juicin'...

It was Sunday afternoon and I felt the need to get domestic.

I had recently purchased a H-U-G-E bag of limes at CostCo and while I knew I couldn't get all the way through the whole bag I still had to ... well, get through the whole bag.

So, I decided to juice them up and make ice cubes...



Here's what it looked like... first I put pressure on the limes (with my palm) and rolled them on the cutting board. According to Rachel Ray this helps break up the juice sacks inside so they are primed to release all their juices.



I have also found that sticking a fork in the lime helps to anchor the lime in my hand while I squeeze it. And then you can move the fork from side to side to help get more juice out.







A couple hours later...





Now I have lime juice ready at a moment's notice, for anything... my chicken tortilla soup, or a margarita, or a pear pizzazz... or , or , or... just took a little elbow grease. (And Dawn... thanks for the idea! You're a genius!)





enjoy your time in the kitchen...

Pear Pizzazz...

Now, doesn't THAT look refreshing?! Well, it is!

Here's where I started... pear vodka, tonic water, lime and ice.



Ice in the bottom of the glass... squeeze in a little bit of lime from a small wedge...



Add a splash of pear vodka... (my new favorite!)





Fill up the rest of the glass with tonic...



No stirring required...



2 tonic tips:

(thank you Dawn and Kris!)

1) Always use cold tonic. It fizzes less when you pour it in the glass. And becuase it's more fizzy it stays fizzy longer.
2) Pour in all of your other ingredients first, then top off the drink w/ tonic. If you pour other ingredients on top of the tonic the fizz goes away.



And trust me... you want the fizz, the pizzazz. Otherwise it's just not "pizzazz-y". And who wants that?!



enjoy your time in the kitchen...