Strawberry Mojito Mocktail

If you're like me and don't drink much alcohol, this is a delicious and refreshing drink for a warm summer day. It's not summer yet here in NYC, but the sunshine has me in a summer mood! I love the flavors of a mojito, and the recipe can be easily adapted to incorporate almost any type of fruitor fruit juice. Berries are my favorite, because they are easily muddled with the mint and lime.

Ingredients:
10 strawberries, halved
2 limes, quartered
handful of mint leaves
1 quart seltzer water or sparkling water
1 cup simple syrup (see recipe at bottom of post)

In a large pitcher, add the strawberry halves and mint leaves. Squeeze the lime slices and drop them in as well. Use the back end of a wooden spoon to muddle (mash together) the mint, lime and strawberries. This helps the flavors and juices to come out of them. Add the simple syrup and stir to combine. Finally, pour in the seltzer water. To serve, pour over a glass with a few ice cubes. Enjoy!

Simple syrup:
1 cup water
1 cup sugar

Add the sugar and water to a small saucepan. Heat over a medium flame and stir continually until it begins to boil and the sugar has dissolved. Remove from heat and allow to cool completely. You may refrigerate it if you will be adding it to cold drinks.

Homemade Apple Cider

It's almost apple season! This is one of the things I am grateful for being back In New York for. New York State apples are delicious, fresh, and in abundance this time of year, so I usually like to put them to use in baking. For some reason, I have been craving some ice cold apple cider this year, and as it is not quite yet fall, apple cider is impossible to find in the supermarkets in New York City. So what did I do? I researched and made my own! It turned out to be super easy and most importantly, amazingly delicious and fresh!

Ingredients:
2 pounds of fresh apples (makes ~4 cups of apple cider)

You will also need:
Cheesecloth
Food processor

Note: Different varieties of apples make slightly different flavored apple cider. If you prefer a more tart cider, add in one or two tart apples, such as the Granny Smith variety. The sweeter apple varieties are Red Delicious, Gala, and Fuji. Mix and match until you find the flavor that suits you!

Method:
Wash and roughly chop the apples into 1-2 inch cubes. Remove any core, stems, and seeds, but leave the skin on. Also remove any spots that look brown or discolored. Pulse the apple pieces in the food processor until they are chopped finely, and then blend until it is almost pureed. Put a double layer of cheesecloth over a clean medium-sized bowl. Pour the pureed apple into the cloth, and then continue processing the rest of the apple pieces. Once there is a good amount of pureed apple in the cheesecloth, twist the edge of the cloth together and squeeze out the juice, being careful not to let any of the pulp through. Discard the pulp and repeat with the rest of the apple puree. You may run the end product cider through a fresh piece of cheesecloth once more to make sure it is fully smooth, if you wish.

Apple pulp in the cheesecloth, ready to be squeezed.

You may then heat the apple cider over the stove to ~160F to pasteurize it (will make it last longer, up to a week). However, we have always finished my apple cider within 2 days so I have always skipped this step.

Store the apple cider in an airtight container in the refrigerator, Enjoy!

Nutritional tidbits:
Apples are known for being a healthy fruit ("an apple a day keeps the doctor away"), but why is that? First of all, apples have plenty of fiber, which help to prevent atherosclerosis, as well as provide bulk to keep waste moving in the intestinal tract. Apples also contain many vitamins and minerals, such as vitamin C, A, potassium, and folate (a B vitamin). Be sure to eat the apple with its skin, as that is where much of the vitamin content is located.