For the past few days, Long Island has been very humid and very hot in the high 80’s. It would be nice to have a summer drink to cool off. I thought of some summer drinks that I was growing up with when my family was living in Virginia. And if you have ever lived in Virginia during the month of August, you would've known how hot and humid it could be. One year it was so hot that we ended up sleeping on the floor only with a flatten cardboard box underneath. Still our shirts were drenched with sweats.
Below are some drinks that I remember growing up with in those hot simmering summers:
Kool-Aid
It doesn't matter if you were an Asian-American kid or not, Kool- Aid somehow magically infiltrated your childhood one way or another. When you think about it, the Kool-Aid Man really is a drawing of a pitcher with hands and feet and a smiling face saying "Oh, Yeaahh" -- like this is really good stuff. Yet my brothers and sisters (there are six of us) trying to drink as many packages as possible so that we can redeem prizes with the face of the Kool-Aid Man. Our favorite flavors were grape and cherry. Grape was the obvious fun flavor because our tongues turned purple and for some reasons, kids loved to show off to others their purple tongues and got a kick out of it. When we got back our prizes, they were always oversized T-shirts with the huge picture of the Kool-Aid Man in the front. We were like walking billboards for Kool-Aid in the front and in the back our baby hair were seen through the rice paper thin T-shirt. Even to this date, I don't even know the sugar content of Kool-Aid. I think it's more like I don't want to know or find out how many cups of sugar in that little package. Imagine McDonald's having nutritional labels on their Big Macs. Would anyone bother looking at it -- we know we're eating junk food already. Now looking back, I wonder why we kids were running around the house, in our Kool-Aid T-shirts, sticking out our purple tongues at each other. Also I now understand why my oldest sister, who was a teenager then and had more sense, had suffused our high energy level by making us cleaning our rooms, sweeping the floor, and washing her car almost every other day.
Basil seed drink
Some have said the basil seed drink looks like frog eggs or fish eyes. But to me, these millions of critters can slip and slide through your mouth so effortlessly and it stays cool in your throat and stomach. You feel like you're drinking fresh air -- if that's possible. If you ever dare to try to bite into an individual seed, it's almost impossible. You would be biting into your own lips and tongue instead. It beats lemonade or iced tea. To prepare it, add warm water to sweet basil seeds and let them sit for a couple of hours. Add water and ice to chill it. Then add sugar and a squeeze of lemon juice.
If you want a fancy drink, you can also add grass jelly to the basil seed drink or have the grass jelly drink itself. The grass jelly is like Jell-O but it has a strong Chinese herbal smell and taste to it. Someone described it smells more like diesel. You have to acquire the smell and taste to enjoy grass jelly but it has a cooling effect.
Even fancier, there's a dry fruit which you can add to the basil seed drink for more texture. I don't know the name of the fruit but it's the size of a walnut. Soak a handful of them in warm water for a couple of hours. They will open up to look like roots and branches with veins -- very coral-like. Then you have to spend several hours to remove the veins with tweezers. It's almost like removing hairs from a goose -- if you've ever done it, you'll know how time-consuming and painful it is. But this activity would be great for any kids who have nothing to do in the summer and who have too much energy. I remember we kids would sit in front of our 17-inch RCA T.V. and watch re-runs of Jaws sequels in 2-D and 3-D while removing the veins one by one meticulously. The branches can then be added directly into the basil seed drink. When you drink, the seeds are trapped between the branches and you can actually taste the slipperiness of the encapsulated basil seeds in your mouth.
Chilled crushed tomatoes with sugar
This is not really a drink but more like a dessert. It's quite refreshing. I'm not sure if it's a typical dessert or it's really from my dad's concoction. It's really simple -- crushed ripen tomatoes with a spoonful of sugar. The best part is that he usually crushed them and placed it in a tall beer glass with a spoon in it and chilled everything in the fridge. When my dad was working at home and the summer was over and we had to go back to school, whenever we came home from school, he opened the fridge and handed us a chilled glass of tomatoes, it felt the summer was lingering on our tongue when we licked the first spoon of fresh, cold, surgary tomatoes. It was the best after-school snack until the fall came.
