A few months back The Wife and I were at breakfast with my Ex-Office Wife and her husband. It was kind of a hippy dippy place, a cross between a greasy spoon diner and a health food joint.

They had just run out of OJ and suggested Aloe Vera juice as a replacement.
I was apprehensive at first but as soon as I tasted it I was in love.
Light, refreshing, pulpy like OJ but not too pulpy.
It was delicious.

We've been dreaming about it since that day but in San Luis Obispo it's $5 a bottle where as in San Diego it is often less than half that.  This weekend we were in town for Comic Con and of course we made a stop at an Asian market to pick up a few bottles to hold us over until our next trip.

On the long drive back up to SLO we had a talk about using it as a mixer in drinks but neither of us could decide on what drink it would go best in.

Then today inspiration hit me: Aloe Vera Mojitos.
Sunburn jokes came from all corners, TXT, Twitter and around the house.
Was I deterred?
Of course not!

I tried out a couple versions of the drink before getting it right, the result is a Mojito with the flavor of Aloe Vera juice.

Recipe:

With "Crunchy" Pulp Bits

• In a glass add mint leaves, 1oz of lime juice and 1 teaspoon of granulated sugar.
• Muddle the mint, sugar and lime until the sugar is dissolved.
• Add ice.
• Add 3/4 oz. of simple syrup
• Add 1 or 1 1/2 oz. of white rum
• Add 3 oz. of Aloe Vera juice
• Top up with Club Soda
• Lightly stir and serve with or without straw.

For a non-alcoholic version obviously you can just leave out the rum but I found replacing the rum with mango syrup makes for a delicious drink.

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I know that there’s a lot of parents out there that say, “Happy Hour!?!? Are you crazy??? I’ve got no time for happy hour – dinner has to get on the table, and the kids need to do their homework, et cetera…”  Well, hopefully, everyone gets to that quiet time of the evening where they get to relax* – and sometimes it’s nice to wind down with a drink.

Now, every now and then I like to have an after dinner drink. A few of my favorites would be:

Scotch (appropriately referred to as whisky – no “e”)
Port (especially if there’s some chocolate around)
Good anejo tequila
Limoncello

Now the first three of those wouldn’t make for much of a post as the “recipe” would be: open bottle, pour into glass, drink. But one of the real joys this spring and summer was an “experiment” performed by The Beloved and one of our friends in making homemade limoncello (we’re scientists even at home, you know…).

Limoncello

Here’s the recipe – its pretty easy, and the final product is fantastic!

Limoncello Recipe

12 Meyer lemons (or big ol' Costco lemons like we used), peel only, no pith!
2 liters vodka (we used Skyy from Costco)
~4 cups sugar (you can use more - up to 6 cups -- but we didn't want to make it cloyingly sweet)
3 cups water

Put the lemon peels and vodka in a glass container and let
stand in dark, cool place for 4 weeks (we used the back of our pantry).

Strain the mixture into a decanter.  Mix the sugar and water in a
medium saucepan and bring to a boil.  Reduce the heat and simmer until
the sugar has completely dissolved.  Let cool before adding to vodka
mixture.

Place in freezer for at least a day.  The limoncello is good for 6 months.  Start this weekend and you can have yours before Labor Day.

You can add an herbal touch to your limoncello by adding 3 sprigs lavender to the "steeping" mixture.  We made both and each is very good.  The plain limoncello is crisp and clean, and the lavender one has an interesting "woody" flavor to it.

* even those of us sans kids

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I don't have a name for this drink outside of "Limoncello Cocktail"; that's what the guy who showed me how to make it called it. Sounds good enough, right?

Anyway here's how you make it:

4oz Limoncello (I made my own, I thought I blogged about it but it seems I only Twittered about it. Here).
1/2 oz Heavy Cream
5-6 Mint Sprigs

Combine all the ingredients together in a cocktail shaker, shake, strain and enjoy.

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On the way to dinner we stopped by BevMo to pickup supplies for Margaritas since we finished off both the Tequila and Triple Sec last week.

While we were there we decided to pickup some extra bottles to make a cocktail we had just seen on Semi-Homemade with Sandra Lee.

So we ended up with:

• Milagro Tequila Reposado
• Potters Triple Sec (for some reason BevMo doesn't seem to carry Bols Triple Sec, they have Bols everything else, but not that.)
• Vermeer Chocolate Liqueur
• Banana Schnapps
• Butter-Schotch Schnapps
  

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Sandra Lee's Banana's Foster Cocktail
Ice
1 shot vanilla vodka (that woman loves vanilla vodka)
1 shot banana liqueur
1/2 shot butterscotch schnapps
1/2 shot chocolate liqueur
Splash light cream
Garnish with banana, sliced in 1/2 lengthwise

In a rocks glass filled with ice, stir together all ingredients and garnish with banana.

Of course when Sandra made it her glass was full while ours only seem to be half full...but hey...its the magic of TV. Also, the banana garnish looked ridiculous.

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What's your favorite time of day and why?

Well, that’s such an easy question, it hardly bears answering.  My favorite time of the day is: Happy Hour!!

Tonight, the Beloved is enjoying a zanahorita, and I’m prepared to enjoy a tall, cool tequila sunrise, which I think is an incredibly under-rated drink.  It’s also a great, easy drink to make and perfect for summer:

Sunrise at Sunset

Tequila Sunrise

Fill tall glass with ice:
Add tequila to there (first row of blue dots)
Add orange juice to there (second row of blue dots)
Top with club soda

Mix with spoon, and drizzle in grenadine (or maraschino cherry juice).  They heavier syrup will collect at the bottom producing the “sunrise” effect.

Happy Friday!

