The Perfect Summer Drink

I will say it a million times: I abso-freakin-lutely love Pinterest.  I pinned this from my friend Sarah:

Yummmmm.

It was a recipe for fruity frozen vodka slush.  It was gloriously warm today, and I have a deep and abiding affection for lemons, so I showed it to Steve.  When he saw pineapple juice on the ingredient list, he insisted that we had to make this TODAY.  And I'm so glad we did!

You'll need:
2 lemons
2 oranges
48 oz. can pineapple juice
12 oz. can frozen lemonade
12 oz. can frozen grapefruit juice
3 cups white sugar
8 cups water
26 oz. vodka

We had trouble finding frozen grapefruit juice, so we substituted with guava-pineapple juice.  As for the vodka- if you can afford the good stuff, use it.

First make a simple syrup with the water and sugar.

While that's going, combine the cans of juice, the vodka, and the juice from the fresh citrus in a large bowl.  Yes, large.  We used the bowl from our Kitchenaid mixer and it was allllmost too small.  When the simple syrup is done, pour it into the juice/vodka mixture.  Then freeze.

The recipe recommends storing the mixture in an airtight container like tupperware.  It also recommends waiting a day or two for the mixture to really slush up.  Then you simply scoop the amount you want into your glass and add some Sprite Zero for fizz and dilution.

However, I'm an impatient gal.  We wanted to try some of this tonight!  So we tried the mixture while it was still non-slushy.

Connoisseur.

The verdict?  Doesn't need to be slushy to be darn tasty.  I couldn't taste the alcohol in it at all.  Which is wonderful.  And dangerous.  So we decided one glass each was enough and the rest would go into the deep freeze.

Unfortunately, we didn't have any tupperware containers large enough to store all of that slushy goodness.  Fortunately, we did have something even better.

It needs a cape it's so super.

We finally broke down and bought a vacuum sealer last month.  We have found it to be really useful so far (despite violating our rule about cluttering our counter tops with small appliances).  And today was no exception.  We took all of those mason jars that had been loitering on top of our kitchen cabinets and filled em up.  A spin on the vacuum sealer with the wide-mouth jar attachment and we were good to go.

Citrus version of apple pie?

Looking forward to having this around when our sweet tooth strikes, or for parties.  And with the size of the batch, I'm hoping we can make it last for a couple of months (one mason jar is two glasses' worth of slush).  Although it's so tasty, we might have to make another batch soon!

*Update*  We packed up most of this batch and brought it down to the in-laws' house for a barbeque the next day.  It was a hit!  There was a lot of "yummmm"s happening followed by no driving for a good many hours.  Success!!