Green Fruit Sangria

Happy St. Patrick's Day!  Hope you are wearing green, I'd hate to have to hunt you down and pinch you just because you aren't!  So, true story, I come from an Irish family, on my dad's side.  In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if my dad took the day off of work just because it's St. Patrick's Day.  I guarantee he is wearing green, I guarantee he will be eating corned beef and cabbage and I also guarantee that he will be drinking at least one green beer today (he does have to get up tomorrow morning at 3am to go to work so he might be taking it easy on himself...wait, he's Irish, scratch that, I'm sure he'll be having several green beers.)  But, if, like me, you aren't a beer drinker (gasp! an Irish girl that doesn't like beer) then this Sangria might be a great alternative for you.  I considered throwing a generous shot of Irish whiskey into the recipe so I could call it an Irish Sangria, but alas, I didn't have any in my liquor cabinet (gasp! again).  Making a mental note to make that next year for St. Patrick's Day.  

Sangria has been my favorite drink for about a year now.  I don't really remember the first place I had one, but I do remember I tried it because I saw an advertisement sitting on the restaurant table and it looked really refreshing with all that fresh fruit. After that I was hooked.  We went on a cruise this past November and I was really disappointed that the cruise line (which shall remain nameless for fear of all my blog readers going on strike against them) didn't serve them!  With all that fresh fruit you would think it would be the perfect drink to serve on a topical vacation, wouldn't you think that???  Well I thought that, but nope!  And this was of course after I found out that they didn't have a sushi bar either! (Note to self, make a tropical Sangria to prove them wrong!)

Traditional Sangria is made with red wine, hence the name Sangria.  According to wikipedia, Sangria is named after the Spanish and Portuguese word for "bloodletting" because of its typical dark-red color. Personally, I prefer the red wine Sangria, which is really strange because I do not like to drink red wine on its own.  But, having said that, this Sangria, made with Moscato was pretty darn tasty too.  If you haven't tried a Sangria yet, give this one a try, it has a very mild flavor and its light and refreshing, I think you'll really enjoy it.

Green Fruit Sangria

adapted from Amanda's Cookin

Ingredients

750 ml Moscato Wine

1/2 cup Triple Sec

1 cup green grapes

1/3 large cucumber, thinly sliced

1/2 green apple, thinly sliced

1/2 green pear, thinly sliced

1 lime, thinly sliced

1 liter club soda or lemon-lime soda

Directions

Combine all ingredients in a large pitcher.  Allow to sit in the refrigerator for at least 2 hours.  If you aren't serving it right away you might want to wait to add the soda until right before serving it so it doesn't go flat.  

*Note: I recommend using a lemon-lime soda instead of club soda.  If you use club soda you might want to add about a 1/4 cup of simple syrup to the mixture to sweeten it up a bit. 

Leprechaun Green Fizz (kid-friendly drink)

As promised, two recipes in one day!  This is my take on a kid-friendly St. Patrick's Day drink.  There really isn't a recipe for this drink, more a method.  I got the idea for this drink when I was searching through Pinterest one day for drink ideas and I came across this really cool red, white and blue drink for 4th of July.  I thought my green drink for St. Patrick's Day would look cooler than it does, but in the end, taste matters more than looks and my little boys LOVED this drink.  In order to get the layering effect you need to pick drinks with different sugar contents.  The drink with the heaviest (or largest amount) of sugar goes on the bottom.  For my drink above I have Mountain Dew on the bottom, I don't know if you could find a green tinted drink with more sugar than Mountain Dew!  Please let me know if you do!  The middle layer, which is difficult to see in my picture, is Sprite and the top layer is green (lemon-lime flavor) Kool-Aid.  Unfortunately for me, I think the Sprite and the Kool-Aid had close to the same sugar content.  I made the Kool-Aid from the small pouch of drink mix so I really had no idea what the sugar content was on it, I was just taking a guess that it was less than the Sprite.  To make the drink put a little bit of ice on the bottom of your glass and pour in the Mountain Dew, fill only about 1/4 of the glass.  Next fill the glass to the top with more ice then slowly pour in the Sprite, about 2/3 of the glass should be full now with liquid.  Finally, slowly pour in the Kool-Aid until full.  The trick is to pour the last two liquids SLOWLY so that they sit on top of the layer before it, instead of mixing with it.

Here is a great video that explains the process a little better.