What do you do when the days are long, the nights are cool, and your best friend is in town? You sleep in, just a wee bit, to savor those chilly gusts of delight weaving through your windows. When you finally rise from your billowy cloud of a bed, you make a pot of hot coffee, turn on NPR (Tripoli has fallen to the rebels = win),  slice up some honeylope melon (honeydew + cantaloupe = double win), and warm up those banana bran muffins you made yesterday.  Then, after weighing your various h0w-do-we-spend-this-perfect-day options, you decide that going shopping outdoors for summer dresses is really the most productive use of your time. But shopping for floral prints can really work up an appetite, so you and your best friend drive over for a late lunch at the Italian restaurant where your parents used to go on dates before they were married (awww). Your stomachs are about to explode from way-too-much-pizza-syndrome, so you venture home to your welcoming couch, who loves you and doesn’t judge you, even with your pizza belly. You put in a movie and make these fizzy hibiscus ginger coolers to calm said-pizza-belly as the afternoon light filters through the windows.

hibiscus ginger cooler
(my senile great aunt mildred could make this)

a box of hibiscus tea, loose hibiscus petals, or Celestial Seasoning’s Red Zinger tea
a bottle of ginger beer (Reed’s is definitely the best)
1 lime, cut into quarters
fresh mint

Throw all the tea – yes, all of it – into a pitcher and fill ‘er up with water. Set the pitcher in a sunbeam to brew a thick, hibiscus nectar. When the tea is dark ruby and fragrant, pour over ice to fill glasses about halfway, top off with ginger beer, and add some mint and a squeeze (or two) of lime. Shazam.