cone filter (Melitta) single-cup servers (Tassimo, Keurig, Senseo).

We will discuss the different methods of preparation later but first, there recently was some slightly jarring news from Colombia: Coffee consumption is starting to outpace coffee production.

What does that mean for consumers? Will we be paying more? Will there be fewer choices? Visit http://www.coffeeresearch.org/market/coffeemarket.htm for a bit of a primer on the coffee market:

"There are two markets for coffee: the cash market and the futures market. The cash market is the market today. It is the price you would pay for coffee today if you could receive it today. The futures market is used to help determine the price for future deliveries. It is used to purchase a contract today to guarantee a future shipment of coffee. More importantly, however, the futures market for commodities like coffee is used to help protect against the wild variations that occur due to coffee market speculation."

Now about the recent news, according to Bloomberg.com http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601013&sid=aXxEc.GuoUb4

"Oct. 20 (Bloomberg) -- The world coffee market will swing to a deficit of as much as 10 million bags next year from a surplus as demand growth outstrips production, said a growers group in Colombia, the third-biggest producer.
Global coffee output will exceed demand by 6-7 million bags this year as Brazil, the largest producer, is in the more productive phase of a two-year cycle, said Juan Lucas Restrepo, commercial manager at the National Federation of Coffee Growers of Colombia. Lower Brazilian output and demand growth of 2 percent next year will cause the shortfall, he added. A bag weighs 60 kilograms (132 pounds).
'Overall consumption is growing faster than production, and global inventories will decrease further next year,'' Restrepo said in an interview in Tokyo Oct. 17. ``Growth is not coming from mature markets but from emerging markets.'

When Colombia completes a tree replanting program, the amount of coffee hopefully will increase.