Last Friday I was listening the radio on my way home from taking the dog to the Beltline and was delighted to find out that it was National Tequila Day. I felt confident it was a made-up (i.e. fake marketing) holiday but I also felt that it would such a shame not to celebrate it! Plus, it was my last week of teaching for the summer term (which has been a serious sprint: five weeks to teach writing and multimodal communication! It was fun but I was excited to be done.). Thus, it seemed like the stars had aligned for a tequila-oriented celebration.
After many years of not drinking cocktails, due to anxiety about what the alcohol contained (in terms of allergens) and the fear of feeling terrible after, even after only one drink (again due to allergens), I’ve recently rediscovered tequila and experimented with margaritas. I’ve been totally delighted to find out that with good ingredients and less sugar, I wind up without a hangover after a couple margaritas. This has been great news for me because I love margaritas–especially with the salt rim–and my birthday is Cinco de Mayo and so I’ve missed celebrating with an appropriate and festive drink pairing.
For national tequila day, I wanted something a little different though. So, I poked around the internet and found Palomas and a lovely recipe from Bon Apetit. I made one key change to the recipe, switching out club soda for grapefruit flavored bubbly water and then slightly adjusted the rest a bit too. For the palomas, all the ingredients were fresh squeezed, which meant I finally bought myself a small juicer (which cost me $5 and has already payed for itself in usage. I can’t believe how long I’ve waited to buy one–like 5 years.).
Mine didn’t look as pretty as the Bon Apetit ones, but they were so good and refreshing and felt very celebratory. Inspired by the drinks, we had burrito bowls for dinner (with cauliflower rice as a base), but that’s a different post. All in all, it was quite a delightful success and I’m so grateful to National Tequila Day for providing the motivation/inspiration.
The Recipe: Palomas
This combo will make 2 medium-sized palomas. Take a grapefruit wedge and rub the rim of each glass and then rub sea salt on them. Then, squeeze the grapefruit and lime into a container and pour half of the juice they produce into each glass. Add a pinch of sugar to each and mix it all together. Then, add the tequila and the grapefruit bubbly water to fill the glass. Add a couple cubes of ice and toast away!
- 1 grapefruit
- 1 lime
- Pinch of sugar
- 1 shot of tequila
- Grapefruit-flavored bubbly water
Kitchen Escapes & Escapades 