Beat the HEAT with these SUMMER COOLERS

Summer has officially begun! As PAGASA reports record-breaking temperatures almost every other day, there's nothing like a tall glass of something cold to beat the heat during this dry spell. Also summer brings in businesses serving all sorts of delicious creations and when things heat up, help yourself to one or more of these summer coolers!

ICY AND ICED DRINKS

Shakes appear year round but summer is the best time to binge on them. Among on my list are the Vanilla Vertigo and Java Chip shakes from Amular Studio and Café at Plazuela de Iloilo. Simple yet delicious, these shakes are made from the real ingredients like vanilla beans and topped with ice cream!

Cubes of cucumber and singkamas mixed with lemonade juice with a hint of mint create the Lemonade Cooler - a best seller at Afriques and Esca’s.

And “green for mint, yellow for mango and red for strawberry” makes Lumpiga Restobar’s Rastaman among the most visually enticing iced drinks in town.

With a scoop of Arce Dairy chocolate ice cream, Bluejay’s Siam Pearl Jelly drink is a melange of flavours and texture all geared up to beat the summer heat.

The Green Tea frap from Coffeebreak was curiosity order at first but it has become an addiction and the initial taste reminds you that it’s actually tea-based drink.

ICED TEA GALORE

Speaking of teas, the iced version of this drink makes it among the most popular beverages. For the powdered brand, I go for the Lipton especially its mango and honey-mansi variants but for the ready to drink, it’s the plain C2 for me. While you can also have these iced teas in most restaurants and fastfood, some serve their own blend of teas like the Happy Kitchen Diner at Amigo Plaza Mall. Theirs reminds of my ultimate favorite fastfood iced tea – Wendy’s, but has their own unique blend to it.

Restaurants at the Avenue complex also have their own blend. Bauhinia Filipino Cuisine has a tropical flavoured iced tea, Amalfi Cucina Italiana has cranberry juice as based for its tea and Mojave Steaks has a strong tea flavoured for its signature red tea.

Dulgies Café also have its own blend tea with a sweet (and a tinge sour) base. “Frozen iced tea” seems redundant at first but it’s the shake version of an iced tea. Barrio Inasal, Amular Studio+Cafe and Buto’t Balat among others serve this type of concoction. Milk tea is another variant of and is often found in Chinese as well as Thai restaurants. Sen Lek Thai Noodle House in Pavia serves a delicious and addicting Thai milk tea!

FRESH FRUITS AND JUICES

Fruits also make delicious shakes and its even better when home made so we can be assured of the ingredients. I often just throw in fruits in season in a blender and add milk – I do away with sugar and rely on the natural sweetness of the fruits. My flavour of the month fruit shake blend is chunky mango and banana with yoghurt!

Buko (coconut) stands among the most versatile fruits and I love having a chilled coconut and meat concoction with a milk. It’s all natural not to mention plentiful around our backyard. Mangoes are also the fruit of summer, and we usually have kaing-ful of mangoes at home. Too much, too many that most of the time some gets ripe faster than the pace of them being consumed. So they are usually mixed with just milk and sugar with a hint of calamansi then froze – instant mango ice cream and shake!

And speaking of mango and calamansi, I love the bottled fruit juice of this combination made by McNester foods. A refreshing blend of the sweetness of mangoes and the tang of the calamansi! And if you’re craving for apple juice, why settle for a tetra packs when you can the real and unlimited goodness of Hi-C apple available only at Green Mango fastfood restaurants!

HALO-HALO

On the streets, carinderia’s, fastfood joints, food courts, restaurants and hotel, the presence of halo-halo is almost inevitable. The blend of flavours and the thrill of the display of colours makes halo-halo is the ultimate Pinoy cooler. One can even make it at home with the availability of bottled halo-halo ingredients or just fresh fruits as toppings

Served in the most Pinoy way at Jo’s Chicken Inato restaurant is their Buko Halo - inside a coconut shell. In Tienda Lapaz, there’s more to batchoy as one also finds a lot of halo-halo stores lining up the market and they are open all year round too!

And most recently I experienced among the ways to have a fulfilling halo-halo – a buffet with a make your own and eat you can halo-halo dished up at Lamesa Grill Iloilo. With more than 30 ingredients to choose from plus ice cream and leche flan as add-ons, it’s one the ultimate ways to cool the summer blues away!

This blogpost appeared on The News Today on March 9, 2012 under my column FLAVORS.

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FLAVOURS OF ILOILO

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