Man it's hottttt in Texas these days! Today, the temperature is supposed to go up to 99...and that's not even the heat index, which is almost always a good ten degrees higher than that! You simply have to be near a body of water to go outdoors, or in our case playing in a sprinkler, otherwise you can't bear the heat. The other way I am surviving this summer is by whipping up frozen cocktails and drinking them like they are water and you are totally welcome to join in on the fun too! My frozen strawberry basil mules are so easy and are absolutely necessary in getting us through the last months of this scorching heat!
Is anyone else obsessed with tomatoes right now? Every year when summer rolls around and tomatoes get sweet and delicious I try to eat all the tomatoes that I can get my hands on! When I was pregnant I ate at least three tomatoes a day with garlic salt and had to make myself stop so I wouldn't get a mouth ulcer! Lately, I have been putting tomatoes into everything like my Greek Chicken Pasta Salad, Panzanella Cantaloupe Caprese Skewers...and now even my cocktails! My tomato basil crush is going to have you loving tomatoes in a whole new way!
Yesterday was one of those days... We started off with a doctor's appointment for Parks in the morning which went great, but then messed up his nap schedule for the whole day. And by messed up I mean he boycotted naps for the rest of the day. This led to me chasing around a now mobile baby, eating two meals standing up, and trying to shoot two recipes all the while keeping a tired baby from being cranky! Needless to say I was ready for Canean to get home last night so mommy could have a break. Can I just say, thank goodness for cocktails and my mom's 5 o'clock citrus vodka soda!
I've been out of the cocktail game for seven months now, and I'll admit my experimentation has gone down because I guess it just isn't as fun when you can't drink your concoctions. That on top of being in and out of town, and slightly preoccupied with baby stuff, I have failed you in the cocktail department. But lucky for you, my hubby has recently decided to make up for my lack of mixology in the house and has starting mixing up some cocktails of his own! The southern cucumber happens to be his new favorite and is the perfect drink to finish out summer!
In the South, you grow up drinking sweet iced tea. It's a staple at everyone's house and more than likely if you go and visit someone, sweet tea will be offered to you. In my opinion, you should never pass up homemade sweet iced tea. It's so refreshing, tooth achingly sweet, and I wouldn't have it any other way. I don't keep sweet tea in the house at all times because Canean and I would drink entirely too much of it, but I thought this week a peach sweet iced tea with bourbon sounded like the perfect cocktail to dive into summer and to channel my Tennessee roots.
If ever there were a trio that was meant to be together, it is sweet tea, peaches, and bourbon. The flavors pair effortlessly together creating the ultimate refreshing cocktail! Peaches are just coming into season meaning they are getting sweeter and sweeter by the week and that means I am entering my peach obsession phase. Which apparently I have had since I was a little girl. My mom will tell you that I would eat as many peaches as she would give me and not much has changed!
Sparkling Blueberry Basil Lemonade
It's getting incredibly hot outside in Texas and I've been thinking about getting a baby pool and parking me and my belly in it for the whole summer. It's the kinda hot where you wake up in the morning and can feel the heat rising as the minutes pass. And...it's not even at hot compared to what the rest of the summer will bring! I have gotten used to the fact that I'll basically be sweaty all summer long, but then again Louisiana prepared me for humid and hot days where your skin never dries. The only thing to do is to hydrate. This can mean drinking water all day, or it can also mean sipping on something really delicious to help you deal with the heat. My sparkling blueberry basil lemonade is going to make the heat a little more bearable this summer and if you spike it, it can help with a whole bunch of other stuff too...know what I mean?
Whenever I drink lemonade, it always takes me back to when I was a little girl sitting on the side of the road, where I would sell painted rocks (one of a kind, I assure you) and I would sell homemade lemonade to the neighbors.
