Iced Green Tea

Iced green tea

I debated about making this a blog post, mostly because it's so easy, I feel like I'm cheating. But then again, sometimes you just need to have your a-ha moment and I had mine last weekend.

I love/hate Starbucks. 

I love Starbucks because they make drinks that are too elaborate for me to make at home. I hate Starbucks because of how expensive it is. And that it's been made into a verb. Starbucksing hurts my ears.

Anyway, my favourite drinks at Starbucks are mostly revolving around tea.

There's the soy earl grey tea latte with sugar free vanilla syrup. (When it's cold)

And in the summer, nothing NOTHING is better than a nice iced tea from Starbucks.

I don't always get the same thing, as I like to experiment with the different teas/syrups Starbucks has.

If I want something fruity, I get an iced passion tea. If I want something sweet, I get an iced raspberry black tea lemonade. Those are a treat though as they are quite sweet.

Most recently, I've been partial to iced green tea.

Not just iced green tea. Venti iced green tea, half sweet, light ice.

After getting 3 of these suckers in 2 days, I decided I would not fall victim to paying $3.00 for tea. That's like, the rules of feminism.

So, I went home and made my own batch of iced green tea and let me tell you, it tasted EXACTLY like the ones I got at Starbucks. Probably because I used the same tea. Whatever, I'm still proud of my discovery.

Since making it, I've been thinking of all the possibilities this brings forth. Green tea with frozen raspberries? YUM. Iced green tea with lemon and orange slices? YUM!

Anyway, here's how I did it.

I used my coffee maker because I don't have a kettle. I know. I'm poor, it's fine. I do things the cracker jack way.

First, I THOROUGHLY rinsed my coffee pot and the basket where the coffee grinds go and brewed just water a few times to get as much coffee taste out of the machine so the water used for the tea wouldn't have a weird coffee aftertaste.

Then I put two Tazo Zen green tea bags right into my coffee pot with the string/tab hanging out so I could easily grab them and take the bags out.

I brewed about 8 cups of water into the coffeepot and steeped the tea for like five minutes. 

I know. This process is pretty technical and complicated.

While the tea was brewing/steeping, I heated up 3/4 cup water and 3/4 cup sugar together to make simple syrup. I felt like this made my tea pretty sweet so you might want to just use 1/3 cup each or 1/2 cup. As long as they are equal amounts. I heated it on medium/low heat while stirring until all the sugar was melted and mixed in with the water. Didn't take long at all.

When the tea was done steeping (I just waited until it looked the same colour as what I get in my Starbucks cup), I added a few ice cubes into it and the simple syrup because I wanted to try it right away.

That barely cooled it down, so into the fridge it went.

I'm pretty impatient, so after a half hour or so, I filled a glass full of ice and poured myself a glass of my homemade iced green tea and let me tell you. It. Was. Refreshing.

I can't believe I've written this much about iced green tea.

OK cost wise, as this is a BUDGET friendly blog, an 8 cup batch cost me about $1.

One. Dollar. For. Eight. Cups.

So, for a venti size of this, I'm looking at about $0.33.

I can't even deal with these savings. Actually, I can't deal with how I've been paying like 100 times that at Starbucks when I could have easily been making it at home.

Shame on me.

Anyway, here are the benefits of drinking green tea, if you needed any more convincing other than how delicious this concoction is.

Homemade Larabars

Larabars

This is something I wish I had done A LONG LONG TIME AGO! I found myself at Safeway the other night and stumbled upon Larabars. I'd had them before and decided to buy a box as a treat to myself.

Well. I got home, ripped one open, took a big bite and looked at the wrapper to see what exactly what was in them.

This is what it said: Pitted dates, Peanuts, Peanut butter.

I almost cried. That's all that's in them? Why am I paying $10 A BOX FOR THESE BABIES?

I was pretty furious.

So the next day I set out to figure out how to make my own larabars, and I have to say, I like them BETTER than the ones I paid $2 a bar for at the store. 

Maybe because I added chocolate.

I found this base recipe and decided to expand on it since I don't like to copy other recipes exactly and like putting my own twist on things.

Anyway. What happened that night was pretty magical. Here's how you do it.

Ingredients:

1 cup pitted dates (I think I got prunes, it still worked)

1/2 cup shredded coconut

1/4 cup dry roasted peanuts (they were salted)

1 tbsp. chocolate chips

1 tbsp coconut oil (This is why I use it in everything)

1/4 cup peanut butter

1/2 tsp vanilla

Steps:

1) Assemble your ingredients.

2) Dump it all in a blender/food processor. (I used a blender and think it might have been way easier and faster to use a processor, but it worked nonetheless.)

3) Pulse, blend, do whatever until it looks a bit gooey. There will still be some bits of chocolate and dates/prunes that aren't blended, but that's ok.

4) Press mixture into a loaf pan lined with parchment paper.

5) OPTIONAL: Melt some extra chocolate chips and drizzle on top and top with extra coconut. But that's only for the overachievers.

6) Pop into the refrigerator until they firm up a bit. 

7) Cut into pieces and try to not eat them ALL AT ONCE!

These are gluten free, dairy free (If you omit chocolate) and seriously so so so so delicious.

There are lots of variations, so you can add whichever nut, nut butter, or anything else. I've also seen people use oatmeal instead of coconut. Whatever, I'm sure that's delicious too.

I think I will be trying a coconut mocha one soon, so stay posted for that.

Cost was under $5 for all ingredients and I have enough left over to make a second batch, so less than $2.50 for six bars is something I can live with for sure.

As far as nutritional information, these babies have around 215 calories each.

UPDATE: Since this post, I've made these bars another time. I chopped up all the dates first in my blender then blended everything together in two batches. Does that make sense? Anyway, it was a lot easier to get everything integrated, although I do not mind that these aren't perfectly smooth. A bit of crunch is always good for a snack food and these have been eaten faster than those I actually purchased.