Cranberry-Ginger White Wine Cocktails

Today, I learned a very important lesson about making cocktails for a blog: You end up with a lot of cocktails. Delicious cocktails. In the middle of the day (not on purpose, that’s when the light is best!). But I suppose there are worse predicaments in life.

Especially when the cocktail in question contains ginger simple syrup! Though ginger and I have not always been the best of friends (chunks of ginger tend to hide in Cantonese cuisine ughhh), I recently became obsessed with ginger flavor in cocktails. It all started when I tried a sip of my friend’s cocktail at the Bar Belmont. It was so good that I almost stole the rest of his drink. The secret behind the delicious? GINGER BEER.

Ever since that night, I haven’t let up on my ginger cocktail rampage. I’ve tried moscow mules, ginger beer with bourbon, and I thought it was time to finally make my own. In the spirit of Thanksgiving, I decided to add cranberries for a festive, tasty touch (and some color)!

Sparkling Mint Lemon-Limeade

This weekend was pretty fancypants. Happy Centennial, Rice!

And, like most trips to Houston (or anywhere, really), it was filled with my favorite foods and drinks. Like the mint lemonade at Tiny Boxwoods, which is bursting with insanely refreshing sweet lemony flavor and just a hint of mint.

It also doesn’t hurt that Tiny Boxwoods actually opens out onto a nursery! No, not the kind with babies, but rather, the garden/nature variety. Absolutely gorgeous. But don’t get me wrong, I think babies are gorgeous as well!

Anyway. In addition to my favorite mint lemonade, I also drank Perrier on ice with lime juice for the first time and it. was. SO GOOD. Which is weird, because, 1) I am so not a fancy Perrier drinking kind of girl (who can afford it??), and 2) I don’t generally like plain sparkling water. I find the taste weirdly salty.

Side Note: Clearly Canadian Sparkling Water, on the other hand, is a totally different story. Did anyone else love this stuff?? Strawberry Melon all the way, man.

My sudden palate change may have been related to the glasses of white wine I was also drinking (hey, all in the name of celebrating Rice!)…but perhaps not. I say that because I continued thinking about that Perrier all the way home. Not a joke.

So, because I am quite the indecisive person, I decided to combine all of my favorite drinks from this past weekend for you into Sparkling Mint Lemon-Limeade! You should really be flattered, because this venture required me to finally find the power switch for fix my ice dispenser.

 

But it was so totally worth it.