Friday, February 11, 2011

Sangria

Sangria is the best drink ever.  It's like an alcoholic fruit salad.  I made it with some friends from work for one of the girl's Superbowl party on Sunday (She's the one who taught me).  It's really good, and you can use whatever citrusy style fruits you have on hand.

You want to start with a pitcher that is approximately a gallon.  We used one like this.  Then take any 750mL bottle of white wine.  I've used chardonnay, white zinfandel, and pinot grigio with good results for all.  I've heard you can use red too, but I've never personally tried it.

Chop up any combination of citrusy type fruits.  Tonight I have lime and strawberry.  On Sunday we used green apple, nectarine, orange, and lime.  If you actually know stuff about wines, you can probably pair flavors to the wine.  Add the fruit to the wine in the pitcher, and let it sit overnight if possible.  It's also good if you make it and drink it right away.

Once you're ready to drink it, fill the rest of the pitcher up with sprite or 7up.  If you want it to be stronger (because otherwise it will be fairly weak like this), add about 2-3 shots of vodka, to taste, and mix well.  You could shake things up a little and try raspberry or lime vodka.

Volia, you have a delicious fruit drink that will make any night better.

Monday, February 7, 2011

Frushi at Orange on Clark st.

I just went to the restaurant Orange, near Clark and Fullerton.  It's sort of a brunch place.  I got fruit sushi (frushi) for the first time and it was amazing.  They had 2 different kinds, one in a nigiri style and one in regular sushi style, and the flavors change frequently.  For the sushi roll, they had lime infused rice rolled with pineapple and for the nigiri, they had coconut infused rice with a green apple slice on top.  They were drizzled in strawberry and orange sauce.  I loved the lime and pineapple ones, I thought they tasted like fruity Popsicles.  It was fairly cheap too.


Here's some frushi that my friend got the other day (I forgot to take a picture when we went out).  We're hoping to experiment and figure out how to make it ourselves.

Friday, February 4, 2011

Caterpillars

This is an easy little snack that would also be cute on display for parties.
Take a bag of stick pretzels.
For each pretzel, dip one end in creamy peanut butter so that it gets a q-tip sized ball of peanut butter on it.
Set on a plate and then push 2 chocolate chips (non dairy) into the peanut butter on either side of the pretzel, so that they look like 2 bug eyes.  Cute!

If I can think of something that would look like wings, I want to make a "dragonfly" version.

Mine are a little melted from sitting on my stove while baking something, but they still tasted delicious.