Cocktail Hour: Rum-n-Root Beer

What is it about four-day workweeks that make them seem like they last forever? It felt like it took forever for Friday to arrive this week. Time to celebrate the end of the work-week with a Friday evening cocktail.

Rum-n-Root Beer Cocktail (printer-friendly version)
makes one serving

2 oz rum
4 oz root beer
ice cubes
bing or maraschino cherry

1. Place 3-4 ice cubes in a small glass.
2. Pour 2 oz rum and 4 oz root beer into the glass.
3. Add a bing or maraschino cherry. (I am seriously loving Tillen Farms Bada Bing Cherries right now.)
4. Celebrate the beginning of the weekend!

What's For Dessert: Root Beer Floats

Another summertime treat for tonight's dessert. And yet another ingredient sourced from Costco! (And as much as I rave about that place, no, these posts are in no way sponsored by them!) I am a huge fan of lemon (limonata) and orange (aranciata) Pellegrino sodas, and you can buy a flat of them at Costco for a ridiculously low price. (Of course, this means I can never purchase a Pellegrino soda at a cafe now, since I know the $2.50 soda really only costs about 25 cents!) However, a recent trek to Costco was unsuccessful in our search for Pellegrino, and we opted to purchase a flat of Hansen's Creamy Root Beer natural soda (sweetened with cane sugar) instead. On its own, Hansen's root beer tastes rather good, I think -- and this of course means that it can only taste even better with a few scoops of vanilla ice cream added to it, right? Don't worry, I won't keep you in suspense -- the resulting root beer float was delish. I made two small servings and thus only used one can of root beer; if you're feeling a bit more indulgent, serve yourself up a whole can of soda in your root beer float.

Root Beer Float

makes 2 servings

1 can root beer (we used Hansen's Creamy Root Beer Natural Cane Soda)

vanilla bean ice cream (we used Breyer's Smooth and Dreamy Vanilla Bean ice cream)

1. Fill a glass with several scoops of vanilla ice cream.

2. Slowly pour root beer over the ice cream.

3. Repeat for the second serving.

4. Eat -- er, drink -- up!

{mise en place}