Cucumber Pomegranate Mule

When Hubs and I went out for our anniversary last month, the restaurant had 2 signature cocktails: a cucumber mule, and a pomegranate rosemary mule.  Only I misread the menu and thought it was a cucumber pomegranate rosemary mule.  Once corrected, I ordered the pomegranate, but couldn’t get my misinterpreted idea out of my head.

So, I infused my own Cucumber-Rosemary Vodka and created my signature cocktail.  And it was everything I’d hoped it would be!  The fruity pomegranate, mixed with the fresh cucumber earthy rosemary is the perfect summer drink!

Ice Cream Sundae Cupcakes

These fun Ice Cream Sundae Cupcakes were made for my son’s Cub Scout Blue & Gold Banquet this year!

The theme was “Scouts are Cool” and there was a whole sundae bar set up for the kids (and parents!)

Oven-Baked Ribs with Cola BBQ Sauce

It’s the 10th, which means it’s time for this month’s Eat the World Recipe challenge!

This month’s challenge takes us to the USA!  But since the USA is so large and diverse, the theme was narrowed down to Soul Food.  Soul Food in the USA typically refers to foods and cooking techniques used by people of African American heritage in the Southern United States.

One of the best soul food recipes I came across was BBQ Ribs.  In the past, I’ve only eaten bone-in ribs at restaurants.  But that tender meat, falling off the bones, drenched in BBQ sauce was amazing.  When I saw this challenge and then found a couple racks of ribs at the grocery store, I knew it was time to make these myself!

The recipe below is intense.  The flavors build and build as these ribs cook, with a dry rub, a baste/marinade, and a homemade BBQ sauce.  It is incredibly time consuming as well, but well worth the effort.  The ribs were bursting with flavor and melted in our mouths.  While the ribs likely won’t be on a regular rotation (so time consuming!) I know I’ll make these again, the next time we’re craving ribs!

Cucumber Rosemary Infused Vodka

 

Walk down the aisle at the liquor store and there are an abundance of flavored liqueurs and vodkas.

I recently learned about cucumber vodka, but then had trouble finding it locally, so I decided to make my own! After all, I’ve dabbled with infused vodkas in the past, making both lemon and strawberry infused vodkas!

4th of July Flag Cookies

This post originally appeared on my other blog in 2014.  Since I'm no longer keeping it up, I'm migrating all of my favorites over here!

Happy July!!

Can’t you believe it’s almost the 4^th?

This year, I decided to make some easy flag cookies! (See my inspiration here and here)

To make these I split a batch of sugar cookie dough in 3 parts, one (for the red) slightly bigger than the others.  One part was left alone and the others were tinted red and blue with gel food coloring.

After that, I rolled the red and white dough thin, cut them in strips with a pizza cutter and started stacking!  After the long and short red and white strips were stacked, I rolled the blue into a long log and used a knife to cut it into a square shape and place it.

Chocolate Lava Cake

It’s time for this month’s Food n Flix!  Camilla from Culinary Adventures with Camilla gave us a bit of free reign this month by choosing a broad theme of any movie filmed or set in Hawaii.  She had a virtual vacation all lined up for us!

I had a much more difficult time with this theme than I thought I would.  First, I looked up movies fitting the theme and made a short list.  I wanted to watch something I hadn’t seen before.  Then, nothing, read NOTHING was available on any of the 3 streaming serves I have access to.  AHHHHHH!!!!  And the library is still closed (but is opening for curbside pickup next month - woot woot!)

I know the movie 50 First Dates pretty well, so I almost just went from memory, but it didn’t feel like it was in the spirit of the challenge.

In the end, I picked the Disney Pixar short: Lava.

All of the Pixar shorts are fabulous, but Lava is my favorite.  

Anyway, the problem is, there is no food to speak of in Lava.

None.  Zilch.

It’s a love story about volcanoes.

S'mores Campfire Cake

I used to have a second blog, but since I'm not keeping it up anymore, I'm slowly migrating my favorite recipes over to this blog!  

I saw this idea for a campfire cake a while ago and I knew I had to make it happen!

My boys had a Cub Scout potluck and I knew it was the perfect opportunity to make the cake!