Aloe Vera Lemonade

I was doing some blog surfing when I came across this recipe for aloe vera lemonade and since I have an aloe plant I decided to give it a try. I found the recipe over at The Thrifty Mama and, as usual, deviated from the recipe a bit. The recipe calls for lemon juice and of course I couldn't just pour it out of a bottle. I had to buy lemons and squeeze them myself. Since lemons are in season right now I was able to buy them at a fair price. If you'd rather used bottled lemon juice, like the original recipe suggests, I would advise against buying Realemon (no offense meant to Thrifty Mama!) Firstly, Realemon comes in a plastic bottle (my awareness of plastic and avoidance of said plastic is ever increasing) and secondly it's lemon juice from concentrate. We can do better! For cooking I purchase Italian Volcano Lemon Juice which is also available at Costco. It's in a glass bottle, it's 100% juice AND it's organic... sold!

Cucumber-Mint Water

Earlier this year I purchased a Jack LaLanne Power Juicer. My thought process was that it would help me drink healthier, because I rarely drink water and I'm usually drinking some sort of artificially flavored juice. I don't know what it is about the taste of water, but I just don't like it! I like something with flavor. So I started juicing and I juiced everything under the sun! Let me tell you, fresh fruit juice is way better than anything you can buy in the store. I then experimented with mixing some veggies into my fruit juices and I discovered that cucumber added a very cool and refreshing note. So when I came across a cucumber-mint water recipe in my Fine Cooking magazine I just had to try it out. You don't necessarily need a juicer for this recipe, but you will need a blender.

Organic Vodka

Until recently I didn't know that organic vodka existed. A couple months ago I walked into my local liquor store and there happened to be a woman inside giving out samples of various alcohols. She had me sample a citrus flavored vodka and then told me that it was organic. It tasted smooth and less harsh than any other vodka that I had previously tried. So I picked up a bottle of Moon Mountain vodka.

How is vodka organic? Well it turns out that Moon Mountain vodka is made from organic grain. You can learn more about their brand here. Just last night I tried their Wild Raspberry flavor which was equally delicious!

Bloody Mary with Bacon Vodka

This is my first culinary related post and I figured that as such it should somehow involve bacon. I recently stumbled upon a recipe for bacon vodka. You can find the recipe here:
http://www.browniepointsblog.com/2008/01/20/homemade-bacon-vodka/
(I always try to give credit where credit is due). The suggestion is made to try using it in a Bloody Mary. This intrigued me. So I fried up some bacon, waited for 3 weeks and just today filtered it. I tried it in a Bloody Mary and it is delicious! There are so many different recipes out there for Bloody Marys and some of them have some out there ingredients. I've tailored my own Bloody Mary recipe and adding the bacon vodka to it makes it perfect! Here is my Bloody Mary: