What a week (and a couple days) – lots of beer, lots of great new recipes to add to the list. Let’s check out what the beer scoop was:
Beer-Brined Pork Tenderloin with Beer-Mustard Sauce
And what better way to end beer week than with a cocktail made with beer? I’m pretty sure there is no better way. This is a play on those delicious Blueberry Beergaritas that we made a few months ago – oh boy were they good. But this Beergarita is straight and to the point – no frills – no fruits – just tequila and beer working together in perfect harmony, with a few other friends along to help 🙂
Beergaritas, plain and simple
INGREDIENTS
(yields 4 drinks)
3/4 cup (4 shots) of your favorite tequila
(da-da-da-da-DA-da-DA-da)
3/4 cup skinny limeade
(recipe below)
3/4 cup orange juice
2 – 12oz. bottles of light beer
(preferably a Corona style)
INGREDIENTS FOR LIMEADE
1/2 cup splenda (or truvia)
1.5 cups water
1 cup fresh lime juice
1) To make limeade: in a large saucepan, combine water and splenda until splenda is dissolved (won’t take long). Remove from heat and let cool before adding the lime juice in. You can freeze it for ‘frozen’ beergaritas – I personally like mine on the rocks 🙂
2) Combine tequila, limeade, OJ and a couple ice cubes in a cocktail shaker and shake a couple times until they’re completely mixed. Pour into a pitcher and then add the beer before serving. You can always adjust the beer taste as you see fit.
Hope you guys enjoyed beer week – and that you enjoy your weekend even more!
Too delish to wait for an official photo shoot – you get the idea though 🙂
I know, I know – it’s goat cheese week and I’m posting a recipe for Skinny Frozen Mudslides. But I had a REALLY good reason for cheating on goat cheese tonight: my cousin Krissy is in town from Atlanta and heading down to the cape tomorrow for a couple weeks of R&R (jealous).
When she’s not drinking mudslides, it’s Whiskey & Diet Coke
The Cape is a special place for us, filled with childhood mems of the summers we spent there. When we were little, fun at the Cape meant bike riding, spending so much time in the ocean that our skin pruned, and the occasional french braid fest (except Krissy was the only one with a bowl cut, so she could never get a braid in her hair – pretty sure she’s still bitter about it) Then we started to grow up, and once we all turned 21 we realized “MAN there are some tasty drinks that pair quite well with the smell of salt water and sand between your toes!”.
One drink in particular – frozen mudslides. It’s like dessert in a cup – drunk through a straw – and there’s vodka in it. Be still my heart. However, indulging in one or two of these cocktails will probably wipe out your entire caloric intake for a day – between the ice cream, the vodka, the baileys, the chocolate syrup, the kahlua (ohhhhh I’m getting the shakes, I want one right now!)
So to start Krissy’s vaca off right, I concocted what I believe to be a ‘skinny’ frozen mudslide – and not to throw rose petals at myself or anything, but damn. It was gooood.
Skinny Mudslides
INGREDIENTS
*yields 2 mudslides
1/2 cup fat free vanilla frozen yogurt
1 cup fat free milk
2 shots vodka
2 tbsp. sugar free chocolate syrup
2 tbsp. Bailey’s Irish Cream Flavored coffee creamer
(can be found in the refrigerated section at the grocery store – near the milk)
1/2 tbsp. MAXWELL HOUSE International Latte MOCHA powder
(powder only – can be found in your grocer’s coffee section)
ice
(about 1 full tray)
1) Take 2 – 160z. plastic cups (I think mudslides taste better in plastic cups – classy I know) and line them with the chocolate syrup (you could also just add the syrup to the mixture before you blend it, or at the top, but I think this just makes the cup look pretty 🙂
2) Combine all other ingredients in a blender and blend until all the ice is crushed. You can always add more ice too if it’s not your desired thickness.
There you have it – one of the best summer-time drinks of all time, without the all the guilt.
And If I have done my calculations correctly, each drink is only 7 weight watchers points, which I know still seems like a lot for just one drink, but compared to a whopping TWENTY NINE points for a ‘Non-skinny’ mudslide, well I’d say it’s quite an improvement!
So I hope you enjoyed the ‘skinny frozen mudslide’ sidetrack – back to goat cheese next time! Promise!
What a weekend!
Katie and Sarin’s wedding was fantastic – Katie looked beauuuuutiful, and despite the heat, everyone had a great time and loved their Chocolate covered pretzels! (even if they were a little on the melted side)
That’s a happy pretzel eater!
After all that dipping though, I needed a cocktail, big time. And it was a perfect weekend to try a new drink! I’ve had margaritas on the brain with all this beautiful weather, more specifically, though, Beergaritas. I’ve seen a few recipes for this delicious combo of tequila and beer and while it sounds dangerous, it also sounds delicious!
