Summertime #TeaSnacky: Panzanella with Sliced Beef Sirloin

By April on Jun 24     Filed In Food & Beverage, recipes, teasnacky     2 Comments

I decided that I needed to get back on the “eat right train” that I’ve been on until the last 6 months or so and what better time to do it than in the summer when it’s just too hot to want to eat your standard comfort food fare. Insert brainiac idea to make myself a tasty bread salad with sliced sirloin on top. Don’t worry about what drink to pair it with, just grab a bottle of sparkling water and your favorite flavor of Sweet Leaf Tea, (Citrus, Half & Half, or Mint & Honey perhaps?) and mix it up. Curious about the exact ratio? Here’s my best guess: 3/4 tea to 1/4 water-ish, but feel free to experiment and comment on what the best ratio is. You could also add some fruit juice to really make it exciting!

Anyways, for my super-easy panzanella (meant to be made with day-old bread and fresh veggies),  I cheated and bought some of what I needed off of the Whole Foods Market salad bar and bought bread, that became a couple of days old by the time I used it. I like a variety of tasty stuff on my salad, so I grabbed a variety of veggies (b-b-b-beets, shredded carrots, shredded zucchini, local cherry tomatoes, diced red bell pepper, black olives, artichoke hearts, mixed heirloom lettuce, spinach and cucumbers), fresh mozzarella (the Specialty Team Members at the Lamar store make some INCREDIBLE cheese), sharp cheddar, Black Forest bacon (get it from the meat counter, you’ll be glad you did), part of a crusty baguette, a balsamic dressing and a succulent petite sirloin and threw it all into a bowl and tossed.

All that's missing is the sirloin!

Black Forest bacon in mah oven

I think it’d be cool to see what YOU end up throwing in your panzanella salad. Make your own dressing, use veggies from your own garden, the sky is the limit and we can’t wait to see what you come up with!

**Below you’ll find a recipe from Alton Brown that will get your culinary creative juices flowing.**

Alton Brown’s Panzanella Salad

Ingredients

  • 4 cups French bread cut into 1-inch cubes and dried overnight
  • 6 slices bacon, cooked, chopped, drippings reserved
  • 2 cups halved grape tomatoes
  • 2 tablespoons oil, for searing
  • 2 cups halved yellow pear tomatoes or roughly chopped heirloom tomatoes
  • 2 cups chopped romaine lettuce

Vinaigrette:

  • 1/4 cup red wine vinegar
  • 1/4 teaspoon salt
  • 1/4 teaspoon pepper
  • 3 tablespoons olive oil
  • 1 tablespoon chiffonade mint
  • 1 tablespoon chiffonade basil

Directions

Toss bread cubes in the bacon drippings. Sear the halved grape tomatoes in 2 tablespoons of oil, cut side down, until caramelized about 5 minutes, set aside.

Combine red wine vinegar, salt and pepper in a bowl, slowly whisk in olive oil in a thin stream until emulsified.

Combine all tomatoes, bread, bacon, and lettuce and dress with vinaigrette, toss well, garnish with mint and basil and serve.

Some Days You Make the Tea and Some Days the Tea Makes You

By Guest on Jun 23     Filed In Food & Beverage, Guest Blogger, Sweet Consumers     6 Comments

My husband Dave has always been a tea fanatic. It’s his way of avoiding soft drinks and other sugary and carbonated beverages. His love of tea goes so far that whenever we go out to eat, he uses his iced tea glass as a tip meter. As soon as it’s empty and he finds himself thirsty, the meter goes down. I’ve seen him shake his glass, slurp the straw, anything to get the waiter’s attention and his tea glass filled.

Since college he has always made iced tea. At some point, he realized the benefits of green tea and began refining a recipe that involves several different types of tea bags and of course a good amount of sugar. Lately he’s been experimenting with different forms of sweeteners including stevia and honey.

People always love to drink his “Green tea and mint” concoction.  His giant tea pitcher even has its own spot in our fridge. I am not allowed to utilize this space even when the pitcher is empty. It must stay in the fridge to remind him to make more tea. I have put things there before only to find them missing and his giant tea pitcher in its place. Well, not always a pitcher, because several years ago Dave found Sweet Leaf Tea. He’s very, very particular about his tea. He’d tried a variety of brands but found them all to either have some weird aftertaste, too much sugar or lemon flavoring, which he hates. As soon as he found Sweet Leaf Tea, I would find a large container of the Mint & Honey tea in the fridge in the pitcher spot. I would ask why he didn’t make his own and he’d just say: “Too Lazy”.

Recently, we decided to cut back on spending and he got back to making tea. Pitcher was back in its spot in the fridge. And yet, even though I tend to be the one grocery shopping these days, I keep finding a bottle of Mint & Honey in place of the pitcher.  “Didn’t have time to make mine” and “Needed something to drink” are the excuses I now get.

Now don’t get me wrong, I love me some Sweet Leaf, but this man has a serious addiction. And because of the fact that people are always asking for the recipe, I thought I’d share how he makes his Green Tea with Mint.

