Here is a beautiful, pink, fresh tasting shrub recipe that is easy and uses a vinegar I haven’t showcased before: champagne vinegar. Read on for the recipe!

My favorite way to lighten up a snowy, dark February is with citrus and this simple recipe does exactly that. Shrubs are syrup made from fruit, sugar, and vinegar. This is a no-cook shrub recipe so expect just five minutes of prep time. It needs to sit on your countertop for a week, so make it on a Sunday to be ready for the next weekend.

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You will need:

1 red grapefruit, sliced into half-inch rounds

1 cup of sugar

1 bottle (200 ml or 6.8 ounces) champagne or other mild-flavored vinegar

Add the grapefruit slices to a half gallon mason jar or another nonreactive container. Cover with sugar and shake to coat. Add vinegar and cover with a lid. Let sit on a room temperature countertop for 5-7 days, strain into a clean vessel (a mason jar is ideal) and store in the refrigerator.

To make a beautiful, pink grapefruit shrub cocktail, combine over ice (perhaps in a wide mouth pint jar)

1 part grapefruit shrub

3 parts sparkling water

An optional 1 part/shot of tequila or vodka

Cheers to welcoming in springtime!

This post will share with you a wonderful homemade cocktail resource, the author of “The Thinking Girls Guide to Drinking” Ariane Resnick, and her tips for preparing healthful, homemade cocktails.

Ariane Resnick is the author of two books I know my readers would love, on very different subjects. Her first book was The Bone Broth Miracle and this volume was an Amazon #1 best seller. She and I need to collaborate on another project where we pressure can bone broth together, I think 😉

Her second book,  “The Thinking Girl’s Guide to Drinking: Cocktails without Regrets” she shares wonderful information about how to craft cocktails that work to leave you feeling better than before your first sip. She incorporates ingredients known for reparative, health boosting qualities into homemade beverages so the regrettable aspects of drinking are by and large left by the wayside.

Ariane is a certified nutritionist and and special diet chef and has been a chef to a variety of Hollywood stars. Her life’s work has been centered around helping people eat and drink well, and usually that is through homemade, whole foods and helping those with restrictive diets eat delicious, “normal” foods.

Most importantly, Ariane is the sweetest, smartest expert I could have asked to interview. She’s easy to talk to, humble, and passionate about helping others. She makes the science behind her craft easy to understand and has tons of helpful advice for regular gals like me and you. I can’t thank her enough for sharing her tips for how YOU can incorporate better cocktailing into your routine, and why you need to avoid the junk served at the bar and sold at the grocery store in the first place.

Enjoy Ariane’s tips!

When I realized that 1. lots of my readers needed and wanted to improve their libation offerings and 2. saw that many of them were really, really worried about preserving in general (you Wildflowers are so darn smart!) I created this email course that explains in 6 easy to follow emails how to make the simple, no-cook shrubs we discuss a bit in the interview above. The mini-course teaches you HOW to make these really easy homemade cocktail mixers out of nearly any produce. Did I mention it is free? It’s free, Wildflowers. Get in there now!

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Ariane has been featured in media such as Forbes, Shape, Star, Goop.com, Food.com, Huffington Post, Refinery 29, Men’s Fitness, Food Network’s “Chopped,” and is a regular contributor to Livestrong.com. She was afflicted with Lyme’s disease and chemical poisoning and recovered holistically from both. She’s the author of two amazing texts that I think you all will LOVE and you can head to the affiliate linked photos here and add them to your cart right now, Wildflowers!

You can follow her a www.arianecooks.com and be sure to jump on her email list- she shares super valuable tips and recipes all the time. Her inspiring Instagram account will show you that healthy drinks (and foods) can be indulgent, easy, and beautiful.

I wanted to create an easy way to teach my readers how to make a super simple type of preserve- sort of a beginner, junior version of canning- which is why I wrote this shrubs homemade cocktail mixer course. You can sign up right here!

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This post will share how to use the part of the pineapple that is so often tossed or composted and thus saves and makes terrific use of it to make a delicious, flavorful shrub. Read on to see how one magic step makes the core the best part of the shrub!

In case you are new to the shrub game, shrubs are a very simple type of preserve where fruit or vegetable are preserved in sugar and vinegar on your countertop. If you love the idea of saving a little fruit in a jar on your counter in under 10 minutes for use in cocktails, sparkling water, salad dressing, yogurt, and more,

Sign up for the How to Make Shrub Email Course here!

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I have to say, I might be the proudest of this shrub recipe out of all of my shrub posts. I try to put forth a genuine and concerted effort to avoid waste in the kitchen. That’s a lot of conditional adjectives because it is darn difficult to do. I have been inspired by the Zero Waste Home blog because of its emphasis on cutting out expensive, wasteful practices in the home. This recipe is a great example of my effort being successful (rather than flop-full).

This little love affair I’ve had with creating shrubs based on old recipes, mixed with spirits I like, in simple combinations has spawned a project that I’m really proud of and very excited to share. I’ve created a course about how to create your own homemade cocktail mixers called Wildflower Mixology. If you’ve been following me for any length of time you know how much I love homemade, simple, farmer’s market fresh fare, and how much I love helping beginners start making more homemade for themselves.

Now that you’ve entered to be one of the lucky winners, let me tell you how to make this zero waste shrub. My kids eat a lot of pineapples. I cut up a lot of pineapples. After cutting up what felt like my thousandth pineapple, I decided to try the following and was thrilled with the result. I’m sure you will too.

