Warm Spiced Milk

Adapted from The Family Kitchen.  I served this instead of hot chocolate this morning for our decorating the tree treat (with cinnamon rolls!).

• 4 cups milk
• 1 teaspoon cinnamon
• 1 teaspoon ground ginger
• 1/4 teaspoon ground cloves
• 1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1/4 cup sugar
• 1 teaspoon orange zest

I nuked the milk for about 3 minutes, added all the ingredients, tasted and adjusted spices, then finished heating until warmed just right.  My kids would’ve been thrilled with the same amount of sugar and half the rest of the spices, but they liked it enough to drink it all up.

Super Easy Cinnamon Apple Cider

I saw this recipe on The Family Kitchen and we loved it. Nathan and I thought it would be a fun treat from the kids, so we were pretty shocked that it tasted as good as it did.

Add 1 container frozen apple juice, the required water (usually 3 cans) and 1/4 – 1/3 cup of Red Hot candies.  Simmer until the candy dissolves and the juice is steaming. (The original recipe called for 1 movie sized box of red hots, or 1/3 cup (more than a full box) but we thought that 1/4 cup was just perfect.)

strawberry lemonade

(I came looking for this recipe and found I posted it on my main blog, not here, so here is a reprint from over there, from last June)

Cold blender drinks and smoothies are some of my very favorite things. The boys and I usually make a smoothie a day for snacks, and when it’s hot we love getting out the VitaMix again for ice cream, smoothies, whatever. Yum, yum, yum. I figured out the best ever strawberry-lemonade slush last week. The one at Carraba’s is close to perfect – a tad too sweet for me. This one is cold, sweet, a tad tart, slushy – my mouth is watering right now.

1 pound fresh strawberries, halved
3/4 cup sugar
1 cup water
3/4 cup lemon juice
2 cups ice cubes