  1. Fill up a 2-quart kettle and boil the water.
  2. Pour 1 cup of sugar into a gallon-sized pitcher (I know he sometimes uses a sugar/stevia mix, but he is still testing ratios and refuses to give up the measurements).
  3. Place 2 tea bags each of natural green tea, natural mint tea and decaffeinated iced tea into the pitcher and then pour the boiling water over the bags.
  4. Steep for 22 minutes (See the nice number pattern here? 2,2,22). Basically don’t let it steep for much longer than 30 minutes.
  5. Pull the tea bags out and stir it all up. Then add cold water until pitcher is full.
  6. Pour over ice to enjoy your homemade sweetened green tea and mint iced tea!
  7. Dream of Sweet Leaf Tea and their delicious flavors you’ll never be able to replicate at home.

    Me & Dave @ Sweet Leaf Tea party. Pic by http://annieray.net/

    Post by April Stockwell

You Rocked It, We Sweetened It: Muddy Buddy Atlanta.

By Danny on Jun 22     Filed In Uncategorized     1 Comment

To all of you fans out there that come out to Muddy Buddy in Atlanta, thank you!  We hope you enjoyed it.  Check out some photos from the event.  Heck, you might be in one of them!

-@SweetLeafDanny

KEYE, Kinky and Snackies, Oh My!

By Marketing Intern on Jun 21     Filed In Celebrities, Intern     3 Comments

Ah, the unpredictable job that is the Sweet Leaf Internship. We never know quite what’s in store for us when we walk into the Austin Sweet Leaf Headquarters, but that’s one of the things that makes this job so exciting.
Take last week for instance. Did you know that last Thursday was National Iced Tea Day? I sure didn’t–not until that day, at least. Anyway, KEYE, the local CBS station, called us that day and asked if we could do a quick spot for their show, “We Are Austin Live.” The marketing team decided to bring with them one of the Tea Snacky recipes, dishes that are made with Sweet Leaf Tea. They wanted us to tag along to film the behind the scenes action and help out, so we all piled into the Sweet Leaf Van and set sail to the studio. Everyone at KEYE was really nice, and because there was about forty minutes before they were ready to film the spot, they led us into a swank conference room to wait. However there was already someone in the conference room–someone with a big cowboy hat, black, pearl studded shirt and a cigar. Did our eyes deceive us? No! It was musician, author and former Texas governor candidate Kinky Friedman!
We learned that he was also supposed to be on the show and was waiting for his spot, just like us. After taking pictures with him, we gave him some of our new Citrus flavor tea to try and in return he gave us some pretty awesome stories. Some were interesting, some were funny, and some were probably too inappropriate to repeat on this blog. After a good conversation with Kinky, KEYE was ready, and someone led us to the filming studio where Sweet Leaf April and Sweet Leaf Charla led a terrific three-minute cooking segment. Check out the behind-the-scenes video of the shoot we took below or the official video here.

Sweet Leaf April, Sweet Leaf Ashley and Sweet Leaf Charla with Kinky Friedman!

When we finished, we packed up, said our goodbyes to Kinky, who was still waiting for his spot, and hit the road back to Sweet Leaf Headquarters.

It was only my third day on the job, and I helped out with a news segment, rode in the awesome Sweet Leaf van and met a Texas celebrity. I learned an important lesson that day: You never know what to expect here at Sweet Leaf.

Let’s give it up for the Dads

By April on Jun 18     Filed In Austin, Texas, Events, Food & Beverage     14 Comments

Father’s Day is approaching quickly (Sunday, 6/20/10) so if you haven’t run out to buy him another tie that he doesn’t need or want, check out the local events around your town and shower him with some love and attention that he deserves.  Little known dad-fact, they are really cool and enjoy concerts, good food, a fine craft beer (some dig on cheap beer) and even cute, hand-crafted items.

I often avoid thinking about this Hallmark holiday because I lost my dad to non-small cell lung cancer in July 2002. As the sad feelings get less and less, the urge to want to fill him in on my life and show him the person I’ve started to become grows. It’s funny to me that no matter how old we get, we still have days where we need our parents. Don’t worry, I’m not going to get on a soap box about how you should appreciate what you have because when it’s gone, it’s a total bummer, but it IS something to consider. My dad was one of the biggest ice tea lovers that I’ve ever known and if he were here, I’d be sharing all of our flavors with him but I think he’d really dig the Lemon Black and my fave, the Lemon & Lime Unsweet. Dad, a toast to you for doing a better job raising me than you ever knew.

To all the dads out there, you are more to us than the big dude that mowed the lawn and fixed stuff. You helped give us our sharp wit, twisted sense of humor and our great legs. You also laughed out loud when we got our softball jerseys that said “Blue Angles” instead of saying, “Blue Angels”. You are 1/2 the reason we are who we are. Thank you.

Enjoy this little ditty by Adrian Belew. It was the first song I thought of when I decided to write a blog post dedicated to dad. Makes you smile right?


Adrian Belew – Oh Daddy – music video

Adrian Belew | MySpace Video

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