Horrid Breakfast Drink

This is my breakfast most days, especially workdays when I wake up as late as possible and chug this stuff with all my old-man pills on the drive to work. It's more like medicine than food. Not recommended, but it does its job.

Ingredients

• 2 heaping scoops vanilla flavored powdered whey protein
• 1 heaping teaspoon ground flax meal
• filtered water
• hot water
• 1 heaping teaspoon raw powdered cacao (cocoa powder, but fancy)
• 2 heaping teaspoon ends matcha powder (yes, the handle of a teaspoon)
• some ice cubes
• maple syrup (very optional, and not recommended)

Equipment

• regular old teaspoon
• 27 oz. Klean Kanteen
• glass or mug

1. Dump whey powder and flax meal into the Klean Kanteen (or other similarly sized, sealable, non-reactive container).
2. Fill container less than halfway with filtered water, seal, and shake hard.
3. Dump matcha powder and cacao powder into mug/glass of hot water and stir.
4. Add hot water mixture to container (along with maple syrup if you want this to be palatable, but don't mind loosing out on the supposed weight loss benefit of 30 grams of protein within 30 minutes of waking).
5. Add enough ice cubes to raise water level to just below the neck of the container.
6. Seal and agitate some more.
7. Heaven help you.

At one point I was adding the Nativas superfood blend of hemp, maca, and cacao (thanks to a price mix-up at Wholefoods), but it made my mouth raw. I suspect the hemp, but would have to try it or the maca separately to be sure. I plan on adding freeze dried nettle leaf to the mix next time we do a bulk order from Frontier.

24 Hour Ginger Beer

Jami makes this ginger beer recipe every once in a while. It is quite good, though shown somewhat inconsistent appreciation by those outside our intimate circle of two. Last night we introduced it to some dear friends who actually liked it, so I'm posting this for their sake. I believe she got the recipe from Martha Stewart, but I won't swear to it. All I know is that it's not our creation.

Ingredients

• 2 lbs fresh ginger root
• 2 quarts boiling water
• sugar to taste
• soda water (optional)

1. Peel and grate the ginger. Grating can be done in a food processor or with a coarse cheese grater.
2. Place the grated ginger in a non reactive bowl (that means glass or ceramic), and pour the boiling water over it.
3. Loosely cover the bowl with foil for twenty-four hours. You want air to get in, but nothing to drop out of the sky into your drink.
4. After twenty-four hours strain out the grated ginger and compost it.

5. Refrigerate then sweeten to taste. Cut the ginger beer with soda water if you need to. I usually need to.