how to eat like a bird

a tea with mint

Enhance your everyday black tea with a handful of mint leaves, just as they do at the Hummus Place. No milk and sugar required.

a ginger and honey tea

I'm sick and feeling sorry for myself. Summer colds are kind of a wretched thing because it's too cold with the A/C on, and way too muggy without it. Thankfully a good friend of mine made this tea for me, which I drink both hot and cold, depending on how I'm feeling. It's a traditional Korean ginger tea, and something my mother also makes, with the addition of dried plums and pine nuts. Dok Suni will sell it to you for around seven bucks, with a shot of bourbon in it. But it's easy enough to concoct on your own.

Select a large piece of ginger, just smaller than the size of your hand. You can choose to peel the ginger, or not peel it, but clean it. My friend peels it. Slice in the manner of cutting carrots for a chicken soup, and place into a large teapot or medium-size pot of water with a very optional cinnamon stick. If you're not using a generous amount of ginger, try filling the pot only halfway. You can always add more water if it's too strong for your taste, but you'll have to wait forever for the flavor to come through if you start with too much water.

Let it come to a boil and then simmer for about 20 minutes. Add as much honey as you want. You can have some at this point, or you can add more water. This is a recipe that can be easily adjusted to taste. Ideally, it should be light and sweet with a kick of ginger that tickles the throat. If you're sick and congested like me, it should be strong and medicinal, and it should leave a vaporous vacuum down your throat. You can also let it simmer down to an even more concentrated form, and use that as a base for your tea, filling a mug with hot water or a pitcher with cold water to drink at your convenience.

Whether you're sick or not, it's nice to have a cold pitcher of this in the fridge as a summer staple. With a few slices of lemon in a tall glass, the light amber color is reminiscent of a sweetened iced tea but the bracing hint of ginger, tempered by honey, is refreshing without being cloyingly sweet.

a Raspberry Lime Rickey

A Raspberry Lime Rickey is the perfect summer drink if you like tart, sweet, fizzy. The one at Teany is so good on a hot summer day that I have to stop myself from guzzling it all down within the span of a minute. Because there goes $4 right there, and I'll want another. So I decided to attempt it at home, which wasn't much of a stretch as there's a recipe right in the Teany cookbook.

Because I'd eaten a whole bag of potato chips with some onion dip that same day, I decided to skip the sugar in this and substitute agave nectar, which is a natural fructose that has a low glycemic index. (It can be found in any health food store). But the result was lacking. The agave nectar was sweet enough but didn't properly stand up to the tartness of the berries and lime. It was a fine drink for someone looking to flavor their water, but for anyone who wants to sit up a bit straighter and say "Ahh...so that's what a Rickey is..." I would suggest following the original recipe below, even going so far as to be generous with the proportions of puree, sugar, and lime to soda water. (The Rickey at Teany used to be pallid...like tea, but now it really packs a punch.) At most, it's only 2 tablespoons of sugar per tall glass, anyway. Just forgo the chips and dip.

Adapted from Teany Book: Stories, Food, Romance, Cartoons and, Of Course, Tea

Raspberry Lime Rickey

• 1 tablespoon of raspberry puree
• 1 1/2 tablespoons of lime juice
• 1 1/2 tablespoons of simple syrup (equal parts sugar and water boiled together)
• 8 ounces soda water         

raspberry puree: 1 pint of raspberries blended with 2 tablespoons of lime juice and 2 tablespoons of sugar (2 1/2 tablespoons if raspberries are frozen)