Spiced Cider

One perk of working in the camp field is that employees receive so many free meals. Any time a visiting group orders meals, food is available to everyone working. Even when groups aren't at camp, there are often some special meals just for staff. Last night at our staff Christmas party, we even got fancy catered food! But, getting food in the winter time is a rare case. Most people aren't exactly interested in trudging through miles of snow so that they can enjoy the below-freezing outdoors. So during times like these, my coworkers and I have to make our own food. 

But there is a (tasty!) advantage to camp work in the winter: free bulk food!

Because less people are at camp, some food tends to expire during this time. To prevent that from happening, we sometimes get some food before it goes bad. Last week, I took home a bag of baby carrots for snacking, a case of spinach so I could freeze it and make green smoothies, and this case of apple juice:

 For our schools in outdoor ed, we give each kid a juice cup at each meal to help them with portion control and to encourage drinking more water (and so they don't take anything caffeinated from the drink machines). Each case contains 72 of these cups, and even with two roommates, I wasn't sure if we could stomach all this apple juice. But then, once I got into the Christmas spirit, it dawned on me:

CIDER!

Okay, sort of. I didn't know anything about cider until I moved to Ohio, but I've learned a whole lot about it since. Within an hour of arriving in what is now my hometown, I found myself at a cider-making party with my new coworkers in celebration of a newly-finished cider press. I occasionally operated that cider press during our living history reenactments. Through this, I learned that cider is what comes out of an apple when you squeeze it, and actual apple juice is more processed. Even though this was apple juice, I figured I could spice it up a bit.

I poured a gazillion of these little cups into a pot along with cinnamon sticks, nutmeg, honey, and cloves. I even threw in a tiny bit of ACV to give it more of a cider-y taste. After letting it simmer for at least half an hour, it was a delicious drink. So far I've probably had about a thousand of those tiny cup's worth of spiced cider.

I felt kind of wasteful throwing all those white cups away, so I ended up finding a re-use for them. They are the perfect size to grow basil! I'll start a little herb garden as soon as I get some potting soil. Either that, or wait until the ground thaws and get some dirt from the backyard! As for the foil covers, I crumpled some of them into a ball. Foil balls are great at getting rid of dryer static!

I hope you have a great time cooking, eating, and being savvy this Christmas season. Merry Christmas!