One of my favorite summer time drinks is a nice cold Blueberry beer, especially when it has nice, plump, beer soaked blueberries bobbing on the top of it! So I adapted this recipe from Eat Yourself Skinny, swapping out the regular beer for Blueberry beer, and infusing the limeade with fresh Blueberries! OMG.
Blueberry Beergaritas
Adapted from Eat Yourself Skinny
INGREDIENTS
*yields 4 Blueberry Beergaritas
1 cup Blueberry Limeade
(recipe below)
2 shots of your favorite Tequila
1 – 6oz package of fresh blueberries
2 – 12oz. bottles of your favorite Blueberry Beer
INGREDIENTS FOR LIMEADE
1 – 6 oz container of fresh blueberries
zest of 2 limes
1.5 cups of water
1/2 cup splenda (or sugar)
2/3 cup fresh lime juice
(juice of about 8-10 limes)
1) To make Blueberry Limeade: Dump the fresh blueberries in a medium saucepan. Take a fork or bottom of a wooden spoon to break the skin of the blueberries (this will help the juice from the berry to mix into the limeade). Add the lime zest, water and splenda and heat over medium heat until the splenda dissolves completely. Strain the blueberries and lime zest from the Limeade with a mesh strainer. Let mixture cool at room temperature and then stir the fresh lime juice in. Chill for about a 1/2 hour.
2) For Blueberry BeerGaritas: In a cocktail shaker, take 2 shots of tequilla and 1 cup of Blueberry Limeade and shake for a few seconds until fully combined.
3) Place a few blueberries at the bottom of 4 margharita glasses (and ice if you like). Distribute the tequilla/limeade mixture into the four glasses.
4) Top the rest of each glass off with the 2 bottles of Blueberry beer (you could also just pour the ingredients all into one pitcher as well – either way it yields about 4 Beergaritas.)
And to answer your question – yes, these are as good as they sound!!!!
I hope you all had a fantastic long weekend – bring on summer!
It’s another Thirsty Thursday – and it’s game 4 of the Bruins vs. Capitals playoff series – and man has it been a nail biter so far! Luckily for me though, I did not spend this Thursday at home alone – Dave had a hockey game last night, so tonight, he’s home, and ready to participate in the awesomeness that is Thirsty Thursday 🙂 Since last week’s Stanley Cup seemed to bring some luck to the Bruins (or that’s what I tell myself anyway) I thought I’d give a Bruins themed cocktail a go again.
I have been seeing a lot of recipes for blueberry vodka w/ lemonade, which sounds amazing. So I took this recipe from Keep It Simple Foods and modified it to make it Bruins appropriate – how’d I do it? Swapped ‘Blue’berries with ‘Black’berries! Genius!
This drink is coming to you 24 hours in the making, as the recipe calls for infusing the vodka with the blackberries overnight, to give the flavors time to meld (i.e. give the blackberries plenty of time to soak in as much vodka as possible) So last night, that’s what I did, and boy was it hard to wait a whole day!
Basically, I took a carton of blackberries (which equals about 1/2 cup – well more if I hadn’t eaten some), put them in a mason jar, and filled to the top (or almost the top) with Vodka. Then tick-tock, tick-tock…..
Tonight, I got home, opened the fridge, and the vodka had turned a beautiful shade of purple (or ‘black’ – right) and I was ready to start shakin’!
Bruins Black and Yellow
INGREDIENTS
1.5 oz (1 shot) Blackberry infused vodka
3 oz (2 shots) water
1.5 oz (1 shot) simple syrup (I made my own cal’ friendly version with 1/4 cup of water and 6 splenda packets – makes enough simple syrup for 3-4 drinks, incase you’re extra thirsty!)
Juice of 2 Lemons
Splash of seltzer (optional – I used Polar Triple Berry)
1) First step is to drain the vodka from the mason jar, using a strainer to separate the vodka from the berries (and save those berry! That is valuable fruit and booze!)
Hello Blackberry Vodka - I waited a long time for you!
Don't be fooled by these innocent looking berries - they pack a mean punch
2) In a cocktail shaker mix blackberry vodka, water, lemon juice and simple syrup – shake a minute or so. If you think the lemon juice is too tart, you can always add more simple syrup.
3) Fill a glass with ice and the berries from the jar, pour the mixture over ice, and then top off with seltzer water (if you like the fizz)
4) Garnish with a lemon and enjoy!
I gotta say, this is probably my favorite TT drink so far – it is light and refreshing, the perfect summer drink! I was really hoping it’d be a little more ‘black and yellow’, but pink is a good alternative I suppose. And the best part is that all in all, it’s a pretty healthy drink, made with all fresh fruit and simple syrup made with splenda (and that means you can drink more of them!)
Unfortunately it didn’t bring a win to the Bruins, but two of these delicious libations definitely helped to soften the blow of the loss for their biggest fan 🙂
Spotted - Dave - drinking a pink cocktail - in a Bruins jersey - Cam Neely would be horrified
And They Cooked Happily Ever After 