A Kitchen Guest!

Welcome to my very first guest post! My mom shares lots of yummy recipes with me and I don't always have the time to try them out so she's here to pick up the slack! Also, I don't have two huge basil plants in my backyard to make yummy drinks. Or, like Mr. Lawyer, she thinks I'm slacking in the food/blogging category and this is a big hint for me to stop eating the chili from the freezer and cook something new.

The Mother Unit and I after a day on the winery/brewery trail

From the Mother Unit:
Happiness is sharing recipes with your daughter, especially after she decreed (as a teen) that she was never going to learn to cook. She just wanted to eat out all the time. Welcome to the real world of bills and budgets. It’s fun that we have developed a mutual interest in recipes involving alcohol. For me, it’s now flavor versus effect.

Here’s a recipe I tried as I had some strawberry flavored vodka. I’ve muddled up a lot of things in my life but never strawberries with simple syrup. My effort was to process the daylights out of the two of them, ending up with a red sludge. With my handy cocktail shaker (thanks for the gift kids) I put the sludge in with the basil and the vodka. So, my effort was murky and sweeter than I would like. I think if it had been straight up vodka that would have cut the sugary taste. The basil added a nice taste to the background. I have two huge basil bushes in the new garden. Time to experiment more with it.

Strawberry Fields

(from the Mother Unit)

Ingredients: 

3 parts strawberry vodka
2 parts strawberry puree (or 3 strawberries muddled with simple syrup)
1 part fresh lemon juice
1 part simple syrup (or agave nectar)
Basil Leaves
Directions:
1. Muddle strawberries and basil (to taste) with lemon juice in a cocktail shaker.
2. Add 1 part simple syrup (or agave nectar) to cocktail shaker.
3. Shake with ice & strain into a chilled martini glass.

Um, did my mother just call me an alcoholic?!