Drinking

Natalie of Good Girl Style is back today with an afternoon refreshment that’ll make light of the heaviest humidity. Part sweet, part drink, these slushie-like lemonades are unbeatable in the heat. Natalie joins us each month to share incredible desserts with Big Girls, Small Kitchen readers–desserts that are entirely gluten-free, but not like obviously gluten-free. That means no specialty flours or hard-to-find ingredients, just good old-fashioned butter, sugar, fruit, and lemons. Don’t miss her other frozen posts, about Coffee Granita and Easy Mango Sorbet with Coconut Cream.

On a hot summer day, little is more refreshing than an ice cold lemonade. Unless that lemonade is actually blended with ice to make it a slushie, and topped with berry compote for the perfect blend of sweet and sour. You’ll definitely want to take the time to squeeze the lemons yourself. Bottled lemon juice is convenient but it may leave a bitter or metallic taste…not so refreshing!

Go ahead and juice the lemons when you have time and the juice will keep in a mason jar with a lid in the refrigerator for a week or so. The simple syrup can also be made ahead and kept in the refrigerator. Add ice-and this drink comes together in a flash. Of course the frozen lemonade can be served alone, but the berries add a nice color contrast and flavor mix. Use whatever berries you have handy. I used strawberries, raspberries, blackberries and blueberries.

I’m not the biggest drinker – think what you will about my after-work pint of Guinness or my enjoyment of sips of bourbon on the rocks.

In fact, while I was testing cocktails for this piece, I’d think: “This Blueberry Mojito is good. But I bet it’d taste even better without the rum.”

And I may have judged my sister Jill too harshly when I accused her of liking pineapple juice and vodka cocktails only because the former disguised the sting of the latter. Pineapple juice, especially freshly blended, tastes amazing. But I never take the time to drink it on its own-or to muddle fresh blueberries with mint and sugar to craft a drink I’m not planning on spiking.

Today, for Summer Fest: Peach Edition, I’ve done that, made a drink only out of limes and fresh ripe peaches. A virgin drink. Hold the rum, the vodka, the tequila-and the elbow grease. This drink’s easier than any cocktail I’ve mixed.

I’m so happy to share this array of homemade cocktails with you today. I have a post up on LearnVest all about summer drinking, with the goal of answering this question: how can serve your friends delicious cocktails that seem like they come from a fully stocked bar but in fact are built from a shelf of booze and mixers assembled with thrift in mind?

With four bottles of booze, some triple sec and bitters, and a lot of limes, lemons and oranges (a bit of an investment), and a quick stop at the farmers’ market, you can get started on the dozen drinks I developed below.

You can read all about the drinks, and get the recipes, over on LearnVest’s site. Check out the post here. But I figured I’d take you through the process of creating and testing all these drinks too.

On Saturday morning, my mom came home with a pineapple.

“You said you wanted to make pineapple drinks,” she said.

I thought she must have been confusing me with my sister, Jill. See, on Friday night, when we all arrived at the beach house, I was told that Jill’s new favorite cocktail was vodka with pineapple juice. Not margaritas, not mojitos, not gin fizzes. And indeed, when I opened the freezer, there was vodka. When I pulled out the drawer stuffed with chips and s’more ingredients, there sat six cans of pineapple juice.

Obviously, I teased Jill. “What are you, 16?” I said.

SPRING DRINKING: Gin and Gingers; Iced Chai Tea Latte; Lemonade, Spiked or Sober

As any northerner worth her flannel will tell you, iced tea should not be sweet. Below the Mason-Dixon line (and in Morocco) Southern types apparently drink tea so sugary you’d think it was mixed for a hummingbird. Up here, we relish black tea that borders on bitter and register utter dismay anytime we find out that a restaurant serves its house iced tea laced with sweetener.

Expert in coconut cake and shrimp and grits, perhaps the Southerners could school us in the pleasures of sweet iced tea as well. Or maybe we could school them about why a glass of unsweetened green tea beats sugar water any day. Or perhaps we should all meet in the middle-somewhere around southern Virginia-and toast to the United States with cool Mason jars filled with slightly sweetened iced green tea flavored not just with sugar but also with strawberries.

I figured if we were going sweet, we might as well go there with gusto, and so I made a strawberry syrup that I’ve been doling out into glasses of iced tea on the pre-summer but very warm afternoons we were having in NYC until this week, when April Flowers turned to May Showers.

Jonestown Punch, BGSK Style
Makes 1 large bowl (or bucket)

Jason’s original recipe called for some premium liquors, and I’m sure he would be horrified at our poor-gal’s excuse for Jonestown Punch. The actual cocktail, which is served at The Violet Hour in Chicago, has many nuances. Ours may not have been as complex or refined with the budget liquors and bottled lemon juice, but our crowd didn’t seem to be any wiser.

To read the original post , click here.

Ingredients
10 cups Jim Beam (or other reasonably priced bourbon)
3 1/2 cups Fresh Lemon Juice (or bottled…let’s …