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I Love Blow

Last year, I blogged about the Cocaine energy drink being sold in stores.  Well folks, they ain't got nothin on controversy when it comes to I Love Blow, an energy-drink powder packaged in coke-like vials, that comes with a freebie mirror and fake credit card to mimic the process of snorting cocaine.

Check it out at http://iloveblow.com/

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Spotted on Cool Material

Ravi Instant Wine Chiller

Enjoy a spontaneous wine tasting every time with this instant wine chiller. No need to worry about stocking the fridge a day or two before or having a chilled wine cabinet.  Just remove your Ravi from the freezer, attach the chiller to the spout of your wine bottle and the wine is chilled instantly as you pour. Wine passes through the frozen steel chamber inside into your glass, chilling your red or white to perfection. -$50

Buy it Amazon.com

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It’s a holiday weekend, so why not start a little early, right?  A couple of weeks ago, while we were at Lola in Cleveland, we tried one of their signature martinis -- Hot, Dirty & Bleu -- and really enjoyed it.

So, continuing the apparently recurring themes of reconstituting other restaurants drinks and a new affinity for spicy drinks, here it is:

3 oz     Vodka (and use the good-stuff)
¼ oz    Olive-brine (from the jar of olives you’re going to use as a garnish)
¼ oz    Dry vermouth
~5 drops Tabasco (or other hot sauce)

Hot Dirty Bleu

Combine all ingredients in a cocktail shaker with ice and shake vigorously.  Strain into a chilled martini glass and serve with a skewer of bleu-cheese stuffed olives.  The cold, cold martini, the salty-bleu cheese-olive taste and the spicy hot sauce are a really great mixed sensation.  I recommend using a vinegar based hot-sauce (if you have one) and nothing that’s been thickened – I think it will disperse better in your drink.  Also, while I'm a fan of the traditional gin-martini as well, I think hot sauce and gin sounds really terrible.

(Of course, you can make it as “hot”, as “dirty”, or as “dry” (varying the vermouth) as you like – that’s sort of the joy of martini-making…)

Bottoms-up!

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Ok, I have a confession.  I make a crappy margarita.

What’s that you say?  You live in San Diego, 30 miles or so from the border – you of all people – with your love of cocktails and spicy Mexican food this should have been something in your arsenal a long time ago.

I agree.  But mine always tend to come out too tequila-y, too sweet, too lime-y, too something where you can tell it’s just not right.  I won’t use a mix, because a) that’s cheating, and b) they vary from too sweet to just plain nasty.

But no more with the bad margaritas!

My rescue came in the form of the latest Imbibe Magazine (your guide to liquid culture…), which has some new summer drink recipes.  The other night we tried one that we LOVED and instantly declared The. House. Margarita. This. Summer.

Zanahorita

Zanahorita

Mix the following in a shaker with ice:
2 oz reposado tequila
¾ oz cointreau or triple-sec
1 oz carrot juice
¾ oz fresh lime juice
½ oz orange juice
½ oz simple syrup

Shake vigorously and strain into a glass with fresh ice (salted or not, depending on taste) and THEN sprinkle the top of the drink with ground cumin. (Yes, that’s right -- cumin -- don’t argue with me)

The carrot-cumin-tequila-salt-citrus blend is both incredibly smooth and gives this drink a rare exotic feel.

Trust me -- it might sound a little strange.  It’s bueno.

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Raise a Glass

Over a hundred breweries have signed up to facilitate a night of remembrance and toast this piece of American history, the night beer came back after a thirteen year drought.  Not to be confused with the repeal of prohibition on December 5th, 1933, April 7 marks the date when beer was the only legal libation in the United States.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt had been president barely a month, having been sworn in on March 4 after a landslide victory the previous November. Sweeping into power with him was an anti-Prohibition majority in Congress known as "the wets."

Together they fulfilled their first campaign promise with passage of the Cullen-Harrison Act, which increased the amount of alcohol allowed in beverages from 0.5 percent to a discernible 3.2 percent by weight.

Crowds gathered around breweries all over the country on "New Beer's Eve," April 6, 1933, in anticipation of the return of legal beer that actually had some alcohol in it. When the act took effect at 12:01 a.m. ET April 7, trucks and carriages burst out of brewery gates bearing cases and barrels of beer for a parched republic -- at least for the District of Columbia and the 20 states whose laws permitted it. Several breweries dispatched cases directly to the White House and the Capitol. More than 1.5 million barrels were snapped up in the first 24 hours.

During the month of April there will be special celebrations, special release beers, and general merrymaking across the country in honor of this milestone.

"People need to be reminded of the single biggest cause of brewery closure," said Daniel Bradford, former president of the Brewers' Association of America. "Prohibition lead to the demise of thousands of breweries and the creation of a violent criminal element. We need to remember this travesty, because it could happen again."

In St. Louis, Missouri, megabrewer Anheuser-Busch is throwing a big bash, celebrating the historic anniversary with a gathering commemorating the events of April 7, 1933, including the introduction of the Budweiser Clydesdales and the re-broadcast of August A. Busch, Jr.’s national radio address from the steps of the Budweiser brewery’s Bevo bottling plant.

In Chicago, Louis Glunz Beer, Inc., the first Schlitz distributor in Chicago, recreates horse-drawn wagon deliveries of the first coveted cases of Schlitz "Classic 1960s Formula" to select locations on April 7, including one of the few remaining old Schlitz tied-houses, Schubas' Tavern at Southport & Belmont in Chicago, from 11:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. Highlights include a celebratory toast to 75 years of legal beer in America with classic Schlitz, based on the original recipe and packaged in traditional "Brown Glass" longneck bottles.

Check out how breweries are celebrating in your area by visiting 75YearsOfBeer.org

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