Drinks Recipes For Springtime

Would you like to have some drinks recipes for for some special occasion? For a springtime drink, that gives you a boost of fruity goodness check out Spring fever or tries a delicious peach and strawberry burst smoothie sure to brighten any day.

Spring Fever

For Spring fever, you will need the following ingredients

Ingredients

- 3/4 oz lemon juice

- 3/4 oz mango syrup

- 1 1/2 oz apple juice

- 2 oz blood orange juice

Directions

Pour ingredients into a cocktail shaker with ice or into a sealable cup if you do not have a cocktail shaker. Shake well and then strain into a glass with some crushed ice.

Mango syrup

Love mango? Here's a recipe for you:

Ingredients

1 cup fruit

3/4 cup sugar

1/3 cup water

Directions

Combine fruit, sugar and water and cook until thick smashing the fruit while cooking
For a thinner consistence strain and for thicker syrup process the cooked syrup using a food processor.

Peach and Strawberry Burst Smoothie

A smoothie is a blended, chilled, sweet beverage made from fresh fruit which is blended with crushed ice or frozen yogurt. They do taste like milkshake but unlike milkshakes, they do not usually contain milk or ice-cream. Smoothies are a favorite drinks to people who are health-conscious.

Ingredients

1 fresh peach

1 handful of strawberries (approx 7)

1 small glass of orange juice

4 ice cubes

Ingredients

Wash the strawberries and chop them in half. Peel the peach, take out the stone and chop it into about eight. Put the orange juice, peach and strawberries into a blender and blend until there are only small lumps. Now add the ice cubes and blend until the mixture has no lumps. Now put into a glass with two straws and enjoy!

Finally, summer time would not be summer without lemonade here is a great recipe for an old summer time favorite.

Lemonade

Lemonade is a drink enjoyed year round, but mainly during the summer time. The ingredients typically consist of lemon juice, water and sugar. Depending on your taste, the lemonade can be very concentrated or diluted. The drink can be made from fresh lemons, frozen concentrate, or powdered mixes. For this recipe, we will just use lemon juice.

Ingredients

Starting proportions should be a 1 to 1 ratio.

1-cup sugar

1-cup water

1 cup lemon juice.

This proportion can be really sweet so reduce the sugar to taste.

Make sugar syrup by dissolving the sugar into hot water. This keeps the sugar in the lemonade instead of in the bottom of the container.

Heat sugar and water in a saucepan until sugar is dissolved then add lemon juice. Take off the heat add to a pitcher and add 4 cups cold water approximately. Refrigerate 30-40 minutes.

Couples Diet - 5 Pointers For Food And Drinks

If you and your partner want to lose weight together, there is nothing better than going on a couples diet. A diet for couples is more effective than each of you going on different diets separately. It gets even worse if you see your partner eat fattening food while you try to lose weight. How would you feel it you were trying to cut down on sweets and then see your partner munching on a chocolate bar in front of you?

You can start a couples diet by planning a menu for two. There are some types of food and drinks that you should get at the grocery or a health food store that will enhance your weight loss plan. Don't presume that diet food is supposed to taste bad. You can still enjoy eating healthy food if you know how to choose what to pick up at the grocery store. Here are tips about food and drinks when going on a couples diet:

1. Water is the healthiest beverage you can drink whether you are on a diet or not. Start your day with a glass of water. Have some too before each meal to decrease your hunger pangs and appetite. Have some more during your meal, and end the night with more water.

2. Switch from flavored and carbonated drinks to fresh fruit juice. Many fizzy drinks like soda, carbonated and flavored water are actually full of sugar which become calories. These are fattening when you take too much of these drinks. Soda can be addictive, so try to cut the soda habit and replacing it with healthier fruit juice.

3. Now that we are talking about fruit juice, it is better to make your own with a juicer or buy commercial fruit juices that don't have any sweeteners or additives. Choose fruits that have a lot of fiber content and vitamins like pineapples or oranges. You can also add some vegetables to your fruit juice like liquefied carrots. Carrots are also able to fight diseases like cancer.

4. Eat a lot of fresh fruits that are high in fiber instead of snacking on potato chips or chocolates. Pineapples, apples, grapes and berries are good choices. Watermelon has a lot of liquid content which is also good. Grapes and berries contain a lot of antioxidants. There are also other kinds of food that are high in fiber like bran cereals, legumes, peas, barley, rye, and soybeans.

5. Vegetables should also be a part of your diet menu. Start with broccoli, carrots, cauliflowers, celery, zucchini and tomatoes. Vegetables will also help you lose weight aside from making you more healthy. Green leafy vegetable are better choices although green salads are also good. When eating salad during a couples diet, get fat-free dressing.

Although you may be eating salad, you may not be conscious that the bacon and dressing in your salad could be fattening. Gravy also uses butter and dairy products than can make you gain weight. Look for a list of foods and drinks for your couples diet and find more recipes that will be healthy but delicious.

Fast Food and Obesity Are Inextricably Linked

If you have been paying any attention at all to the ongoing health care debate, you know a large part of that debate is over what preventative measures can and should be taken by everyone to take responsibility for their personal health and stay out of the doctor's offices and hospital emergency rooms in the first place.

A large part of this prevention debate as centered on the very scary childhood obesity statistics and the undeniable link between eating too much fast food and the rise of obesity rates in children.

What follows here is a pretty eye opening comparison of some fast food nutrition information along with the current USDA recommended daily calorie intake for children of different ages.

This table provides the recommended daily calorie intake for children based on both age and level of physical activity. To the USDA, for a child to qualify as "active" they must be doing an amount of physical exercise equal to walking three miles daily at 3 to 4 miles an hour as well as the light physical activity of daily life.

• Boys ages 4-8 and active 2,000; if sedentary 1,400
• Girls ages 4-8 and active 1,400; if sedentary 1,000
• Boys ages 14-18 and active 3,200; if sedentary 2,200
• Girls ages 14-18 and active 2,400; if sedentary 1,800

Now, compare the above table with the following information from a popular fast food chain's nutritional website regarding a meal consisting of a double cheeseburger, medium fries, and a medium drink. Such a meal will put into your child's body:

• 1, 400 calories
• 62 grams of fat
• 186 grams of carbohydrates

Please note that this meal offers the "medium" French fries and drink. If you "supersize" the fries and drink, the totals are even scarier.

When you look at these two sets of numbers and then take into account that our children are getting less physical activity than ever before because of changes in the school curriculum doing away with recess and the amount of time spent in front of computers or television at home, some of the reasons for childhood obesity become very clear.

I do not mean to demonize fast food here, as an every now and then treat there isn't thing wrong with them. The problem with fast food starts when we begin to rely on their menus as an everyday source of meals.

On the positive side of things, there are many studies show that children in households that promote both healthy food choices and sensible diets that do not rely so much on processed foods and the fast food outlets have a much improved chances to maintain these habits throughout their lifetime.

Of course, kids being kids, promoting healthy food choices at home will be much easier if you have something to substitute for the fast food treats and for that I recommend fruit or vegetable smoothies in their many forms as a staple of a healthy diet for years to come.

Healthy smoothies can be made from any number of fresh and/or frozen fruit with very few calories, fat, and carbohydrates. For example, a 16 oz fruit smoothie recipe using strawberries, bananas and low-fat yogurt will come in at around 530 calories, less than 3 grams fat, and 98 grams carbohydrates. Plus, you will have the added benefit of the nutritional value of the fruit in terms of vitamins and dietary fiber that are absent in the fast food meal.

The epidemic of childhood obesity is not going away but we can all help by watching what our children eat and providing them better food choices.