Herbal Iced Cooler

@cdragonwagon 's absolutely massive (1120 pages) cookbook has been on my shelf for years - this tome of vegetarian cooking is chock full of not just 100s of recipes, but lots of informative articles on nutrition and healthy living.  It wasn't until this week, when I went to make my summer staple: a refreshing container of Herbal Iced Cooler (recipe below) that I noticed the author's unusual name: Crescent Dragonwagon .. and wondered to myself .. is that a pen name?  No - apparently it's not!  Crescent chose her ridiculous (her word, not mine) name when she was a 16 year old baby radical but stuck by it as she matured as both a children's and cookbook writer.  Where is she now?  Head on over to her blog to find out :-)

Herbal Iced Cooler

• 8 1/2 cups water, preferably filtered or spring
• 8 hibiscus-type herb tea bags, such as Celestial Seasonings Red Zinger
• 1 12-ounce can frozen apple juice concentrate, thawed
• 1 orange, sliced
• 1 lemon, sliced
• Garnish: fresh sprigs of spearmint or pineapple mint, and/or honeysuckle 

Bring 4 cups of water to a boil. Drop in tea bags, remove from heat, and let stand till lukewarm. Remove teabags and squeeze them, to get every drop of flavor. Discard "squoze" tea bags.  Combine steeped herb tea with juice concentrate, the reserved cold water, and fruit slices. Chill deeply.  Serve, preferably in chilled glasses, garnished with mint and/or honeysuckle.

.