Saga Boy Mojitos

Free up yourself!


Let your hair down forget about work  for two days.


It's okay  the boss won't mind. 

If you have the good fortune to live in a country that places high value on the festival known as Carnival then you no doubt already know that this is the last hurrah before the austere and solemn occasion of Lenten prayer and fasting.

The debauchery though questionable is entirely legal.

Carnival is not complete without an inebriating drink of some sort and this one makes use of one of my favourite Angostura cocktails. You'll need a local variety of tangerines called portugals but feel free to substitute with tangerine or mandarin juice sweetened to your taste. 

Saga Boy Mojito
*Saga Boy is a Trinidadian term for a guy who is a playboy. He is very interested in his looks and dressing well and likes the ladies.
INGREDIENTS:
2 oz White Oak Rum
.5 oz Lime Juice
2 oz Portugal Juice
Mint Leaves (8-10)
Soda Water (splash)
2 dashes Angostura® orange bitters

METHOD: In a tall glass add white rum and lime juice then 8-10 fresh mint leaves. Using muddling stick gently bruise leaves then fill glass with cracked ice. Pour in the portugal juice, soda and Angostura orange bitters. Garnish with sprig of mint.

High Energy Refreshment

Lately I've been hearing voices.

These voices, they ask me to do things I don't want to do. Most recently these voices have been protesting the amount of time I spend blogging and they are also partially to blame for my delay in posting the reveal about that mystery fruit. I try but it's hard to ignore the voices. I swear, I can even hear them in my sleep!

Voice #1: " Mooooooom, may I have a snack?"
Voice #2: "Mummy, want milk?"
As yet, Voice #2 doesn't speak in complete sentences but punctuates by screaming.

Voice #1: "Moooooooom, he doesn't want to share. Make him share?"
Voice #2: SCREAMS.
Voice #1: "Mom, I want to look at Ben 10."
Voice #2: SCREAMS. ( He wants to look at Doki on Discovery Kids).

Voice #2's communication is more telepathic than verbal...

Voice #1:"OOOOW! Mom make him stop biting."

 ...and sometime physical.

Mom, sipping on her sanity saving smoothie, steps in to prevent a trip to the hospital.

Voice #1:"May I go outside?"

You've gotta know that I'm only pretending these voices are polite. Play along.

Voice #1: "Moooom! Make him stop following me!"
Voice #2: "Mine, bike!"
Voice #1: "Mom, why doesn't he share?"
Voice #2: "Mummy, naughty. Spank you."

Or maybe that was Voice #1 again. Heck, you know you're in trouble when you start mixing up the voices!
Voice #1: "Mom, I'm hungry."
Voice #2: "Mummy, foody!"

Listen. I'll be the first person to tell you that my children are insanely cute, super adorable and so very sweet. Such over the top sweetness can be described by the local phrase  "Sweet too bad". Yep, that's them. They are sweet to the point of badness.  As a matter of fact,  I think I have diabetes on account of all the sweetness or at the very least a toothache. 

The above conversation was only a sound bite of the before breakfast chatter so it's understandable that by mid-morning I am drained and looking for an atidepressant a pick me up. Smoothies are my favourite power breakfast or my  mid-morning energy boast.

Anyone can make smoothies from scratch. There is no need for the pre-mixed powdered stuff which is what you are served at a very popular and in my opinion over-priced, local coffee house. Smoothies are often marketed as a health food. However it never ceases to amaze me when people don't understand that there is nothing nutritious in a drink if your server is shoveling it out of a large plastic bucket. Even worse you're being charged a premium price for inferior ingredients. You might as well be drinking very expensive, milky Kool Aid. I have actually asked to see the ingredient list on the back of one of those buckets and could not pronounce or recognize most of the ingredients. Confused? Click here for an excellent guide to help you rate the quality of your favourite smoothie establishment.   

As long as the basic ingredients are ready to go, a smoothie can be prepared in minutes. Use plastic baggies and freeze fruit or even a mix of several fruit into individual portions. Ehow recommends that half a quart-sized plastic bag makes the perfect portion for one 16 ounce smoothie. I use full fat milk and yogurt in mine so one 8oz is good for me. Freezing fruit in season means that you can enjoy a smoothie even when the fruit is no longer available. Just remember to thaw frozen fruit slightly before putting it into your blender. 

