Tag: beverage

Price Points: Coffee subscriptions

Coffee subscriptions | H is for Home

Last week, we featured online tea offers; this week, it’s only fair to investigate a few coffee subscriptions available. We only drink one or two cups each per day, but we like them to be made using good quality beans. Favourite of ours are full-bodied espresso beans – and decaf espresso beans for evening consumption.

  1. Coffee-Direct: from £5.99 per 227 sample bag (save 15% when bought on subscription)
    Probably the one of the three that has the most choice – there are 16 different Espresso roast coffees alone! Coffee-Direct explain:

    At the checkout you have the option to choose to receive your order periodically, at any frequency that suits you. What’s more, once your subscription is set up, you’re able to amend, skip, pause or delete your subscription at any time.

  2. Coffee REAL: subscriptions – £36 – £328 (3, 6 or 12 month coffee subscriptions, 6 – 52 bags of beans)
    Coffee REAL is a company with a charitable heart. 10% of the purchase price of their espresso blend goes directly to the Born Free Foundation – and, even better, the blend is made from 2 top coffees that originate in areas where Born Free run wildlife projects.
  3. Skinny Coffee Club: from £24.95 (28 day, 8-week and 12-week day/night programmes)
    Well, I never knew that you could drink coffee in an effort to help you drop a dress size or two! According to their blurb:

    Skinny Coffee Club is ideal for those looking to lose weight, fast. It’s tasty, organic and designed specifically to raise your metabolism, burn fat, fill you with energy throughout the day and leave you feeling fuller for longer.

    There’s only 63mg of caffeine and 6 calories in each cup. Skinny Coffee is comprised of ground coffee, ground green coffee bean extract, green tea extract powder, Garcinia Cambogia, Siberian ginseng powder and spirulina powder. I’ve no idea how much like traditional coffee it tastes but there are thousands of reviews on their website posted by satisfied (slimmer) customers!

Price Points: Tea subscriptions

Tea subscriptions | H is for Home

Working from home, we drink a lot of hot beverages during the day – the kitchen is less than 10 paces away from where we sit at the computer. We tend to have one or two cups of coffee in the morning, then switch to loose leaf teas for the rest of the day.

We drink all sorts of tea – black, white, green – depending on the time of day or what we’re eating. I also cook with tea leaves occasionally.

We tend to buy our ‘everyday’ tea (Yorkshire Tea) at the supermarket, our ‘special everyday’ tea from Fortnum & Mason, our usual brand white tea from Amazon and green and jasmine teas from a Chinese supermarket in Manchester.

Tea subscriptions were made for people like us. We’re always up for trying new ones that you wouldn’t normally find in the supermarket. What kind of tea(s) do you drink?

  1. Teabox: from £39.70 for 3 months
  2. Silver Lantern tea: from £36 for 3 months
  3. Fortnum & Mason: from £45 for 3 months

Redcurrant cordial

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Bottle and glass of home-made redcurrant cordial | H is for Home

Our bumper crop of redcurrants from the allotment has so far gone into jelly and a tart.

bowl or redcurrants and jar of granulated sugar

Today I made a bottle of redcurrant cordial or vinbärssaft in Swedish (although when I ran the word through Google Translate it came up with ‘coleslaw’)!

redcurrants and granulated sugar in a jam pan

A kilo of fruit only made about 600ml of cordial. It felt like a bit of a waste, disposing of all that fruit pulp.

cooked and mashed redcurrants in a jam pan

But once I had that first taste, I felt that the profligacy was worth it.

straining cooked and mashed redcurrants in through a jelly bag

It was fruity, tart and sweet, all at the same time – almost like cranberry juice but not at all dry. It’s delicious simply mixed with iced sparkling water, but can also be incorporated into cocktail recipes… and a dash in a glass of champagne is wonderful too!

Bottle and glass of home-made redcurrant cordial | H is for Home

Redcurrant cordial

Print recipe Pin recipe
Course Drinks
Cuisine Scandinavian

Ingredients
  

  • 1 kg/2.2lbs redcurrants
  • 200 g/7oz granulated sugar

Instructions
 

  • Rinse & drain the de-stalked redcurrants in a colander
  • Put the redcurrants and sugar into a heavy-bottomed saucepan or jam pan
  • Put the pan over a medium heat and stir until the sugar dissolves completely
  • Using a wooden spoon or a potato masher, squash the fruit
  • Turn the heat up high and boil for about 5 minutes
  • Pour the redcurrants into a jelly bag and strain for about an hour
  • Decant into a sterilised 1 litre bottle
  • Once opened, keep refrigerated and consume within a week or two
Keyword cordial, redcurrants, vinbärssaft




Smooth Operator!

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Mixed fruit smoothie with lemon balm garnish | H is for Home
Since we’ve lost the facility to bake cakes, we’ve been replacing our usual dessert course with a nightly fruit smoothie. We’ve been doing a lot of experimenting and have discovered a few great combinations.

ingredients and equipment to make a mixed fruit smoothie

We put all the ingredients into a stainless steel jug and use a Philips ‘Billy’ blender to whiz the whole thing up in a jiffy! It’s much less of a faff to clean then if it’s done in a jug blender. And so much cheaper than if you buy it ready-made!

Just as delicious as a slab of cake, just a filling – but much friendlier on the waistline! Each recipe below makes two large glassfuls.

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