Sour Wildflower

Eggs are our ingredient of the season. That link will take you to our archive of egg posts.

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I still can’t believe how much I love these cocktails with a creamy foam created by egg whites. While I understand the chemistry behind the egg white + acid + simple syrup mixture, I still can’t get the drink names straight. Continue reading

Bento Box Eggs

Eggs are our ingredient of the season. That link will take you to our archive of egg posts.

Have you heard or seen the crazy awesome bento box lunches that Japanese mom’s make for their kids? Apparently some moms spend hours every morning crafting these works of art… we aren’t suggesting that you do that, but we do have a couple of fun tools that can make snack time more fun and funny.  Continue reading

Pisco Sour

Eggs are our ingredient of the season. That link will take you to our archive of egg posts.
pisco_sour_title Read on for the most popular hipster of all egg white cocktails: the pisco sour!

Last month we shared the recipe for a lavender lemon gin fizz. That post provides a simple introduction to egg white cocktails. I LOVED that drink, but since I finished the lavender simple syrup, it was time to try something new.

I feel like pisco sours have had a resurgence lately. Really, it seems like all sours are back in fashion, and I’m glad that we didn’t totally miss the boat. With their citrus, sugar, and creamy egg whites, I think you’ll find that these drinks are easy to sip.

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Pisco

Pisco is an un-aged brandy produced from fermented grapes. It is currently produced in the wine-making regions of Peru and Chile, where it was developed by Spanish settlers in the 1500s. I bought a color-less pisco from Peru, but other varieties may be a yellow to golden color.

There is a bit of a standoff between both countries when it comes to the liquor and the cocktail. They both claim to be the original of pisco and they both claim the cocktail as their national drink.

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Pisco Sour

The pisco sour was developed in Lima, Peru in the 1920s by an American bartender BUT it was a Peruvian bartender who added the egg whites and bitters! The Chilean version is slightly different in that it usually doesn’t include the egg white or bitters and uses powdered sugar.

There are many pisco sour recipes online, and you’ll likely notice one other big difference between the recipes : some call for lemons while others call for limes! Traditionally, limes are used in the Peruvian and Chilean pisco sours, BUT the International Bartenders Association’s recipe uses lemons.

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The Wikipedia article on pisco sours goes into great detail about the history of the drink and its nationality… it’s a fun read if you want to go down that rabbit hole. It’s moments like this when I love the collective power of the internet to create a volunteer-generated article about a single cocktail.

Ingredients & Instructions

  • 2 oz pisco
  • 3/4 oz lime (or lemon!) juice
  • 3/4 oz simple syrup (I’m heavy handed with my simple syrup, you can use less if desired)
  • 1 egg white
  • ice
  • Place the gin, simple syrup, lemon juice, and egg white in a blender. Blend on high for a quick 15-30 seconds. You’ll see a nice foam develop, and you’ll know that  the white is whipped the right amount.
  • Shake the blended ingredients with ice in a cocktail shaker.
  • Strain and pour over ice into an old fashion glass and enjoy!

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*You can read more about my use of a blender here. If you prefer to skip the appliances, then you can do that first shake in the cocktail shaker without ice (dry shake). Just make sure that you get a nice foam from your egg whites. Egg slime is not your sour’s friend.

Daily Dose of Exercise

Katie mentioned in our Welcome May post that we have an exercise initiative this month. We are challenging ourselves to a bit of exercise every single day. Remember when we were encouraging you to Get Outside? Well, it’s as easy as that. We’re not running marathons or working on a squat max, we’re simply trying to sweat a little bit each day of May and beyond. I made a simple goal in my phone for the month: be too busy for Facebook and sweat enough each day that a shower is necessary.

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Exercising is as simple as leaving your house and going for a walk. Start easy, start free.

You don’t need an intense workout plan and a protein smoothie to consider your activity exercise. Ease into this goal if you’re new to exercising on the regular. Make it enjoyable so that you stick with it.

  • Step out into your backyard or onto your city block and start walking. There you go, today’s exercise goal is started. Now keep going!
  • Pick activities that are free. You don’t need to pay for a walk. Shooting hoops doesn’t cost a dime. Dropping down in a plank while your kid is playing on the playground is free and potentially inspiring to other moms and dads.
  • Get to know your neighborhood. Where are there hidden opportunities for exercise? Maybe there are monkey bars at a nearby playground or a trail that needs to be hiked. Maybe it’s finally time to check out that rock climbing gym or the local yoga studio.

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Welcome May!

Near the beginning of every most months, you can find us checking in with what’s coming up on the calendar, both literally and figuratively.  You can find our archive of previous welcomes here, including May 2018May 2017May 2015, and May 2014.

Happy May! How are you feeling about it?

Usually, the spring weather, flower blossoms, and increasing hours of sunshine is enough to break anyone out of their mid-winter funk. Is it working for you? I’d like to say that it’s working for me, but this week’s snowstorm dragged us back into winter for a few days, and took me right back to 2017 when we got a few inches of snow on May 21st! Hopefully this year we’ll be planting flowers instead of shoveling snow at the end of the month.

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Summer Quiche

Eggs are our ingredient of the season, you can find our full archive of egg posts here.

This post was originally published in June of 2016. Follow our simple quiche formula, and it will make your mid-week dinners a piece of cake quiche. 😉

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If you follow us on Instagram, then you may have noticed that I’ve been having fun with a #quicheoftheweek hashtag. I don’t make and post a quiche *every* week, but that’s the goal, and I find that my quiche-making really ramps up in the spring and summer time. So, since today’s the first day of summer, I thought it was the perfect time to share my basic quiche formula. Continue reading