Chai Spiced Espresso

I'm not a big chai tea person but I am a coffee lover! In this recipe I have combined the signature spices you find in chai tea with espresso and created a nice little "chai-scented" brew.

 Ingredients

1/4 cup espresso

2 tsp Chai Spices (cinnamon, cardamom, nutmeg, cloves, anise, all spice, black pepper)

2 TBS Honey

1/2 cup Rice Milk, Almond Milk, or Non-fat Cow's Milk

Set Up

I ground my chai spices freshly in a coffee/spice grinder. I spooned the freshly ground spices onto the packed espresso in my moka.

You can read more about a moka here & here. I got mine in Italy but they are available at Bed, Bath, Beyond  and Amazon.

Brew the espresso on your stove top just like you normally would in a moka.

If you don't have a moka you can use a traditional coffee maker. Add you grounds to the basket or filter and sprinkle the chai spices on top and brew.

Once the espresso is brewed, add honey or your favorite sweetener to the bottom of the cup.

Next pour the hot espresso or coffee over the honey. Then top with foam and spices.

I foamed my milk in a Nespresso foamer but you can froth yours on the stove with whisk or a traditional espresso frother.

Non-fat cow's milk creates the best foam but you can get a pretty good "froth" with rice or almond milk.

 I topped mine with a few additional chai spices. You can make this as sweet or as "milky" as you want. You could even add a scoop of canned pumpkin to make it a "Pumpkin Spice Latte."

You can find more chai recipes on Mary's blog & Christina's blog this week!

Photos take by Alisa Lewis. Edited by Mary Banducci.

Community Garden

This weekend we became part of a community garden in our small town. Our friends, Rachael & Nate, are hosting it on their couple acres in Dalton Gardens. There are 5 families involved and we are all planning on sharing the work and the produce.

Yesterday Kyle & Nate rototilled the soil and hauled in horse manure for fertilizer. We are going to let the manure soak into the soil over the winter. Then in the spring we will till the soil again to mix in the manure. Manure is the BEST FERTILIZER EVER!

Here is the garden space with ample deer fencing.

Kyle rototilling the hard ground.

Nate shoveling manure into the freshly tilled garden space.

We planted our garlic crop yesterday, too! Now is the time to plant garlic.

See my post last year about fall planting.

I picked up three different varieties from Kyle's grandpa and the farmer's market.

While the guys made trips with manure, the ladies made thai food and shared delicious wine inside. See our thai recipes here!

Autumn Gardening & Our Secret Ingredient

Fall is near. This makes me sad.

We only have about one more month to enjoy our overgrown garden. Right now we are in the peak of tomato season! I cannot keep up with the picking! I planted too many Sun Gold, Sun Sugar, and Grape tomatoes and not enough Romas, Beefsteak, and large tomatoes for canning. There's always next year, though.

Fall also means it's time to start working on next years garden, especially next years soil. My husband came across some FREE MANURE! We were jumping for joy over this because it's not just any manure. It's very rotted, dark, steaming horse manure! The perfect secret ingredient for our garden! We fertilize with a fish fertilizer once a year. Other than that all we do is compost horse manure and till it into the soil in the fall and spring.
The garden loves it!

This Black Gold is sitting under

a tarp rotting & steaming away! We will incorporate it into the garden soil sometime in October.

So you may be wondering what you can do if you have a smaller garden or don't have a tractor. You can start composting now! You can compost any organic materials such as any vegetable or fruit waste from the kitchen, grass clippings, dead plants from your garden, egg shells, tea bags, coffee grounds, etc. You can add dead fish (gardens love this) or farm animal manure such as horse, cow, chicken, goat. Use your judgement...haha!
You can buy one of those fancy compost bins or turners or you can just make a pile out of sight and add to it everyday. It is important to churn it with a pitch fork or shovel once in a while to mix it up! Don't add it to your soil until it decreases in size by about one third to one half. It should be black or very dark brown, warm or steaming, and you should not be able to really see anything in it except a rotted soil looking material.

Hope that helps! Post any questions in the comment box or email me!