honey lemon ginger drink, originally uploaded by mintyfresh.

It’s cold season at our house (I should really invest in Kleenex stock right now) and one of our tried + true ways of coping with the sheer yuckiness and exhaustion is drinking lots of this lemon ginger tonic.

You can make it at home with just a few ingredients – and for us these are things that we constantly have laying around.

Lemon Syrup
4 – 6 Meyer lemons (regular lemons will do if you can’t find Meyers)
2 cups sugar
4 cups water

My meyer lemon syrup is a side effect of homemade candied meyer lemon peel but if you want to skip the candy and go straight for the simple syrup, simply wash and peel the lemons. Add lemon peels and 4 cups water to a saucepan and cook over medium-high until mixture is boiling. Strain, reserving one cup of the liquid. Set lemon peels aside.

Add two cups sugar and reserved liquid to saucepan. Stir over medium-high heat until the sugar is dissolved. Add lemon peels to the mixture and simmer for 5 minutes.

Remove peels and pour syrup into a mason jar to cool (you should have about 2 cups).

This will keep, tightly sealed, in your fridge for about a month.

Ginger Drink
3 – 4 inches of fresh ginger, finely sliced
6 cups water

Wash and slice the ginger – you can leave the peel on for this recipe. Add slices and water to a saucepan. Bring to a boil over high heat and simmer, uncovered for 45 minutes – 1 hour. Strain out the ginger pieces.

To serve, add 2 tbsp lemon syrup, 1 tbsp honey to a mug. Top off with ginger drink and voila! You will feel better.

If you REALLY want this drink to pack a punch, add a shot of rum. You’ll be ready for another nap in no time.

batonnettes, juliennes, dice, originally uploaded by mintyfresh.

while I’m willing to say I’m a pretty reasonable home cook I’ve been wanting to improve my skills for years and have been taking courses here and there as interesting ones came up.

last night was my long awaited knife skills class. Somewhat shockingly, I was the only student who already knew how to hold a knife. I was stunned, since I thought that EVERYBODY knew what a choke grip was.

Clearly I watch too much food network.

We diced, julienned, chopped, segmented, and chiffonaded all sorts of edible items and then smashed garlic into a delicious, delicious pulp.

This class was a great refresher for some skills I already had a good handle on, but most of all it was an important lesson in knife placement and motions. I loved it!

IMG_5797, originally uploaded by mintyfresh.

My friend dwayne was in town this weekend for a visit and we spent much of it wandering around the city despite the less than balmy temperatures.

We had some great chats, ate delicious food, visited the Big Bang, and stopped to capture all kinds of photos in alleys, on mountains, and places in between.