Summer Drink Series #3: Paloma

In my quest to expand my adult beverage recipe collection for my Summer Drink Series, I stumbled upon a great boozy website: Drink Of The Week. You can search by all sorts of things; I chose to click on the tags over on the left side of the website based on what I had available on the liquor shelf of my pantry. We had a pretty random mix of libations, so I chose a bottle that was mostly full: silver (blanco) tequila. Actually I last used it for Summer Drink Series #1: Blackberry Margaritas. I didn't want to have to buy a ton of ingredients, and this one came up towards the top of my search and sounded tasty. It calls for grapefruit soda (or juice), and I love grapefruit soda. I think it's an often over-looked soda or at least not very popular because Safeway is the only place I can find it. I don't drink soda very often--and hardly ever buy it--so it may very well be available tons of places, but I've always only ever seen it there. I'm not a fan of grapefruit juice. Actually I'm not a fan of grapefruits in general. My grandpa always liked grapefruit soda, and I think I got my love of it from him. The whole point of that was that I was excited to get some grapefruit soda.

Paloma
Source: Drink Of The Week website

2 oz. Tequila (blanco or reposado)
1 oz. Lime Juice
4 - 5 oz. Grapefruit Juice or Soda
pinch of salt

Build in a tall glass over ice. Start with the tequila, lime juice and salt and then fill with grapefruit juice. Garnish with a lime wedge.

*****

I love easy boozy drinks that don't require a bunch of ingredients you're only going to use one time. The husband and I both really liked these, although I got Diet Grapefruit soda to help save on calories, and I'd recommend going with the regular soda, not diet. I don't know, I swear I could taste the artificial sweetener in it so that kind of ruined it for me. These went down really smooth, so be warned. Definitely a great pool drink or if you're having a fiesta and want something different than margaritas.

Cheers!

Summer Drink Series #2: Watermelon Martinis

There's a blog I follow called Gina's Skinny Recipes. I don't remember how I came across it, but it's a great resource if you're doing Weight Watchers (WW) because she includes WW Points for all her recipes, along with the nutritional info. Since we're calorie counters around here I especially like knowing the calorie, fat, carb, etc. info from her recipes. Recently she posted this one for Watermelon Martinis. I had plans to buy a watermelon last weekend when they were on sale everywhere for the 4th, so I thought this would be a great drink to try for my second Summer Drink Series cocktail. Plus it's low cal! I made it according to the recipe, but the recipe below will include the changes I made. Check out her blog for the original version!

Watermelon Martinis
Adapted from: Gina's Skinny Recipes

2 cups seedless watermelon
3 ounces vodka
2 ounces melon liqueur
1 ounce fresh lime juice
1 cup ice

Puree 2 cups of watermelon in a blender and add vodka, liqueur, lime juice and ice and blend well. Pour 6 oz martini into each martini glass.

*****

I thought about copying the nutritional info, too, but since I changed mine up a bit (less watermelon, more alcohol) I figured it wouldn't be accurate. Gina's recipe called for diced up watermelon to be added to each glass, but I didn't really like the chunks of fruit in my drink. I left the watermelon pieces out in subsequent drinks and found it to be quite tasty. I had to brave the grocery store on July 4th for the melon liqueur which sucked, but I was a lady on a mission. I ended up buying melon schnapps over Midori because it was a lot more cost effective, but either would work equally as well. I'm just cheap. ;)

This is definitely something I'd make again. It was a great, easy drink and quite tasty for sipping on while floating leisurely in my pool. Plus I have a bottle of watermelon schnapps to use up. ;)

Summer Drink Series #1: Blackberry Margaritas

Summer is definitely upon us here in Phoenix. Today I think is going to be the hottest day of the year so far with a forecasted high of 110. This is the time of year I start to wonder why it is I live here. But I have a pool in my backyard which makes it somewhat bearable. It's definitely going to make training for my half marathon tricky since pretty soon even the lows will be in the upper 80s or low 90s. (Did you know I'm training to run a half marathon? I am. You can follow my progress on my weight loss blog if you're interested.)

Anyway, I was toying with the idea of having a series of blog posts over the summer of tasty adult beverages. I posted on my Facebook page asking for ideas and if people thought it was a good idea. They did and they offered up some tasty sounding ideas, so my idea is a go. I rely heavily on peer pressure, in case you can't tell. So here's the first drink in my summer adult beverage blog series.

I hadn't had a chance to flip through the most recent Cooking Light issue when my friend Jen said there was a tasty looking recipe in there for blackberry margaritas. The mere mention of the word "margarita" generally makes my ears perk up, so I quickly found my copy and looked up the recipe. Tasty indeed! Coincidentally, not more than a day or two after that conversation, there were blackberries in my produce basket from the produce co-op. The Good Lord obviously wanted me to make these. I thought they'd be a perfect accompaniment to the queso fundido burgers I had slated for the husband and I to have later that week. I just had to hide the blackberries from my kiddos.

Blackberry Margaritas
Source: Cooking Light, June 2011

1 1/2 tablespoons granulated sugar
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
1 lime
1 cup water
1/2 cup sugar
1 cup 100% agave blanco tequila
3/4 cup Grand Marnier
2/3 cup fresh lime juice
12 ounces fresh blackberries

Combine 1 1/2 tablespoons granulated sugar and kosher salt in a dish. Cut lime into 9 wedges; rub rims of 8 glasses with 1 lime wedge. Dip rims of glasses in salt mixture. Combine water and 1/2 cup sugar in a microwave-safe glass measuring cup. Microwave at HIGH 2 1/2 minutes, stirring to dissolve sugar; cool. Combine syrup, tequila, Grand Marnier, fresh lime juice, and blackberries in a blender; process until smooth. Strain mixture through a cheesecloth-lined sieve over a pitcher; discard solids. Serve over ice. Garnish with remaining lime wedges.

*****

I love me a good margarita and this definitely fit the bill. Although we skipped the whole straining step in an effort to save time and get to drinking sooner. However, that pretty much backfired because then they were too thick and seedy. So we threw some ice into the blender and had frozen margaritas instead. Normally we aren't frozen margarita people, but these were really tasty.

Summer Drink #1 was deemed a success!

I loved the color of these margaritas!!