Friday, July 22, 2011

Fizzy summer refresher has lime and vodka,
and 'how can you go wrong with that?'

“Why are your blueberries floating nicer than mine?” I asked my husband, jealous of how the berries in his glass of Ginger-Lime Fizz with Blueberries (click for the recipe) seemed perfectly suspended in different spots.
   The blueberries in my drink were clumped together near the middle of the glass.
   It was a silly complaint, really, just prompted by visual appeal of the scattered blueberries in my husband's glass.
   The drink itself is delicious and refreshing, and where the blueberries are in it have no bearing on the fine taste of the final product.
   My husband pointed out that the main appeal of this drink is that it has lime and vodka, and “how can you go wrong with that?”
   Indeed.
   Only one thing puzzled me about the recipe. It directs to make each serving in a tall, ice-filled glass.
   It doesn’t make sense, because one serving doesn’t even fill a 1/3 of the bottom of a tall glass with ice in it.
   There are two ways to combat that – either serve the drink in a small highball glass, or double the serving in a medium-tall glass.
   The amount of vodka in each drink may seem too strong as well, so make sure to sample the first one you make to see that it tastes right and adjust as needed.
   Note that the recipe makes 10 servings. I halved the ingredient amounts, and that resulted in four tall-ish ice-filled glasses of drinks.
   The recipe I linked to above is on a recipe-sharing site, but it’s exactly the same as the one I used from the July/August 2011 issue of Vegetarian Times magazine (save a couple of spelling mistakes).
   Fresh ginger is thinly sliced, and brought to a boil with sugar and water in a medium saucepan and then simmered for 10 minutes.
   The mixture is cooled, then poured through a strainer. The solid-free liquid that results is combined with fresh lime juice and blueberries.
   For each drink, blueberry syrup is poured into a glass, then vodka and club soda is added. Though the recipe doesn’t say to do this, I stirred each drink and put straws in them before serving.

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