Tag Archives: drinks

Spiced Apple Toddy

This is just a quick post today to help you through any chilly weather you might be experiencing. My kids call this “fancy cider”. Enjoy!

The current weather across much of the United States is cold and snowy right now. At my house, we have been battling rain and sand storms for the past week. I thought many of you might appreciate a warm treat, and this is one that you might already have the ingredients in your pantry. I’ve made many similar recipes, but this particular one is from the 1943 cookbook Double-Quick Cooking for Part-time Homemakers by Ida Bailey Allen.

Notes:

I’ve also used packaged cider mix combined with water, cloves, and lemon juice to make “fancy cider”. This works fine. It just isn’t as attractive as using the lemon slices. It’s a great option, though, when it’s cold outside and you don’t want to leave the house to buy a lemon.

Spiced Apple Toddy

Ingredients


4 c sweet cider or apple juice
1/2 tsp whole cloves
1 lemon

Directions


Heat cider, cloves, and half the lemon sliced to a boil. Strain into cups, and serve with thin slices of fresh lemon, each stuck with two cloves.

Summer Drinks: Cranberry Pineapple Ale

This cranberry pineapple drink hit the spot after a long hot day. It’s also a very pretty drink to serve in a clear glass pitcher. The weather was pleasant this evening and I took my glass onto the patio to enjoy outdoors.

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In my last post, I mentioned that the 1944 edition of The Good Housekeeping Cook Book had a terrific drink section. There was not just a varied selection of beverages, there were also helpful tips for the WWII home front housewife. Today’s drink was listed under fruit drinks, and there was a reminder that fruit drinks were a great way to get part of the daily two quarts of liquid suggested to maintain health in the 1940s.

Cookbooks from this time were interesting because they often needed to address kitchen appliances that were both very modern and more old-fashioned. A discussion about ice is a good example of this. In the mid-1930s, many people were switching to electric refrigerators that were finally more affordable than before. During WWII, factories stopped production of non-essential goods, but large numbers of people had electric refrigerators in their kitchens. The Good Housekeeping Cook Book includes advice to housewives with both electric and ice refrigeration since there were still too many families with ice refrigerators to leave that information out of the 1944 edition.

The home front housewife was also warned that warm weather and party seasons put a strain on a home’s ice supply. Thank goodness there were ice-making plants that could provide crystal clear ice in a variety of styles if the housewife was a smart planner and ordered ahead! This ice would come carefully delivered in a container and ready to use when needed.

A well-stocked cupboard insured the home front housewife could stir up a variety of refreshing beverages. Suggestions for canned or bottled items to keep in stock included fruit juices, tomato juice, vegetable juice, ginger ale, carbonated water, and colas. Fresh fruits like limes, lemons, and oranges were great to have on hand.

I find the idea of having a stocked drink cupboard appealing. None of the recipes I’m including on my blog are difficult or time-consuming to make, and they are much more fun than the beverages typically served in our home. All of my kids have enjoyed the new drinks this past week, My one-year-old loved today’s cranberry pineapple ale.

I love that this cookbook, even though it is filled with quaint advice, can also provide us with good ideas and tasty recipes 74 years later.

Cranberry Pineapple Ale

1 pint cranberry juice cocktail

2 1/4 c. pineapple juice

1 1/2 c. pale dry ginger ale

ice

Combine juices and ginger ale and serve over ice. Enjoy!

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Summer Drinks: Grape Rickey

The Good Housekeeping Cook Book has a wonderful drinks chapter. I think it’s my favorite out of all of the early 1940s cookbooks I own. It’s 21 pages of recipes ranging from hot chocolate to spiced fruit punch to chocolate banana milkshakes. In addition to the recipes, there are tips for making different types of beverages, including how to make the perfect pot of coffee and the perfect cup of tea. There are suggestions to help the drink maker extract juices from fruits to add to the recipes and helpful hints on how to deal with rationing and shortages.

I love this chapter so much that I’m going to add a few more drinks this week, then revisit it when the weather gets colder.

This Grape Rickey is another great summertime drink. It’s more tart than sweet and is incredibly refreshing. Since it is still over 100° here every day, drinks like this are a welcome addition to an afternoon snack.

Grape Rickey

4 c. grape juice

6 tbsp fresh lime juice

2 tbsp powdered sugar

3 1/1 c. carbonated water

ice

Combine the fruit juices and stir. Add the carbonated water. Our pitcher wasn’t large enough to add the ice directly to the mixture, so we added it to glasses. You could also add it to the pitcher before serving. It makes about 7 3/4 cups before the ice is added. This was enough to serve generous sized drinks to 6 people with enough for some of us to have refills.

If you are interested in more summer drinks, you might like a Ginger Cream or a Frosted Chocolate Soda.

 

 

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