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
Get ready for the deviled egg recipe that you’ll be taking to picnics all summer long… Continue reading
This is one of those recipes that I mentally added to our blog calendar the moment we picked eggs as our ingredient of the season. Continue reading
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
Read on for the 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.
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.
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.
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.
*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.
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.
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.
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.
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. 😉
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
Today we’re excited to inject a bit of science into this ingredient series!
You may know this as the “Naked Egg Experiment”. You may have even done this experiment as a kid. In this post we take that basic experiment and add a few more fun steps.
Gratitude improves our existence. There is no argument there. Gratitude helps us sleep better at night, cope during difficult times, and leads to better overall health. Practicing gratitude and writing in a gratitude journal each day is one way to ensure we reap the benefits of gratitude. If you already have a gratitude habit, adding a writing element will fit seamlessly into your routine. If you aren’t in the habit of expressing gratitude, let’s learn how to do so through journaling and what better time to begin than Thanksgiving, a holiday built upon gratitude. We’ll cover techniques that will both fit into the busiest of schedules and those with a little more time to devote to gratitude journaling.
Journaling our gratitude is another way to solidify the gratitude habit loop we are trying to employ. Remember, a habit has three parts: the cue, the routine, and the reward. The cue for gratitude journaling should be something that happens every single day. Maybe you always wake up and drink a cup of coffee. You could use the coffee brewing aroma as your cue to open your gratitude journal and begin your day’s entry. The routine is the act of your journaling, which we will talk about a bit more, and the reward can be enjoying a freshly brewed cup of coffee or the feeling that washes over you after you internalize what it means to be grateful, even for the little things in this life. So long as you clearly define your cue, remember to employ your routine, and follow up with a reward, eventually your habit loop will begin to emerge on its own.
Let’s circle back to our routine: journaling. Journaling doesn’t imply that you need to sit down with a pen and a notebook every night and scrawl for hours, unloading everything that happened in your mind and in reality that day. There are many ways to journal and certainly a technique that can work for everyone, even the busiest among us. If you aren’t keen on the idea of journaling or you don’t think you have enough time, start by bullet journaling. Simply jot down a few bullet points of gratitude each day. It’s as simple as that. If you’re really pressed for time you could write down three words, that’s it, just three words! That alone would constitute as a gratitude journal and a gratitude habit so long as you are consistent and add an entry each day.
If you are intrigued by the idea of a gratitude journal and would like to make it an enjoyable piece of each day, you can choose a pretty journal, pick out a cozy seat, and set the mood for journaling. Light a candle, pour a glass of wine or brew a cup of tea. Play a favorite song. Even if you only plan to write a few sentences about each grateful moment of your day, setting the vibe for your routine acts as part of the cue. Soon enough, you will look forward to the moment in your day when you put on your slippers, curl up on the couch, and pull out your journal. It’s more than just the act of writing, it’s about the mood it evokes. In this case, setting the vibe of your journaling session is also partly acting as a reward.
When you consciously choose to craft special moments in your day, you will soon begin to crave those cues and then act on them. You will look forward to the reward of feeling grateful and blessed in your life. Starting a gratitude journal doesn’t have to take time out of your day if you don’t want it to. It can be as simple as a note in your phone where you type out a few points of gratitude each day. It can also be a new part of your daily routine that does take time, time for you to enjoy the present moment and soak in the goodness of your day. The choice is yours, but either way, you will be improving your overall existence by solidifying a gratitude habit.