Red Hots Apple Cider

I have this need to smell cinnamon all the time around these months, lol. Also, I still have some more Red Hots in a secret stash (my aunt sends candy in bulk) that Marguerite doesn't know about. If I don't do something about them, they just might still be around when cockroaches take over the world. Anyway, had apple juice as well, so why not some apple cider?

I thought it was a nice ruby red, but it lacked embellishment, hence... topped with whipped cream:

That still wasn't enough, so I added twigs of cinnamon pretzels and sprinkles of chocolate shavings. You can see it here.

Strawberry Wine from Baguio

Lookit! My cousin Cheska gave this to me when she got back from Baguio. It's strawberry wine. It may look harmless, like wine cooler or something like shandy, but it did daze me, lol. Probably because I treated it like a bottle of soda. It did leave the impression of being part strawberry syrup, part wine and mostly pink food color. :)

Non-powdered Spiced Tea

Obviously, I couldn't get a good picture of this thing. A little girl kept on trying to snatch the glass. That's spiced tea, btw. It's my variation of the usual spiced tea mix. We don't have powdered drinks here (except for Husband's ever present Nestea), so I didn't have the Tang or the powdered lemonade. What I did basically was just to brew lemon tea. I then added natural orange juice, muscovado sugar (sorry, I didn't measure - just kept on adding until just right), ground cinnamon, nutmeg, and cloves. Since my allergies were acting up yesterday, I heated a mug up so I could drink mine hot. And no, I didn't give Marguerite tea. She was able to sneak in a sip and seemed to like it, but I gave her plain orange juice and she accepted the trade without any fuss.

Cucumber Shake, Tilapia Mushroom Dinner

I had a cucumber that would start rotting away if I didn't make something out of it (and we can't have that; wasting food is tantamount to a mortal sin around here), so I ended up making a cucumber shake. Peeled and cut up the cucumber. Tossed it in the blender which already had 1/4 C brown sugar and 1 C fresh milk. Added a tray and a half of ice cubes, covered the blender and pressed the button. LOL. No wonder I didn't get that gig writing recipes!

For dinner, thawed frozen tilapia and cooked it with mushrooms, tomato, and olives.

2 two teaspoons of olive oil
3 cloves of garlic, minced
1 can (about 200 g) mushrooms, drained
1/4 cup pitted green olives with juice, quartered
1 green tomato (other types would work, but this is what I had)
a sprinkling of dried Italian herbs
a sprinkling of dried basil
tilapia (it was probably 4 filets, but I ended up tearing the things up)
salt and black pepper

Heat 2 teaspoons olive oil in skillet over medium heat. Add garlic and mushrooms. Cook about 5 minutes. Add olives (plus juice), tomato and
herbs and cook until juice evaporates. Remove from heat.

In another pan, heat remaining 2 teaspoons olive oil. Rub the tilapia with the salt and pepper seasoning. Cook tilapia for about five minutes, turning halfway. Add fish to the vegetables and warm the entire thing before serving with rice.