I took the core of 2 pineapples and chopped them into about ½ an inch slices and put them in the bottom of a quart jar. 2 cores measured out to be 1 cup, but that will depend on your core, your slices, and how many pineapples you get to cut up on a weekly basis 🙂 I kept a core for a couple of days by itself cut up and waited till I had to cut another to make my next batch of pineapple core shrub.

With whatever quantity of core you end up with, cover with the same amount of white sugar. 1 cup of core gets covered with 1 cup of sugar. A quarter cup of core gets 1 quarter cup of sugar.  

This step is key. You must let this mixture sit in the jar, covered, for 12-24 hours. The sugar pulls the pineapple juice and goodness out of the dense core and makes it available to be mixed with the apple cider vinegar.

Here’s youtube time-lapse video of sugar pulling the juice out of rhubarb. I’ve found pineapple core to be even more amazing but failed to record it for you yet. Check it out; it is amazing, I think.

Stir, shake, stir, shake. When the sugar is dissolved and it has been at least 12 hours, add 2 cups of good quality apple cider vinegar if you had 2 cups of pineapple to begin with, which is about 2 cores total.

Let sit on your counter for about a week.

Strain and decant into a clean jar. Store in the refrigerator.

Serve with sparkling water, with or without a shot of your favorite libation.

Pretty savvy, right Wildflowers? If you want to learn all I know about shrubs, sign up for my email course! I will send you the ratios, the how-to, and all the recipes so you can make these yummy syrups. Get started now!

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Here’s a beautiful graphic that shows where shrubs originated (pirates for the win!), and some different flavors you can experiment with! Enjoy, Wildflowers!

Source: Fix.com Blog

Blood oranges are arguably the most beautiful citrus fruit, inside and out, and when paired with balsamic vinegar in a sweet-tart shrub they really shine. You may have noticed that I am a huge fan of shrub making and I compiled everything I know into a FREE email course just for my Wildflowers! Get in here! 

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Blood Orange Balsamic Shrub is the second shrub I have crafted with balsamic vinegar. The other recipes I have shared use apple cider vinegar and that is a much more mild tasting vinegar. Balsamic is bold both in flavor and in color and when added with blood oranges and plain white sugar it creates a strong but delicious shrub. This mixes so, so well with unflavored sparkling water and in a cocktail with bourbon.

So all this shrub talk probably has you wondering what the buzz is about and why you should be making shrubs in mason jars, like, yesterday. I wanted to share my favorite mixer tips and techniques with you so I created a simple, fun, and totally FREE email course to teach you everything I know about making shrubs. Sign up for the week’s worth of easy to read emails that explain how to make all kinds of shrubs, from whatever is in your fridge, to suit your tastes and make these sweet-tart syrups. Grab it here!

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The quantities below are tiny, I admit but when I was trying this out I didn’t want to sacrifice more than one blood orange on a trial shrub. I’m such a produce hoarder. Feel free to increase the quantities. Go on and be crazy and use 2 blood oranges, Wildflowers 😉

You need:

1 blood orange, peeled and sections sliced into halves or thirds, that equals about ½ cup.

½ cup white sugar

1 cup good quality balsamic vinegar

Add the fruit to a clean mason jar or another clean glass vessel with a lid.

Add the sugar and if time allows, let the sugar and fruit sit for up to 24 hours. I’d be fibbing if I said I always make time for this and with a juicy fruit like a blood orange it isn’t entirely necessary but it can help a bit pulling the juice from the fruit.

Add the vinegar and perhaps muddle with a wooden spoon and stir to incorporate the sugar.

Lid and let the shrub sit on your counter for up to a week. The flavors will blend and develop into a bold and delicious shrub.

Strain using either a fine mesh sieve, a colander with small holes, or a funnel and a cheesecloth into a clean glass vessel. Store in the refrigerator.

Blood Orange Shrub + Whiskey Cocktail

1 part Blood Orange Balsamic Shrub

1 part whiskey (I like Bulleit Bourbon, as recommended by a dear friend)

3 parts sparkling water

ice

Served nicely in a wide mouth mason jar. What, you don’t have a stash of jars on hand? You can grab some from Amazon by clicking the affiliate photo link below!

If those beautiful blood oranges have convinced you to try more shrubs, I can’t encourage you enough to try my new and completely free e-course! In a week’s worth of emails, I share everything I know about shrubs to help you turn nearly any fruit, in even tiny quantities, into a sweet-tart syrup that is as pretty sitting on the counter as it is delicious served in a beverage or as an ingredient. Sign up here!

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Wildflowers, I have to tell you something. I’m a teacher, some of you may know this already, and this school year I decided to take the year off to stay home with my kids that are 2 and 4 years old. I have been working on writing blog posts, creating workshops, and generally putting all this extra “teacher energy” in the blog because while I LOVE being home with my babies, I love teaching and I miss it. With all the great feedback I have had from these fun shrubs recipe blog posts, the comments I have had on lifestreams in the Grow Like a Wildflower Facebook group, I decided to create a whole course that will teach you, step by step, the super-simple preserves, and techniques to make homemade cocktail mixers. The course is called Wildflower Mixology and I’m so excited about it!

Wildflower Mixology is a way for a busy, modern homemaker to transform their hostess skills from uninspired and stressed to at ease, farmer’s market fresh, and fun. It is a full-fledged course that teaches you how to make bounces, infused syrups, shrubs and more in 15 professionally edited (as in, not be me lol!) videos. That’s the Bloody Mary Shrub in the youtube thumbnail below…and you are NOT going to find that recipe anywhere else, Wildflower! I can promise you that!

Head over to www.wildflowermixology.com to learn more and enroll!