Exotic Dragon Fruit Cocktail

On my last trip to the local farmer's market I was feeling adventurous and of course the pretty pink thing in the corner caught my eye -- the dragon fruit. The best thing to compare a dragon fruit in to in terms of taste and texture is a kiwi. It's sweet and filled with tiny black edible seeds.

A few things to know about dragon fruit: a. the pink skin is not edible and b. selecting a ripe fruit is much like selecting ripe kiwi: squeeze it lightly and it should give, but not too much and look for fruit that is brightly and evenly colored with yellow to yellow-green leaf tips and stems.

Exotic Dragon Fruit Cocktail

Serves: 2

Champagne and Strawberries & Strawberry Margarita Jell-O Shots

Strawberry Margarita Jell-O Shots - a new Cinco de Mayo tradition

These are an absolute hit wherever you take them! In fact, I even took the champagne and strawberry shots to an event where the average age was 3x my own and they were the talk of the evening (I dragged the poor bf to this and he was wide eyed when we showed up, "you said they were older, but I didn't think you meant THAT old!! WHAT DID YOU BRING ME TO?!" Let me add that by the end of the evening he was thoroughly enjoying himself and realized old people can be fun too).

 Champagne and Strawberries

INGREDIENTS

• 2 pints of strawberries
• 1 small box strawberry Jell-o (sugar free of course)
• 3/4 cup boiling water
• 1 1/4 cups sparkling wine, very cold - you will have left overs in the bottle so make sure you have someone to drink the rest :)

Boozy Watermelon Lemonade

A refreshing cocktail perfect for summer & adapted from Smitten Kitchen's Watermelon Lemonade recipe. This cocktail has made it to the beach, a pool party, family gathering and as of Sunday, a Marlins game. Let me forewarn you though, the booze in this will sneak up on you as evidenced by the fact that I lost my apartment keys, had the MLB logo spray painted across my stomach (so classy), conned my way into the Clevelander to avoid a $10 cover and proceeded to eat half of a full-sized bag of potato chips. My roommate's experiences weren't nearly as fortunate.