Dragon Fruit Rum Cocktails

This would be great for Valentine's Day! The color is so bright, fuchsia pink that it looks totally fake, but it's all from the dragon fruit. You chop it up and infuse the rum with it (dragon fruit has almost no flavor so it's really just for the color). It's super tasty and beautiful.

Makes 4
Ingredients:
1 cup white rum
1 dragon fruit, 3/4 chopped up and 1/4 reserved for garnish
1 tbsp superfine sugar
1 tsp honey
juice of 2 limes
juice of 2 tangerines
tonic water

Directions:
Mix the rum and the chopped dragon fruit in a bowl or measuring cup and let it sit at room temperature for an hour or two. It should turn a bright fuchsia.

Lime Ginger Soda

My brother in law got me the Thug Kitchen cookbook for Christmas last year, and it's hilarious. (Read more about it here.) It's totally vegan and has lots of healthy recipes, but it's riddles with curses words and is fun to read. I made this fresh soda from their recipe. It's so fresh and tasty and bright; great plain with soda water or with a little booze thrown in. 

Nectarine Shrub

I tried the shrub recipe with nectarines (instead of blackberries) last weekend - yum! It's also the most beautiful color, a bright pinky peach. I topped these with a little soda water to lighten them up. 

Pear-Bourbon Cocktail

Jamie loves bourbon so we always have it around. Last weekend, I wanted to make a special cocktail and I love pears, so enter the pear bourbon cocktail. My grocery actually had Goya pear nectar, which is delicious, so I was in luck. I made a ginger-spiced simple syrup to go with it, and topped it off with a thin slice of pear and then for fun some tiny pear hearts speckling the bottom. Good for Valentine's Day!

Seersucker

I'm just regretting that this is the only picture I took to show how great Seersucker was. I'd been meaning to go forever and Jamie took me for a Valentine's Day dinner. It was so. good. The cocktails were great, with a special smokey chipotle whiskey sour. The biscuits they served to start were flaky and fluffy and buttery. The star of the night was the fried chicken. Wow! It was so herbaceous and juicy, even though it was boneless. It was just so flavorful. I can't wait to go back!

Rooibos Ice Tea

I tasted this delicious rooibos ice tea at the DasDog stand at the Old Biscuit Mill in Cape Town. It was a hot summer morning and this was an amazingly refreshing hybrid between iced tea and juice. It was earthy from the rooibos and was sweetened from a bit of fresh orange juice and honey. I had been craving it since and finally got my act together to try to recreate it last weekend.