Below are some drinks that I remember growing up with in those hot simmering summers:
Kool-Aid
It doesn't matter if you were an Asian-American kid or not, Kool- Aid somehow magically infiltrated your childhood one way or another. When you think about it, the Kool-Aid Man really is a drawing of a pitcher with hands and feet and a smiling face saying "Oh, Yeaahh" -- like this is really good stuff. Yet my brothers and sisters (there are six of us) trying to drink as many packages as possible so that we can redeem prizes with the face of the Kool-Aid Man. Our favorite flavors were grape and cherry. Grape was the obvious fun flavor because our tongues turned purple and for some reasons, kids loved to show off to others their purple tongues and got a kick out of it. When we got back our prizes, they were always oversized T-shirts with the huge picture of the Kool-Aid Man in the front. We were like walking billboards for Kool-Aid in the front and in the back our baby hair were seen through the rice paper thin T-shirt. Even to this date, I don't even know the sugar content of Kool-Aid. I think it's more like I don't want to know or find out how many cups of sugar in that little package. Imagine McDonald's having nutritional labels on their Big Macs. Would anyone bother looking at it -- we know we're eating junk food already. Now looking back, I wonder why we kids were running around the house, in our Kool-Aid T-shirts, sticking out our purple tongues at each other. Also I now understand why my oldest sister, who was a teenager then and had more sense, had suffused our high energy level by making us cleaning our rooms, sweeping the floor, and washing her car almost every other day.
Basil seed drink
Some have said the basil seed drink looks like frog eggs or fish eyes. But to me, these millions of critters can slip and slide through your mouth so effortlessly and it stays cool in your throat and stomach. You feel like you're drinking fresh air -- if that's possible. If you ever dare to try to bite into an individual seed, it's almost impossible. You would be biting into your own lips and tongue instead. It beats lemonade or iced tea. To prepare it, add warm water to sweet basil seeds and let them sit for a couple of hours. Add water and ice to chill it. Then add sugar and a squeeze of lemon juice.
If you want a fancy drink, you can also add grass jelly to the basil seed drink or have the grass jelly drink itself. The grass jelly is like Jell-O but it has a strong Chinese herbal smell and taste to it. Someone described it smells more like diesel. You have to acquire the smell and taste to enjoy grass jelly but it has a cooling effect.
Even fancier, there's a dry fruit which you can add to the basil seed drink for more texture. I don't know the name of the fruit but it's the size of a walnut. Soak a handful of them in warm water for a couple of hours. They will open up to look like roots and branches with veins -- very coral-like. Then you have to spend several hours to remove the veins with tweezers. It's almost like removing hairs from a goose -- if you've ever done it, you'll know how time-consuming and painful it is. But this activity would be great for any kids who have nothing to do in the summer and who have too much energy. I remember we kids would sit in front of our 17-inch RCA T.V. and watch re-runs of Jaws sequels in 2-D and 3-D while removing the veins one by one meticulously. The branches can then be added directly into the basil seed drink. When you drink, the seeds are trapped between the branches and you can actually taste the slipperiness of the encapsulated basil seeds in your mouth.
Chilled crushed tomatoes with sugar
This is not really a drink but more like a dessert. It's quite refreshing. I'm not sure if it's a typical dessert or it's really from my dad's concoction. It's really simple -- crushed ripen tomatoes with a spoonful of sugar. The best part is that he usually crushed them and placed it in a tall beer glass with a spoon in it and chilled everything in the fridge. When my dad was working at home and the summer was over and we had to go back to school, whenever we came home from school, he opened the fridge and handed us a chilled glass of tomatoes, it felt the summer was lingering on our tongue when we licked the first spoon of fresh, cold, surgary tomatoes. It was the best after-school snack until the fall came.