True Texan

Date night in=new cocktail.  With Sophie off at a sleep-over birthday, we decided to toast our upcoming move with a cocktail inspired by the great state of Texas.  Ruby red grapefruit juice paired with Hill Country lavender simple syrup and topped with a splash of our super secret sparkling water-Topo Chico.  If you wanted to go more Texan you could use some Deep Eddy vodka.  I just wanted to use up our liquor stash of Absolut and we are a little less Texan for it.

Adjust the proportions to your taste, but this seemed to work for us.  If you want a lighter cocktail serve in a tall glass so you have a higher proportion of Topo Chico.

2 Parts grapefruit

1 part vodka

1/2 part St. Germaine

1/4 part lavender simple syrup (simple syrup steeped with lavender flowers and strained)

Shake and pour over ice.  Top with sparkling water.

Yeehaw!

Summertime, time for a snack and a drink

                      Mise en place: French for "get your sh!t together"

Once you have your ingredients ready, you are minutes away from eating fresh summer rolls. Sophie was truly fascinated by the rice paper wrappers as they changed from a "plasticky" disc into a translucent, soft wrapper.  Not fascinated enough to allow me to put shrimp in them unfortunately.

This stack of summer rolls took us less than 30 minutes to make.  Keep wrapped tightly and you can bring some for lunch the next day.

See through!  Bibb lettuce, sliced scallions, cilantro, cucumber, bell pepper, carrots--you can also use some cooked rice noodles as filling.  We skipped them because we were saving room for a giant slab of grapefruit tiramisu. 

Serve with sweet chili dipping sauce.  If you are wondering what that beautiful pink drink in the background is, here is the recipe:

Grapefruit Campari Sparkler

1-2oz grapefruit syrup (find recipe in grapefruit tiramisu post)--adjust for how sweet you want your drink

1 oz Campari

Soda water

Fill tall glass with ice and pour syrup and Campari over.  Top with soda water, stir.

Honey Please Do!

The honeydew the size of a human head had been sitting on my counter mocking me for yet another Costco overindulgence.  When I saw the recipe for "cucumber, honeydew and cayenne frozen yogurt" in Jeni's Splendid Ice Creams I thought I had this problem solved.  Until I saw the amount required--1/8 of a medium melon.  Whaaaat?  And then you only use 1/3 cup of honeydew puree?  There was no way I was bringing this overripe monstrosity to my Sunday brunch meetup.  What's a girl to do?

 Pictured is the giant bowl of honeydew puree from most of the melon.  See cat head shadow for scale.  I forged ahead and made the cucumber/honeydew syrup--boil the above with a little sugar (proportions were roughly 1/3 cup honeydew puree, 1/4 cup cucumber puree and 1/4 cup sugar).  That's about 10 times what I needed for the froyo.

I made a sparkling water and syrup beverage with the two tablespoons that wouldn't fit in the bottles.  Delicious!  What else is sparkling and tastes good with honeydew-cucumber syrup?  Sparkling wine, natch!

Honey Please Do!

2 TBS honeydew-cucumber syrup

dash lemon bitters

sparkling wine

Put syrup in the bottom of champagne flute, add bitters. Top with sparkling wine.

 They were a big hit at brunch once I stopped overflowing the glass-FWIW small, flat bottomed glasses cause massive issues with this particular beverage.  Nothing to do with the bartendress--happened the very first cocktail I poured.

St. Germain Mojito

Definitely more fun than drinking alone....Ian documented a recent cocktail experimentation session.  From the St. Germain website we bring you the Mojito.

2 parts rum (they called for light but we used Gosling's Black Seal-no biggie)

1 part St. Germain (we used a touch more, it was super tart without this)

1 part freshly squeezed lime juice (Key Limes--juicier I think)

Fresh mint leaves

Muddle mint leaves gently. Add other ingredients and fill glass halfway with crushed ice.  Stir.  Top with more ice and sparkling water.   Enjoy.

Pear Tree Martini

Also from the St. Germain website.  This was the winner, and dangerously drinkable.

1 1/2 parts pear vodka

1 1/2 parts St. Germain

1/2 part freshly squeezed lime juice

dash Angostura bitters (we used blood orange bitters)

Shake with ice and pour in chilled martini glass.

Cocktail moratorium declared until I am sipping a Mai Tai at Outrigger Canoe Club.