Food 52 gives 11 recipes for a Cinco de Mayo Fiesta.

House to Haus gives New York-style Coffee Cake.

Food 52′s got seven winter cocktails.

Serious Eats ‘splains Sun Tea (forget the sun).

That cool, refreshing drink.

Saveur gives us lemon shake ups.

[Photo Credit: Food Addict]

Paying for water, well it’s just something some folks can’t abide. I get that though I buy bottled water all the time. Don’t touch Evian, the taste doesn’t agree with me at all. Poland Spring does the trick but my favorite bottled water–snot that I am–is Fiji. What’s your go-to brand, if n you’ve got one.

If I was at the game today this here’d be my beverage of cherce.

A root beer float is a good thing. Cream soda float would work too.

[Photo Credit: The Improvised Life]

I support this product.

I never got into Yoo Hoo and as a kid that was upsetting to me because the name was so appealing.

[Photo Credit: LMF RNF]

Serious Eats offers seven ways to spike your hot chocolate.

[Photo Via Dizzy Dee]

[Photo Credit: The Quest for the Perfect Ginger Ale]

More gift ideas. If you like black tea, orange pekoe is the way to go. Either of these brands of loose tea will do you right.

This is my favorite Ginger Ale–the grown up soda. What brand do you prefer?

Last week I told Ted Berg that I really like Mexican Coke and he challenged me to take a taste test to see if I’m just being a sucker. I’m going to take the test (and I’ll let you know the results) but the good folks at Serious Eats have beaten me to it:

Those folks who prefer Mexican Coke (like myself), really just like the idea of Mexican Coke—whether it’s because they think real sugar is tastier/healthier than corn syrup, whether it’s because Mexican Coke is more expensive and harder to find, thus more valuable, whether it’s because of its exoticism, whatever the reason—strip away the Mexicanness of it, and suddenly it’s a lot less appealing.

Which is what Ted was getting at to start with.

Summer is over but it’s not too late for this story by Allison Glock on the wonders of sweet tea (from the terrific Garden and Gun Magazine):

When you drink sweet tea, your body starts to pump out insulin like water from a fire hose. Then, you have the caffeine. Which stimulates your adrenaline. Which confuses your metabolism. And keeps you from feeling sated, as one normally would after swallowing that much sweetness. Only a select few can eat seven pieces of cheesecake at a sitting, for example. But nearly everyone I know nods and says, “Just one more” when the lunch lady comes around toting the clear pitcher with the rubber band snapped around the handle. Say what you will, but sweet tea is the real hillbilly heroin.

To say Southerners drink sweet tea like water is both true and not. True because the beverage is served at every meal, and all times and venues in between—at church and at strip clubs, at preschool and in nursing homes. Not true because unlike water or wine or even Coca-Cola, sweet tea means something. It is a tell, a tradition. Sweet tea isn’t a drink, really. It’s culture in a glass. Like Guinness in Ireland. Or ouzo in Greece.

(When I was stuck in New York for a stint, a bout of homesickness led me to get the words sweet tea tattooed on my left arm. I could think of nothing else that so perfectly encapsulated the South of my pining. Now that I have moved home, it serves less as a touchstone and more as a drink order.)

Theories abound: Southerners prefer sweet tea because back in the day we used sugar as a preservative and our palates grew to crave the taste. Southerners like sweet tea because it is served ice cold and it is hot as biscuits down here. Southerners like sweet tea because we are largely descended from Celts and Brits, making a yearning for tea a genetic imperative. Southerners like sweet tea because Southerners are poor and tea is cheap. (Cheaper than beer anyway.) Southerners like sweet tea because it is nonalcoholic but it still gives you a hearty, if somewhat diabolical, buzz.

[Photo Credit: WelchOK.com]

Hey, if the price is right.

“I really don’t like it myself but I like it because other people don’t like it.” —Kool Keith.

Makes sense to me.

A cool drink.

Anyone been to the New Amsterdam Market? I haven’t but just read about it at a cool food blog, La Buena Vida. Looks like it’s worth the trip.