If you’re not familiar with matcha, it’s a finely powdered green tea. And if you’re not familiar with chef Eric Gower, his matcha is to green tea as Dom Perignon is to Champagne. Eric spent sixteen years in Japan learning the customs and history behind one of the healthiest teas on the planet. I took a class with him and he made me a matcha convert; now, every day at 3 p.m. on days when we’re home working, my husband, Gregg, and I stop everything for a few minutes and do a little tea ceremony around this hearty brew. I thank you, Eric, for allowing me to share your matcha method with my readers. We all give you a virtual bow.

This tea is a little like a mother’s gentle belly rub for a sick child, as both peppermint and ginger have qualities that relax the smooth muscles that surround the intestine.

How do I love thee? By keeping thee at all times on my refrigerator shelf. Seriously. My husband, Gregg, lives on iced tea, and he loves this green chai in particular. Green tea is a real brain-boosting food, and here we up the ante by adding ginger, cinnamon, and coriander, all of which have top-notch anti-inflammatory properties. In our house, this is a go-to for staying sharp throughout the day.

When I want to go from “wow” to “YOWZA!” with a drink, I boil it down into a syrup. This one’s made with grapefruit, lemon, and orange. And sometimes inspiration will strike, and I will add fresh herbs, in this case thyme. Then I boil, watch, wait, and strain. Surprise–I have a syrup of epic proportions that is bracingly refreshing.

Whether it’s kids, traffic, work, marriage, or any combination thereof, stress is an ever-present factor in most people’s lives. I’ve long turned to chamomile’s relaxing properties to pull some of that stress out of my system. A lot of folks like chamomile as a hot tea, but that’s not exactly a summertime go-to, thus the inspiration for this lemonade that combines chamomile tea, green apples, lemon juice, and a hint of maple syrup.

When it comes to improving your well-being, green tea is a slam dunk. It’s a phenomenal immune booster and can protect against tumor growth. But when it comes to taste, lets just say it needs a good point guard to help it set up the alley-oop. In this recipe, that would be papaya, which Columbus called “the fruit of the angels.” It’s a popular food in Nicoya, Costa Rica, one of the ‘blue zones’ renowned for longevity. Papaya’s sweetness balances the natural bitterness of straight green tea. The two dance nicely together in the lab as well; one study suggests that the combination of green tea and papaya may cut the risk of prostate cancer. I have to admit, I get a kick out of it when I choose ingredients based on taste and later find out that they’re also great for you.

Three Smoothie Recipes by Drew Ramsey, MD. Kiwi Green Smoothie, Minty Blueberry Shake & Cashew-Chocolate Smoothie

Hazelnuts get a bad rap in America, and I can understand why. They’re often found in cheap,
packaged nut mixes that are years old and, consequently, rancid. This is a shame, because a fresh hazelnut is a delight to behold. 

Someone asked me why we were doing coffees in this book. Truth is, coffee drinkers love their joe, and a little bit of caffeine is good—and energizing—for the brain’s  opamine receptors.

You may have heard the slogan “You’ve tried the rest; now try the best.” That’s the way I feel about this tea recipe. It was developed ages ago by the fantastic folk at the Commonweal Cancer Help Program, a renowned retreat for patients and caregivers, and they’ve been very kind in allowing me to share their recipe with you. When I am cooking at commonweal, I often make about six quarts a day so I’ll have some on hand for anyone who comes through the door, and still, it’s never enough. The blend of ginger, cloves, cinnamon, and cardamom is like a backrub in a cup. It turns me into absolute mush, it’s so good.

If this were the 1960s, I’d call this the “ohmmmmm” elixir, as kudzu root has a way of eliciting a meditative state. Now, we’d just call it “chill,” because that’s certainly what kudzu does in this drink, thickening spiced apple juice slightly to a silky consistency. This is a variation of the tried and true recipe by my mentor, Annemarie Colbin, who was looking for ways to make puddings that didn’t require milk or eggs, and turned to kudzu. It thickens the same way as cornstarch does—by being dissolved in a cold liquid and then heated while you stir it. After a few days of eating it for breakfast, she began to realize she was feeling exceedingly mellow and sleeping really well. And you didn’t hear this from me, but this elixir makes for a heckuva hangover remedy.

The wonderful thing about cooking is that we can borrow from everywhere. Take bartending: one of their favorite tools is the muddler, which, as the name implies, muddles (or crushes) ingredients to release flavors that go into the drink. And so it is here, with mint being the ingredient to be muddled. Now, you and I don’t have muddlers (unless you happen to be a mixologist), but you can use a mortar and pestle or the back of a wooden spoon to break down the mint and release the essential oils that go into this mojito. Mixed with antioxidant-rich pomegranate juice, lime juice, and pellegrino (Italian for “seltzer”), it tastes anything but muddled; it’s a straight shot of joy juice to the brain.

A lot of people wonder why adding healthy items like flaxseeds to a decent-tasting smoothie destroys the taste. The answer is that the smoothie recipe didn’t take into account the items you’d want to add. The normal fix is to add a ton of sweetener, but I don’t agree with that approach, especially in recipes for cancer patients. But the berry blast of this smoothie plays well with the vital flax and whey. The abundant antioxidants make this smoothie one for the books.