I'm afraid my recipe isn't very original. In fact the idea to put oatmeal in my smoothie came from Food Blogga. Check out her Blueberry Breakfast Smoothie here. Yes strawberries are rather expensive but some people spend much more than this each week on those trashy coffee house drinks. I refuse to feel guilty about the one box of strawberries I buy each year. Have fun and make up your own smoothie combination. Feel like sharing? Take a picture with your mobile phone and post pictures of your own smoothies concoctions. I'd love to see. Share them on the Breakfast Lunch Dinner Punch Fan Page.

Strawberry-Banana Oatmeal - Breakfast Smoothie

1/2 cup rolled oats
1 cup yogurt

1 banana (cut up)
1 cup strawberries (fresh or frozen)
1-2 tablespoons honey
1 cup milk (or juice, soy or almond milk- whatever you prefer)

3-4 blocks ice

Directions

Purée everything in a blender or food processor until smooth and frothy. Add more milk to thin it out or more fruit and yogurt if it isn't thick enough.

Due to all the insanity on account of the kids being on vacation for the past two months, my post on the mystery fruit is not quite ready. Just one more week of vacation left.  In the meantime if you guessed that the mystery fruit fron the previous post was a Mammy apple, Hooray! You are  absolutely correct. More details on that and the delicious dessert still to come. 

Have a blooming good New Year!

Once again the time has come to say goodbye. How do you plan on saying farewell and ushering in the new year? Whatever your plans, I'm guessing it will include something bubbly.





Hold on to your glasses because I am about to blow you away with the most amazing garnish for your champagne. It's charming, elegant, exotic and fun.

Take a few minutes to appreciate the awesomeness that is sorrel in syrup.

Wait! Did you just do that typical dismissive West Indian thing?

You DID NOT just steups (suck your teeth at me)!!!

Sigh. You did, didn't you?

It might interest you to know that people pay upwards of $10.00 US for a jar of just eleven of these flowers.

That's right, $63.00 for eleven flowers. And you were grumbling about the high price of sorrel this year at $5.00 or .80 US cents per lb. Not 'steupsing' now are you?

Let us take some time to appreciate the brilliance of the man behind all of this. According to wildhibiscusflowers.com, Lee Etherington is the man who invented this product 11 years ago. Whaaaaaaat??? And all these years I thought God held the patent for wild hibiscus. Maybe Lee thinks he invented the concept of putting sorrel in syrup. Again, this is old news. In the Caribbean we have been boiling and preserving this thing in sugar long before Mr. Etherington was even born. It's an old recipe but Lee has looked at it in a new way. Bloody brilliant. Forget about, out with the old and in with the new. How about keeping the old and making it new.





Lee is to be admired for an effective marketing strategy and branding of this product. Just look at the pretty packaging and the hype he has created about the way these flowers open up, or appear to bloom when placed in an effervescent drink.

This is what the sorrel or wild hibiscus flower looks like. There are several varieties, even a white one but only two are shown here as these are the ones I used.




The one on the left that looks like a jester's hat is less tart and is better suited to making the traditional Caribbean, Christmas time sorrel drink. The flower on the right had a superior flavour when cooked. This is the one to use in your champagne cocktail since it is closed and will 'bloom' when you pour your drink.

Wild Hibiscus Flowers in Syrup (Hibiscus sabdariffa) or

Mock Caribbean Cranberry Sauce

*adapted from the Naparima Girl's High School Cookbook

Makes 2 8oz jars

1 lb sorrel

water

1 lb granulated sugar

1 stick of cinnamon

Remove the seeds from the flower (* I left the seeds in the flower because I wasn't sure that the flowers would not float to the top of the glass. That, and I was lazy.)

Put sorrel and the cinnamon stick in a pot and just barely cover with water. Bring to a boil and cook for 10 minutes until tender. Remove from the heat and measure sorrel. Add 1 cup of sugar for every cup of fruit and juice. Return to the heat and bring to the boil. Cook until water thickens to a thick syrup.

Pour into hot sterilized bottles.

Cooking for a longer time will make sorrel jelly which is good too. The jam does not take too long to cook and sets up rather quickly in about 15 minutes.

Wishing you all a blooming good 2010!