America, F yeah! Oops, sorry. for those patriots of more delicate constitution, Happy 4th of July!~
Tonight’s theme is all American, red white and blue ‘tinis. And we’d like to welcome our first Special Guest Star:
Kim! Can we say, Kim is the guestest with the mostest….she dove right in there mixing ‘tinis and crafting one of our highest rated efforts to date. But more on that later…..let’s dive right in to our first round.
As we graze on warm spiced nuts (heh), olives and caprese bites we sample the:
From a Texas warm weather drink recipe collection. Refreshing, pleasant, not too sweet. Would be great over ice in a tall glass (Kim- maybe with gin instead of vodka?), we enjoyed this.
Ratings ranged from
(Shaker One) 
(Shaker Two)
Helpful hint: use the immersion blender to muddle. Much faster.
And on to round 2 with the #14 Cosmo-not Martini.
Ok, well Shaker One had recipe fail here and read a key ingredient wrong. Also, we neglected to notice that this was a non-alcoholic(!?!?!?) ‘tini (oxymoron, I know). So Kim tweaked, tinkered and twirled (hi Simon!) and created Kim’s Cosmo Haute!
Delicious! We needed two rounds of this. Soooooooo tasty. Brava Kim~!
Perfectly balanced peach, cranberry, citrus…..they all play so well together. Your mouth will be happy. Trust us. Um, ok. Don’t actually trust us, that’s a bad idea. But make this drink. You won’t be sorry. Mmmmmmmm.
And then we decided to actually eat some food. The booze was lonely. We had quite the feast with Shaker Two’s mom’s pigs in a blanket, mini cheesie burger sliders with carmelized onions (Shaker One rocks the sliders…mmmmm) , sweet potato fries and Shaker Two’s delicious Orzo salad
.
And, because we thought it would be so cute, we chose a blue tini:
#15 The Blue Print!
I shall let the peanut gallery comments speak for themselves:
“Ohhh, Windex!” “It burns!!!!!”
Yeah, so the pretty ones don’t taste so good. Kinda like in real life.
Rather than waste all that boozy goodness (we’re all about recycling and repurposing – especially vodka) we remixed that bad boy into-
#16 The Octopussinki!
Now this is even better than our last salvagetini. Inky pretty color, nice flavor. Not bad. This may just about hit a 3 olives.
(Shaker Two’s working on her home made ice cream! Two flavors! We are very excited)
Tonight was doubly productive, as we have come up with several more Shaker night plans/menus for the future. Stay tuned for…. luai-tinis, field trips, Russian night, Sake-tinis, MadMen night, south of the border themes, Trailer Trash ‘Tini night, vodka tastings and numerous other evenings of silliness we have talked about.
oooh… next round is coming up.
Warm mini apple pies with home made cinnamon ice cream. OMG, yum on the cinnamon ice cream.
(Emong joined in on this one – he was also a bit let down.)
Ok sadness, disappointment, remorse.
Again, it sounded so much better than it tasted. Meh. You know, they have the five stages of grief? We need to make the five stages of martini disappointment. Delicious description, lovely ingredient excitement, mixing glee, pouring/straining anticipation, tasting fail. 1 1/2 olives.
Take a pass.
(Side note… we all found it rather funny as we realized we were now measuring vodka in measuring cups – saves time rather then count out jiggers.. but still… measuring cups!)
Come back soon. You know we get thirsty often. Good night and see you next time. Same channel, same shaker.
Lushes out.
Overall, another lovely evening ‘tini tasting, despite several bailing guests. An excellent ending to a wonderful holiday weekend. Celebrate, marinate, macerate!
