beverages

Thick hot chocolate, Italian style

Italian style thick hot chocolate
| Eva

Hot chocolate in Italy is serious business. Every café serves it and it’s always deliciously thick. Even if it’s made from a bag, you can always count on the fact that it’s thick. Lusciously thick. Even instant hot chocolate that you get at the grocery store, you make it at home and it’s thick. Italians like their hot chocolate thick. The level of thickness may vary, generally it is still runny enough to drink, but you may also get hot chocolate so thick you need to eat it with a spoon. Real thick hot chocolate.

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Grzane piwo, Polish mulled beer

Grzane piwo, Polish mulled beer
| Eva

Grzane piwo is a warm beer-based drink flavoured with honey, lemon and spices. Mulled beer, basically. It is commonly served during the winter as an alternative to the more common way of serving beer: ice cold. Winters in Poland can get pretty rigid, with temperatures dropping as low as -30°C on the coldest days of the year. On such days a cold beer is not always the best of options. Luckily you don’t need to give up your favourite drink only because of the temperature. You can make grzane piwo.
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Szarlotka, the Polish apple juice and vodka cocktail

| Eva

Szarlotka is the name of Polish apple pie. There is another item in Polish cuisine that goes by the same name and that features two of the same ingredients – apples and cinnamon. The third igredient is Żubrówka, probably the most famous Polish vodka out there, the one with a leaf of bison grass in the bottle. When szarlotka doesn’t refer to a pie, it is a drink, Poland’s favourite way of drinking Żubrówka when used as a cocktail ingredient and not enjoyed alone.

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Brown lemonade

brown sugar lemonade
| Eva

“Lemonade can’t be brown!” was the comment I got when I lay on the table a jug full of my newest lemonade. That, and a puzzled look on the face. “But it features muscovado sugar…”, was my reply. Indeed, the beverage looked more like a fancy attempt to revive old coca cola gone flat, rather than a regular lemonade. But why does lemonade have to be yellow? I mean, it can be pink, too, right? So why not brown? Again, it has awesome brown sugar in it! Continue reading →

London fog

| Eva

I discovered that Earl Grey tea with milk is called “London Fog” only a few months ago, when my friend Ania from Snowtoseas introduced it to me with that name. I’ve always been an appreciator of tea with milk, but never really delved into exploring the world of tea lattes much deeper. Apparently, I was missing out on a whole world of opportunities, London fog being one of them. After that moment, my tea with milk ritual got much more interesting. Continue reading →

Mulled wine, my kind of Christmas drink

| Eva

Mulled wine reminds me of home. It is the perfect drink to fight off the cold during an outdoor gathering in the winter. Like the one I used to attend back home every Christmas Eve. Every year, on the night of Christmas Eve, the whole village gathers in the church for midnight mass. After the service, people linger in front of the church and take their time to catch up with friends and wish one another a merry Christmas. To make this moment even more idyllic, kind volunteers hand around steaming cups of mulled wine and slices of panettone. Continue reading →

A cozy Sunday morning with hot chocolate

| Eva

It is that time of the year when the days are much shorter and the working days are much longer than usual. The Swedish town I live in lays at 60° North, so it does not feature the phenomenon of the polar night (when around the winter solstice the sun doesn’t come up over the horizon at all), but still experiences quite an interesting shortage of daylight hours compared to more southern locations at this time of the year. Continue reading →

Almond vanilla flavoured black tea

almond vanilla flavoured black tea
| Eva

Browsing the ever inspiring Pinterest, I recently stumbled upon vanilla ice and I really liked it. So I decided to try and make my own. The only difference being in the fact that I don’t own the classic ice cube tray, but make ice cubes in disposable ice cube bags instead. Heart-shaped ice cube bags. So I made my own almond vanilla hearts and the outcome was actually pretty cute. I really love vanilla – I love everything about vanilla – and these nice and fun ice cubes are the perfect way to make a boring black tea much more interesting. Continue reading →