Name: Rosemary and Cucumber Infused Ginger Beer
Prep time: 5 min
Total time: 5 min
Ingredients: 1 L (4 cups) of ginger beer, sugar free; ½ a cucumber (sliced); 2 spring of rosemary (slightly crushed); Ice and Extra rosemary sprigs, (to serve)

Sometimes it is all about non-recipe recipes like this Cucumber and Rosemary Infused Ginger Beer Mocktail. Don’t you just love these? It is going to be one of the drinks I serve during our summer university friends reunion supper party.

How To Make Rosemary and Cucumber Infused Ginger Beer Mocktail

It is one of those drinks that is absolutely perfect for entertaining. Simply throw in all the ingredients a couple of hours before your guests arrive, refrigerate and you are good to go. It makes a great centrepiece and talking point too.

Feel free to vary the herbs and fruits depending on what you have in your pantry. It is that flexible. Best of all, thanks to the usage of sugar-free ginger beer, it contains 0 Weight Watchers Freestyle points.

More Mocktail Recipes

Sangria Mocktail.

The Hisense RQ689N4AC1 American Fridge Freezer.

Making this mocktail has been much much fun as It allowed me to test out and fall in foodie love with my Hisense RQ689N4AC1 American Fridge Freezer.

Installation and getting it in comes first of all. No point buying a fridge freezer if it won’t fit through the doors. This one does. You can take the doors off, and put them on again to get through standard (80cm or so) doorframes. And it has adjustable front feet, so you can level it, even if your floor is wonky. We certainly had no trouble getting ours into a pretty small cottage door.

When you look at it, the first thing that will hit you is that it has four doors. A bit strange you will think, as most American fridge freezers have two – one on the left for freezing and one on the right for the fridge. But what the clever people at Hisense have done is organise their fridge freezer much better. They have realised that you spend most of your time using the fridge part of the fridge freezer. You may use the freezer once a day at most, while you’ll be in and out of the fridge several times a day.

And what helps you find things in the fridge? Having everything at eye level. If you can see things, and get them in and out without effort, life is just that much better. So, the fridge is laid out horizontally. The top level is all fridge and is all at eye level, making it miles easier to find things and to organise. And the freezer, which you go into less frequently, is at the bottom. A small change you might think. But certainly, one which makes life easier.

They haven’t compromised on space, either. The fridge has a capacity of 362 litres, which is pretty big.

The layout too is good. With the extra width, you can have fewer yet wider shelves, which makes putting odd-shaped things in and out that much easier. Think of a bowl of pancake mix, saved for tomorrow, next to a load of cheese and the tomato ketchup. All able to be squashed together on these lovely wide shelves. Plus these shelves are made out of toughened glass, so you don’t need to worry about overburdening them with food.

One other thing is the door shelves, and the fact that there is a specially designed bottle storage compartment. That works well and is surprisingly capacious. When we had a family to stay last weekend, we could keep orange juice, milk and two bottles of champagne all in the door, keeping cool.

What else is there about the Hisense American fridge freezer that makes it stand out? The other big advantage is that the two freezer compartments have independent temperature controls. This means that you’ve got a lot more flexibility because you can turn one of the freezer compartments into an extra fridge space. So suddenly three-quarters of the fridge freezer can be a fridge. I certainly found it using the other day, when I had a barbecue and had loads of meat, salads and drinks to keep cool but not frozen. Saved my bacon! And then, party over, that compartment could go back to being a freezer, and the temperature controls allow me to set any temperature I want on it, which is lovely.

Of course, you can use the freezer compartments just as that, and then you’ve got 194 litres of freezer space. Which is certainly pretty useful for me – I tend to do batch cooking and then freeze lots for later, so having six separate freezer compartments lets me organise things, and I’m much less likely to lose my pre-prepared meals.

I’ve told you about its great storage capacity right? But they manage this in just the same size as a more conventional fridge freezer. Plus they don’t skimp on insulation. Living in the country, we get power cuts quite a lot, and the Hisense American fridge freezer has a 10 hour safe storage period, so there’s no panic about food being spoiled.

And you know that I am pretty lazy. That means that things like defrosting fridges and freezers just doesn’t get done, as it can always get done tomorrow, so it always is put off till tomorrow. This fridge freezer has a great automatic defroster in the fridge. Means it never freezes up at the back, it always works efficiently and I don’t have to defrost it. And the freezer is frost free too – so no more de-frosting – ever!

And one more thing – the Hisense American Fridge F reezer has a ‘fast freeze’ mode. So when you have a load of stuff to freeze, all in one go, it gets everything good and cold, fast. I used this the other day, when our local butcher brought round a 10kg batch of gluten-free sausages we had ordered (he only makes them in batches of 10kg). They needed freezing fast, and so I could chuck them into the top two drawers of the freezer compartment and a quick press of the mode button to switch fast freeze on, and that was that. Seriously useful.

And How Well it Performs

Performance – how well does it do? Probably most importantly for my daily sanity, it is quiet. I can hardly hear it, even when the motor is kicking in more over a heat-wave. In fact, the only time I notice any noise from it is the rather handy door alarm, which sounds whenever one of the kids has gone into the fridge and taken a tomato and then not shut the door properly.

Indeed, thinking of the performance, it is pretty low on energy consumption – I’m keeping hundreds of litres of air and food cool for only about £64 a year – £1.23 a week. Not bad at all.

I think I’m onto a winner with that fridge freezer.

ao.com

I got this fridge from AO.com, the online appliances company (though they’ve expanded and now do computers and more!). I’ve found them a pleasure to work with, their website is nice and clear, the delivery of the fridge was on time and the delivery people were friendly and helpful. Good service yes? So, try checking them out next time you need to buy an appliance on ao.com.

Now back to making a gazillion and one Cucumber and Rosemary Infused Ginger Beer Mocktails and letting them infuse in my brand new fridge freezer. I hope you try it and like it as much as I do.

Sierra Leone flavours – is the spot on my blog where I share both traditional Sierra Leonean recipes and West African fusion recipes.

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