Bora Bora

For Valentine's Day I decided that instead of going out to an expensive restaurant that I would make Whitney dinner. So I decided to make Chinese which I am pretty sure is one of her favorite foods. So I decided to make Kung Pao chicken. Well I wanted a drink that would go well with it and decided on the Bora Bora. I had never made this before and didn't know how it tasted, but it turned out to be one of our favorites. It is contains pineapple juice, lemon juice, grenadine, and passion fruit juice. You can use a cherry and/or a pineapple slice as a garnish as well. Finding straight up passion fruit juice proved a bit difficult, but we finally found one that Welch's makes. The recipe is below. It tasted great with the spicy food and is great all by itself.

Bora Bora

5 oz Pineapple juice
3 oz Passion Fruit juice
1/2 oz lemon juice
1/2 oz grenadine

Put juices in shaker with ice and then strain into a high ball glass.

New Found Favorites

This past week I have found a new favorite drink mix and a new ingredient. We were at Macey's and decided to buy a Cosmopolitan mixer and it was pretty good. We had tried to make Cosmos before, but these were really good. I also bought some Non-Alcoholic Triple Sec. Triple sec is a orange flavoured liquer that is triple distilled from dried orange skins. It is mostly used as a sweetening agent in its non-alcoholic form. We have used it with the Cosmo mix and it is great. I have used 2 or 3 ounces of the mixer, 1 oz of water and an ounce of the triple sec. Everyone that has tried it so far has really liked it.

Tips For A Well-Stocked Bar

Now that our first mocktail party is in the past I have been looking at what ingredients make a well-stocked bar for mocktails. The biggest thing to consider is what you will use the most. Anything extra can be bought when you are having a party or want to try something new. The main ingredients I have tried to keep in my bar are mostly fruit juices and mixers that we enjoy. The juices I have are pineapple, grapefruit, cranberry, orange, peach. We also like Pina Colada, Mai Tai, and Mojito mixers. Club soda, Sprite, and Ginger Ale are also key ingredients for mocktails. I keep a bit of simple bar syrup on hand as well. It is really simple to make and helps make any drink sweeter if desired. A cocktail shaker is really nice to have though not totally necessary for drinks made with mixers. But any drink you make by mixing different juices will warrant a cocktail shaker. The cocktail shaker not only mixes your drinks, but also chills them relatively fast if you do not want your drink served on the rocks. And of course for the real effect of a cocktail you will want fancy glasses. Right now we have low ball glasses and stemmed wine glasses, but I would eventually like to get martini glasses and margarita glasses. Garnishes and garbage also add something extra to your mocktail experience, but not necessary for everyday use. I mostly save that for parties.

Drink recipes...Finally!!

Well my plan to post the drink recipes the next day did not work out so well. Whitney and I both got colds a few days apart and then tests creeped up all in the same week. So here they are:

Classy Cricket

4 oz. Pineapple Juice
1 oz. Creme de coconut
splash of cranberry juice
2 oz grenadine
Maraschino cherry

Add all ingredients into a cocktail shaker with ice. Shake well and pour into glass. Add cherry for garnish.

Mai Tai

4 oz Mai Tai mix
4 oz Club Soda
splash of grenadine

Pour mix and club soda over ice in a glass. Mix well. Add a splash of grenadine and let it sink to the bottom.

First Mocktail Party

Well with Halloween also came our first mocktail party. Whitney really wanted a Halloween party and I really wanted mocktails so we decided to combine the two. We did not have the amount of guest we would have liked, but my brother Craig, his girlfriend Brynn, and my sister Brie at least showed up. I made a variety of mocktails and the most popular were the Mai Tai and Classy Cricket. I think we will have to work on the Cosmo recipe a bit because it was way way too tart to drink. I think the trick will be more Cranberry juice and less Lime and Lemon juices. But I will post the recipes for Mai Tai and Classy Cricket tomorrow. We also had strawberry margaritas, but I put them in the freezer too late and then we forgot about them. So needless to say Whitney and I will be having a lot of margaritas this week. We also have a lot of mocktail ingredients left over because we were planning on about 13 people but only 5 showed up. So yeah we are pretty popular haha. But it was still a lot of fun and I can't wait to do another mocktail party in the future.

Final Purchases and Alcohol Removed Wines

Well yesterday I finally ordered the last pieces we needed for our Halloween/Mocktail party. I ordered some liquor pourers (pictured above). They are pretty much oil pourers, but geared more toward the pouring of liquor. While we won't be using them for liquor (obviously), but it is nice to have those when pouring mixes and juices because it doesn't come out as fast and is easier to measure correctly. I also thought it would be a good idea to get a quart-sized bottle to put our bar syrup in since it is currently in a WSU water bottle haha. But we are finally done with all our purchasing for our home bar. (For now hehe) Along with Mocktails we also have tried a couple alcohol removed wines. The two we have tried are White Zinfandel and Chardonnay. Whitney liked the white zinfandel, but not the chardonnay. I did not like either of them. I am not a big fan of the fermented taste. My brother and sister were visiting when we opened the zinfandel and I think they liked it. I think I will just stick with the sparkling cider and grape juice when I want to feel fancy. If you ever feel the urge to try some, we got ours at Harmons by the rest of the mixers.

We're Ready

We have been preparing for our first Halloween/Mocktail party and we are pretty much set. Whitney was in charge of the decorations and I was in charge of the drinks. We both collaborated on the food. We were able to get the decorations pretty quick, but I thought it was weird that most stores had more Christmas decorations available than Halloween! Our first step in getting the drinks was deciding what drinks we wanted to have. Since we have never done this before we just searched a few databases for drinks that sounded good to us. We then made a list of ingredients and headed off to a few stores. We were able to get most of the ingredients at Wal-Mart and Target. This time we went more for a 'from scratch' approach for our mocktails and got a lot of juices, ginger ale, and club soda. We also got a few mixes that we hadn't tried before to see if they were any good. I am really excited to try the different recipes and get other people's opinions on what they like.