A Light Drizzle: Guest Post by Ashley of Quarter Life (Crisis) Cuisine

A Light Drizzle is a spicy-sweet cocktail, inspired by the popular Dark & Stormy, that won't kill your diet!

Hey peeps! Welcome to Day 1 of Booze Week Part Deux. I'm away at a conference in Seattle so some of my favourite bloggy friends are filling in for me this week.

First up is Ashley of Quarter Life (Crisis) Cuisine. Ashley is an amazing blogger, she's super talented and always fun to visit. Plus she's just good people. Which I dig.

Hi everyone! I'm Ashley from Quarter Life (Crisis) Cuisine! I met Kim via one of the blogger Facebook groups and have been following Cravings of a Lunatic for a few years now. Kim's been an awesome blog-role-model and always seems to be doing what what she can to help us all out. I'm constantly amazed by everything Kim does in the blog-o-sphere and beyond, and am so excited to be guest posting for you all!

When trying to lose "a pound or two (or twelve)" the hardest thing for me to give up is ALWAYS the booze. I'm 26, I work a fairly demanding job, and both my social time and my personal time are always helped along by just a bit of booze. Happy Hour with friends? Cue the cocktails. A night to myself with the fiancé and the pooch? Pass the wine while I binge-watch cooking shows. Not to mention the fact that I work at a fun and funky start up that gives us margaritas at our weekly meeting and routinely has full-office happy hours where the first drink or so is on the company's tab... yeah. It's a little bit of a social lubricant, a little bit of a relaxer.

In short, booze happens.

Unfortunately, booze also happens to have a ton of calories, sugar, carbs... actually, just about anything I'm trying to cut out when trying to lose weight. A simple cocktail can run you as many calories as a meal and so, SO much sugar.

So I make a deal with myself: keep the booze to weekends. Okay, that doesn't always work (margarita meetings, remember?). So here's my OTHER deal: low cal cocktails. When I'm out and about, a flavored or infused vodka with soda water is what I go for. Under 100 calories, just enough buzz.

When I'm home for those few personal nights... something like this. Based on a Dark and Stormy, I call this "a light drizzle." Homemade ginger syrup sweetened with stevia, soda water I make myself with my SodaStream*, a hint of lime... perfect. Since it's practically calorie-less (just the vodka!) instead of a Dark and Stormy, it's a Light Drizzle. I'm clever like that.

It's not TOTALLY guilt-free, but between this and a 700+ calorie cocktail with 10 grams of sugar? Gimme my light drizzle.

Enjoy!

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A Light Drizzle

A spicy-sweet cocktail, inspired by the popular Dark & Stormy, that won't kill your diet

Prep Time 10 minutes

Total Time 10 minutes

Ingredients

• 1.5 cups water
• 1 large knob ginger peeled and cut into chunks
• 3 tbs-¼ cup stevia if using sugar, ½ cup
• 1 oz vodka
• .5 oz lime juice
• 1 cup Club Soda
• 1 lime wedge

Instructions

• Bring the water to a boil. Add the ginger chunks and let boil rapidly for 10 minutes.
• Turn heat down to medium, add the stevia or sweetener and mix until fully dissolved.
• Let mixture simmer until reduced by a third. Taste often, if it's getting too spicy, remove the ginger (I like it spicy so the ginger stays until the very end). Strain into a heat-safe jar and let cool to room temperature.
• Once cooled, gently mix 2 tablespoons of ginger syrup into soda water. Taste, add more syrup if needed.
• Fill a glass with ice. Pour vodka over ice, and top with ginger ale (you realized that's what you just made, right?) and lime juice. Stir, gently.
• Serve with a lime wedge garnish.

Notes

Recipe and Photo Credit to Ashley Blom of Quarter Life Crisis Cuisine

Thanks so much to Ashley for kicking off this month's edition of Booze Week for me. This cocktail is amazing, and I wish I was sipping one right now.

Be sure to swing by Ashley's blog, Quarter Life (Crisis) Cuisine to see all her amazing recipes. While you're there be sure to follow her on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Pinterest. I'd stalk her in all those places. She is so much fun to follow on social media.

Tune in tomorrow when my friend Kita of Pass the Sushi gets her drink on.