Happy Hour

It's Friday! And it's after 5 o'clock! Time to celebrate.

We're having tacos for dinner tonight so I was planning to make margaritas, but then I thought - we've got all of the spearmint going ass wild in the garden, why not try mojitos?

I was never really into mojitos. I must not have had a very good one for my first experience, because the general idea is very appealing to me. I love fresh-tasting drinks that aren't too sweet. Anything with lime, mint, and club soda is a winner in my book so I figured it was time to give the mojito another shot. When I was in Guatemala with my sister B in March, she got me hooked on them. We were visiting this teeny tiny town on a lake and one of the restaurants had a Happy Hour special - 2 Mojitos for 25 Quetzales. That's about $1.50 per drink. Score. We ditched Seth, who was recovering from having his wisdom removed (I'm a good wife) and had a lovely afternoon sipping mojitos in Panajachel.

Back to today. Time for some homemades. I picked a bunch of spearmint from the garden and rinsed it off. Next I gathered my white rum, limes, powdered sugar, and club soda. Most recipes call for granulated white sugar, but I found one for an authentic "Cuban mojito" that used the powdered sugar and I figured that would dissolve more easily. I wasn't about about to whip up some simple sugar. Ain't nobody got time for that at 5 o'clock on a Friday.

First, I placed 4-6 mint leaves in my glass.

There they are - mint leaves, fresh from the garden in my whiskey tumbler.
I'm going to need to buy some official mojito glasses.

Next, I added about a teaspoon of powdered sugar and the juice from half a large lime. I also threw in a small lime wedge because one of the recipes mentioned that the bitterness of the lime's "white pith" was important. No idea what that means, but I didn't want to take any chances.

The next step is to "muddle" all of that together. It sounds really intimidating on all of the recipes. Apparently it's really easy to fuck up on this part and mojito snobs can really distinguish a good muddler from a bad one. I just used a little plastic spoon and squished everything together. Works for me.

Finally, I filled the glass with crushed ice, added 1.5 ounces of white rum and topped it off with club soda. The recipe said to use 2 ounces of rum, but I know myself - I'll pound this drink so it's definitely a good idea for me to keep it light.

MmmHmm look at that gorgeous green color.

It's pretty good for my first try! I can taste the mint and the lime and it's definitely not too sweet for me. Some people, like Seth, might like a bit more sugar but I think it's delicious as is. I can't wait until the limes on our tree are ready to be picked! Too bad we don't have any rum in the garden - I'm going to need to go get another bottle if I'm going to be sharing these with everyone at dinner tonight!

Buffalo Chicken Wonton Cups

The NBA playoffs have been going on for the past few weeks and Seth's favorite team is still in the running. This means that for about three hours every other night, I don't see or speak to him. Don't get me wrong - I like sports. Some sports. I enjoy watching football - both American and soccer. But to be honest, my interest in sports doesn't really go far beyond my interest in what we'll be snacking on during the game. I love, love, love game day snacking. Even though I don't really care about the games, the snacks just seem to taste better.

Last night was another game night, so when Seth told me his brother and girlfriend would be coming over to watch the game I seized the opportunity to try some new recipes. We decided on some classic Guacamole (Seth's specialty) using cilantro and jalapenos from our garden, hot spinach and artichoke dip, and something with buffalo chicken (my favorite snack).

For the "Hot Spinach Artichoke Dip", I used the recipe from SkinnyTaste.com. It was super easy to make and it turned our really well. I'm not sure how it differs from a non-skinny recipe because I've never made any version before, but this didn't taste "skinny" at all. I realized later that I forgot to add the salt and pepper, but it still tasted pretty delicious!

Like I said, buffalo chicken is one of my favorite snacks/meals. I love everything buffalo - grilled buffalo chicken sandwiches, buffalo chicken cheesesteaks, buffalo wings, boneless buffalo wings, buffalo chicken dip...you get the idea. Buffalo chicken dip is easy to make, but you need a vessel for eating it and that's usually bread or chips. I wanted to do something a little lighter. I got the idea to make buffalo chicken bites using wonton wrappers from a Buffalo Chicken Cupcake recipe at Emily Bites and then I modified it using my own recipe.

Buffalo Chicken Wonton Cups
2 lbs. boneless skinless chicken breasts
1 bottle Buffalo Sauce (I used Frank's)
3 oz. shredded cheddar cheese (sharp, mild, low-fat, whatever you like)
3 oz. cream cheese (I used reduced fat)
1/3 cup chopped red onion
1/3 cup chopped celery
2 lbs. of oil (I used sesame)
wonton wrappers (pack of 48, I used about 40)
ranch dressing for dipping

Frank's RedHot Buffalo Wing sauce is the best. I found Nasoya wonton wrappers 

in the produce section of my grocery store.

Place thawed chicken in a crock pot and cover with about 1 cup of the Buffalo Sauce. I used more, but you can keep adding it along the way to suit your taste. Cook on low for 6 hours or high for 3-4 hours. Once the chicken is cooked, use two forks to shred the chicken. You can turn your crock pot to "warm" at this point. Add the shredded cheddar, cream cheese, and extra buffalo sauce (if you want) and mix until the cheese is melted and well combined. To make the cups, press the wonton wrappers into cupcake pans the same way you would with a cupcake liner (one wrapper per cupcake hole). Brush each wonton with a little bit of oil. Put them in the oven (mine was set to 350 F) until they are slightly brown and crispy. Put all of your wrappers on a platter, fill with buffalo chicken mix, and top with onion and celery. I served the ranch dip on the side.

