Tag Archives: cocktail

Skinny Berry Sangria

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This is a GREAT drink! So good in fact, that I had to wait for the after effects (and the memory of the after effects, lol) to wear off enough for me to stomach writing up the recipe for you guys, haha. The good news is as long as you don’t let these go down like water (as we did on our girl’s night) they shouldn’t give you any trouble but I will warn you it’s difficult because MAN are they delicious! This drink was my effort to create a fruity and fun “girl’s night” cocktail while keeping the calories at bay (the sugar content is still a factor but at least it’s from fruit and fruit juice, we do what we can right? haha). I love getting together with my girls for drinks but especially during the winter those extra calories hiding in your cocktails can definitely do some damage to the waistline. While it’s no secret that the best way to keep healthy and fit is to eliminate alcohol altogether, you’ll feel a little bit better about your decision to have a drink or two knowing that you were able to lighten them up even just a little bit! This is a great big-batch drink to make for a crowd and would be super fun for a bridal shower or summer event. That being said, cheers to warmer weather hopefully being on the horizon for us NOVA folks (but if not I can always warm up with this cocktail).

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Like my champagne glasses? They’re available here on Amazon in sets of four (“toast”, “sparkle”, “cheers” and “celebrate”) – so cute!

INGREDIENTS

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  • 1 bottle Sparkling Brut Rose (if you prefer a sweeter drink try a sparkling moscato or regular sparkling rose but I felt plenty of sweetness came from the fruit and cranberry juice)
  • 1/2-1 cup Berry Vodka (depending on how strong you want your sangria)
  • 1 cup berry or raspberry seltzer
  • 2 cups light or diet cran-raspberry juice
  • 1/2 cup each strawberries (sliced), raspberries and blueberries
  • frozen mixed berries for serving (optional)

INSTRUCTIONS

  1. Combine the fresh berries, vodka and cran-raspberry juice in a pitcher and allow to refrigerate for at least an hour.
  2. When ready to serve pour in seltzer and brut rose and stir. I served mine in champagne glasses with frozen mixed berries in lieu of ice cubes!

Natural Pear Martini – from an unlikely source!

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I love a good cocktail, and while I’ve had to put my enjoyment of cocktails on hold for the better part of a year on account of squishy baby P, J and I have just gotten back to being able to enjoy a little homemade drink here and there. Since I was sure that any amount of hard alcohol would actually kill me after such a long drinking hiatus, lol I stuck to my occasional glass of wine for a while, but after having a martini while we were home for a visit (and not dying, yay! lol) I decided that I really would like to try to make a homemade version of one of my favorites – a pear martini (without the $12/drink price tag)!

Now, back to baby P, this is where the unlikely source for my recipe comes in – one of the star ingredients is actually baby P’s homemade baby food (questionably bad mother or genius? you decided, lol)! Since I love to cook and I take the time to fix homemade meals for my hubby and I, I figured that I would be doing my squishy baby a disservice if I didn’t do the same for him, so ever since I started him on solids at six months, I have been making his baby food from scratch. Now, I know this can be time consuming and I don’t necessarily save boatloads of money by doing this, so I don’t knock anyone that buys jar food or anything (do yo thang girlll!) but I genuinely enjoy preparing little P’s food and I have the time to do it, so why not? Since the beginning, one of his favorite foods have been pears so I have whipped up several batches of homemade “pear sauce” (recipe below) using my slow cooker – so easy! So when reading over an over-priced cocktail menu while having a date with my hubby while we were home and seeing that one of the ingredients in the pear martini was “pear puree” I thought, “oh hey now, I’ve got some of that”!

In just a second I will stop boring you with my lame stories about baby food and few-and-far-between date nights, lol. First let me tell you that this martini came out amazing and without using any weird ingredients like “elderflower liqueur”, which if you Google “pear martini recipe” is actually called for in most (and FYI it’s $32.99 for the bottle and you will probably need to use less than an ounce, no thanks!). I think it’s also worth mentioning that I’m not sure if you can deem a cocktail “natural” unless you buy one of those organic vodkas so this might not be a 100% “natural” recipe as I claim it to be but other than the vodka there is no added sugar or processed ingredients. Also, if martinis aren’t your thing I’m sure you could find a use for use for the delicious pear sauce, even if you don’t have a baby in need of purees :). Cheers!

