homemade ginger beer

Rock is on a blogging roll! Here he is again…

I really like a good ginger beer but they are hard to come by in this part of the world. We bought a bunch of old British cooking magazines awhile ago and we found this easy recipe.

2 limes / 120 grams of fresh ginger / 6 tablespoons of granulated sugar / cold carbonated or sparkling water

Bring 100 ml of water to boil in a small saucepan with the sugar and the zest and the juice of the two limes.

In the meantime, thinly slice the ginger. Add it to the boiling water and let simmer for 6 minutes.

Remove from the heat and pour the syrup through a strainer or sieve to strain out the ginger and the lime zest. Let the remaining syrup cool down fully.

To make the ginger beer, simply add some of the syrup to carbonated water to your taste.  I would suggest about 1 to 2 tablespoons for one glass of ginger beer but it is up to you how strong you want the flavour to be.  You can make a large batch if you’d like or if you want you can keep the ginger syrup in the fridge. Now we just need to find some rum…

(better than) milestones bellini

I love the frozen (not at all authentic) bellini at Milestones and my sister told me that her and her friend once made bellinis in an ice cream maker which gets you that nice slushy consistency.  Well, Rock got me an ice cream maker for mother’s day so of course I had to give it a try and today’s a bright sunny Sunday so what better day for it.  I know that a true bellini is prosecco poured over pureed peaches and I looked up the drink’s description on the restaurant’s menu. I also googled copycat recipes which all seem to say that there’s 7-Up in it and peach drink powder.  I guess the 7-up is what makes it taste like freaking candy and the peach powder is what makes it a bright orange colour but I wanted to use fresh peaches instead.  We ended up with bomb ass bellinis that we drank sitting out in the sun.

This makes 2.  I wish we made more.

5 oz prosecco  or another sparkling white wine of your choice  /  1 oz white rum (which I forgot for the photo)  /  2 ripe white peaches  /  300 ml 7-Up  /  1-2 oz sangria (we just poured, I don’t really know how much)

Peel the skin off the peaches and cut the flesh off the pit.  Using a handheld immersion blender (or if you don’t have one, a regular blender), puree the peaches in the blender jar until smooth.  Slowly pour the 7-Up into the jar and then the prosecco and rum.  Just using a spoon stir everything together.

Pour into your ice cream maker and let it do its thing until you get a slushy consistency.  This is the ice cream maker Rock got for me and I used the sorbet mode for about 15 minutes.

Spoon into your glasses and then top with sangria.  Enjoy!

rock’s current obsession: mango lassi

We spent the day at the Mosaic festival in Regina yesterday and Rock’s love for mango lassi was reignited.  I am sure that this is nowhere close to how an authentic lassi is made but it worked out well; ice cold and refreshing.  And dare I say very healthy!?

a good handful of frozen mango chunks  /  roughly 1/2 cup of fat-free plain yogurt  /  about a tsp of agave syrup  /  milk (use as much to make it the consistency you want.)  I am trying out skim lactose-free milk for the first time since my body is intent on rejecting milk (although it still lets me love cheese so I won’t complain too much!) but use whatever you usually drink

And then you really don’t need instructions for this.  Just toss altogether in a magic bullet or blender and whiz until smooth.  Rock says YUM.