Category: food

Cocktail of the Week: Bourbon Sweet Tea

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Well, here it is July in California’s Central Valley and it is starting to get hot. Today it got up to 100° F, tomorrow it’s supposed to get up to 104° F?! What are you supposed to drink in that kind of weather? What could possibly be appropriate? Iced Tea wouldn’t be a bad idea, even better if it’s sweet tea. Sweet Tea, while being delicious, isn’t a cocktail though…

Until you add bourbon to it.

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The ingredients

Bourbon Sweet Tea
(makes 1 pitcher)

  • 3 cups of black tea
  • 1/2 cup sugar
  • 1 lemon, sliced
  • 1 lime, sliced
  • 1 orange, sliced
  • 1 cup bourbon

Add sugar to tea. Put tea on stove and heat, stirring, until the sugar is dissolved. Let tea cool for a few minutes. While tea is cooling add, lime, lemon, orange, and bourbon to a large pitcher. Pour tea into pitcher. Chill. Serve in small glasses with a lemon wheel for garnish.

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This was a lot like drinking candy. Delicious citrus flavored sweet tea and with a little hint of bourbon on the way down. In the future, I’d pour the tea into chilled glasses or serve it on ice to really get it cold. This was so refreshing on a hot, California summer evening.

Cocktail of the Week: Bloody Mary

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Summer means Gazpacho soup for dinner and Gazpacho means V8 juice. And when you have a container of V8 in the fridge it’s the most natural thing in the world to start thinking about Bloody Marys. The definitive morning cocktail.

The ingredients
The ingredients

Bloody Mary

  • 2 oz. vodka
  • 6 oz. tomato juice or V8
  • 2 dashes Worcestershire Sauce
  • 1 dash Sriracha  Sauce

Stir all together in an iced highball glass. Sprinkle celery salt on top. Garnish with celery.

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You’ll notice this recipe has one small alteration from the traditional recipe: Sriracha. We don’t keep, or use, Tabasco sauce in this house. I don’t know if there is anything I can say about the Bloody Mary that hasn’t been said before by a better writer. Spicy, fruity, and with lots of umami it’s like a meal in itself. Also, makes for a pretty good pick me up first thing in the morning on a weekend…

A Festivus Miracle!

I know it’s not normal to write about Festivus in June. But, I didn’t get my 2013 Festivus gift’s until just this week! It’s been quite the wait, but in the end I think it was all worth it!

So what was so miraculous about Festivus last/this year? I got two of them!? I know, crazy right? I thought the person who was assigned to get me a gift had bailed or forgot or was overwhelmed with their own life and so I was not going to be receiving a gift. But my good friend, Nich, decided that people not getting Festivus gifts would not stand! And he went out of his way to make sure that I, and many other people, all got Festivus gifts.

But it gets better! Shortly after Nich had sent me a gift my original gift giver contacted me to let me know that my festivus gift was finally on its way! That’s right, two festivuses, festivii? Truly a miracle! Thanks to Nich and Stiv for the wonderful presents!

You can see all the loot below. Continue reading “A Festivus Miracle!”

Cocktail of the Week: French 75

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You know what’s better than a Tom Collins? A Tom Collins with Champagne in it! We’ve had a bottle of the bubbly sitting in our fridge for awhile and I decided I wanted to do something with it. Something other than a Bellini. Friends had a few recommendations. The French 75 ended up winning.

The ingredients
The ingredients

French 75

  • 1 oz. gin
  • 1 oz. fresh lemon juice
  • 1/2 oz. simple syrup
  • champagne (around 2 oz.)

Add gin, lemon juice, and syrup to shaker filled with ice. Shake. Strain ingredients into a Collins glass filled with cracked ice. Top with champagne. I has some frozen raspberries so I tossed a few of those on as a garnish.

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Doesn’t look like much, does it? That’s okay though because it taste’s great. D and I took these out on the back porch last evening and sipped them as the sunset. The French 75 was the perfect treatment for the 97 degree weather. After drinking this I don’t know if I can ever go back to a regular ol’ Tom Collins.

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