PEAR BABY FOOD RECIPE (Makes about 4 cups)

INGREDIENTS 

  • 8-10 pears, cored and large diced
  • 1/2 cup water

DIRECTIONS

Begin by peeling, coring and dicing your pears and placing them in the slow cooker with 1/2 cup of water. Cook on high for 4 hours. When cooking is complete remove the pears with a slotted spoon and place in a blender or food processor (I use my nutribullet) don’t discard the liquid from the slow cooker, this is part of the next recipe.

I know this puree looks wildly unappetizing lol, but I promise it's delish!

I know this puree looks wildly unappetizing lol, but I promise it’s delish!

The pear juice that I collected after the cooking process, works perfectly as a natural simple syrup and it's already pear flavored!

The pear juice that I collected after the cooking process, works perfectly as a natural simple syrup and it’s already pear flavored!

 NATURAL PEAR MARTINI (makes 2) 

INGREDIENTS

  • 4 parts vodka (I sprung for the Grey Goose, but whatever you have on hand will work! Feel free to use pear vodka, I just wanted to use a regular vodka so I could use it easily in other cocktail recipes)
  • 2 parts pear juice (reserved from cooking process above)
  • 1 part pear puree
  • lemon lime seltzer (or 7-up if you want it sweeter and don’t care about the “natural” element of the recipe)
  • Ice

DIRECTIONS

Combine vodka, pear juice and pear puree in a shaker with ice. Shake vigorously for a few seconds and strain between two martini glasses. Top off with seltzer or lemon-lime soda. 

TA-DA! I was too excited by the drink to actually garnish it with a pear slice, but look how cute this pear is with the leaf still attached!

TA-DA! I was too excited by the drink to actually garnish it with a pear slice, but look how cute this pear is with the leaf still attached!

NOTE: I am no mixologist so this may not be the proper “method” for martini making these are just the ingredients that worked for me based on what I had and my limited budget for cocktail making 🙂

 

Faux Sangria

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As if my Mom wasn’t already amazing enough, she is also the creator of this amazing drink that I am about to share with you! Whether or not she will actually read this post is debatable, as it took her about three years to finally master Facebook and a whole seven years to finally hop on the iPhone bandwagon (although she did just learn how to post pictures from her iPhone to Facebook, so there may be hope for her after all lol). Whenever I tell her about my blog she seems confused so either she doesn’t know how to navigate it or she is just too busy being awesome to find the time to read my nonsensical babble, so to give her the benefit of the doubt I’ll say it’s the latter lol.

Anyway, on my recent trip home my Mom offered me “faux sangria” and while all I heard was “diluted alcohol”  (yuck lol) when I tasted it I was pleasantly surprised to find that it actually tasted exactly like the sangria at one of our favorite mexican joints back home, day = made! I was even more excited when she told me that you could make it using only two or three ingredients, whaaaaaaaat?! Needless to say when we got back to NC the ingredients for “faux sangria” were at the top of my shopping list (and here I sit enjoying a glass as I write this post and pray that hurricane Arthur doesn’t knock out my power lol). I love a good summer cocktail and I especially love one that is easy to whip up and doesn’t cost a fortune in ingredients you will only use an ounce of (a problem I encountered when making  my whiskey punch for J’s 30th, I will post about this soon). While I know this isn’t the most creative recipe and is I’m sure, by no means an original, I still think it’s worth posting because I for one am always looking for new budget friendly cocktails, especially those that lend themselves to social gatherings a.k.a. ones that are cheap lol. I hope you whip up a batch for your next fiesta, even if you’re like me and your “fiesta” involves working on your blog while hubby and baby snooze haha.

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I let baby P have at one of the apples while I was making the sangria, only 20 years and three months until he can give it a taste lol

 

FAUX SANGRIA

NOTE: This recipe can be doubled, tripled etc. It is GREAT for a party and you can use any combination of fruit, I actually plan to come up with a variety of “faux sangrias” using different wine, fruit and oj combos. If you’re on the “skinny” train lighten it up by using Trop50 or if you like a sweeter cocktail add some simple syrup.

INGREDIENTS

  • 1 750 mL bottle red wine (I like dry wines and think that the OJ gives the cocktail enough sweetness but if you’d like it sweeter use a sweet red)
  • 3 cups orange juice
  • Juice of half a lemon (this just brightens up the flavors, feel free to omit it if you don’t like/have lemons)
  • 1 Apple, cubed
  • 1 Orange, quartered and sliced thin

Combine all ingredients in a pitcher and refrigerate for at least an hour before serving – enjoy!

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