They were really tasty and they turned out super cute! Everyone loved them. I'm not a health expert, but I don't think they're awful as far as typical party snacks go. I used a lot less cheese than other buffalo chicken dip recipes I've seen. The vegetable toppings also gave a good fresh, crisp taste.  I will definitely be adding this recipe into my party foods rotation!

Spearmint Smoothie

I am obsessed with fruit smoothies. Or slushies, maybe. Is it still called a smoothie if it doesn't have any yogurt? Either way, I love them. I really don't like eating fruit. It's not that I don't like the taste of fruit, it's just that I don't really get excited about it. I want to eat it because having a healthy diet is important to me, but I guess I'm just more of a vegetable person. However, itt turns out I actually enjoy eating fruit when it's in this blended, icy form!

When we were in Guatemala in March to visit my mother-in-law, we went to a little restaurant that specialized in fresh smoothies and sandwiches. My sister and I became obsessed with the smoothies. We would order different drinks and analyze them to figure out which ingredient made them so freaking delicious so that we could learn to re-create them at home. Our studies indicated that the pineapple, passion fruit, and spearmint were most often the key ingredients.

I started having smoothies every morning since we returned from our trip. I thought it would be awesome to be able to make my own smoothies at home using "local and organic" ingredients. It is pretty awesome. We already have a bunch of pineapple plants at our house, but it grows slowly (and only bears one fruit per plant) so I often have to substitute with store bought or frozen. Spearmint from the store usually goes bad before I get to use it all, so I made sure to plant some in our garden. It's going wild! I'm never going to run out.

Today was the first time I used the spearmint from the garden and hot damn this smoothie turned out fantastic. I don't use official recipes so my smoothies don't have names. We'll call this one Citrus Spearmint Smoothie. It is seriously delicious. The spearmint flavor is unreal.

Citrus Spearmint Smoothie

Citrus Spearmint Smoothie

2 cups ice

6-8 oz. of juice or water (any kind - I used grapefruit today)

1/4 to 1/3 cup pineapple 

1/4 cup blueberries

1/3 cup peaches

1 orange

10 spearmint leaves

You can use fresh or frozen fruits. Put all of the ingredients into a blender and blend until nice and smooth. If it's too thick, you can just add more juice or water.

This recipe made about 2-3 cups of smoothie. Normally, I would drink the whole thing myself but Seth wanted to try our homegrown spearmint so I shared it. It has about 2-3 servings of fruit which I think it pretty good considering I used to eat only 2-3 servings of fruit per week! And did I mention that it's really delicious?

How Our Garden Grew

Seth and I like to cook and we try to use as much fresh food as possible. It can get really expensive. We already have a few fruits trees in our yard, so we figured it would be a great idea to try growing our own vegetables and herbs as well!

Our two huskies love to dig in the mulch, so a regular garden wouldn't work for us. I had seen plans for raised gardens all over Pinterest and Seth agreed that it looked like a simple, fun project for us to work on together. We measured the area we planned to use for the garden and headed off to Home Depot.

We wanted to have two 4 x 4 or 4 x 5 beds and we spent a good amount of time browsing the lumber aisles to see what types of wood and cut would work for us. Admittedly, we took the easy way out. We found pre-cut 1 x 12 x 4 pieces of pine board for less than $7 a piece. Not too bad. We already had all of the tools - hammer, nails, screws - that we needed to build the boxes, so we moved on to the garden center. In order to keep our dogs out of the beds, we also bought some garden fencing (something like this). Finally we grabbed some river pebbles to use as ground cover around the beds and picked out a selection of herbs and vegetables, both potted and seeds.

Seth put the beds together (with a little help from me), first using nails but then switching to screws. The ground isn't really level so the beds tilt and it was putting some pressure on the front boards. The screws do a better job of holding it all together. Brackets would work well too!

You can see that we underestimated the amount of top soil we would want at first, so we had to head back to Home Depot for more.

All finished! On the left we planted two types of tomatoes, jalapeños, green peppers, and two rows from carrots from seeds. On the right we have basil, oregano, chives, cilantro, lemon thyme, spearmint, and chamomile from seeds.

Binky and Bear love their new garden. The potted plant in the middle is a lime tree that has been planted to the left of the garden. I'm so excited for that - I can make limonada con soda and fresh margaritas whenever I want!

It's been almost two weeks since we planed everything and you can see the carrots starting to come in along the front of the left bed! Bear approves of the progress.

All in all, I think the gardens probably cost a bit more than we expected but like I said we took the easy way out. We're really happy with how they look. We might choose to stain and seal the wood or use cedar next time, but we'll see how these hold up through the hot, rainy summer. Yard work is a whole lot more fun now that we have something to look forward to. We already enjoyed our first garden meal - homemade pasta sauce made with fresh basil and oregano. I can't wait for the jalapeños and the limes!