Happy New Year!  I hope your celebration was a good one!  Ours was just as we like it…low key.  Actually, I’ve spent a bit of time thinking about our last New Year’s, which was spent in a little house on Whidbey Island.  Such a great weekend.  This year was less eventful, primarily because the holiday fell on a Wednesday.  Who does that?!  However, if you’ve not noticed, all of the major holidays in 2020 fall on either a Friday or Saturday.  Don’t believe me?  Pull out your calendar…and celebrate.  It’s going to be a great year!

Since we had a large, beefy meal for Christmas we decided to go a different direction for NYE.  I gave the husband two options:  tamales or chile verde.  He chose tamales.  Good choice.  There is a local Mexican store/restaurant that makes amazing tamales, which made things super easy for me.  And, what goes with tamales?  Margarita, of course!

December brings with it delicious citrus.  Oranges, cuties, blood orange…you name it, it’s in season.  So, when I stumbled across a recipe for blood orange margarita the search for the perfect NYE drink ended.  Sold!

I wouldn’t have minded a deeper blood orange color, but it is what it is….delicious, no matter the color.  The original recipe called for simple syrup, but I substituted agave.  I also doubled the recipe as it claimed to represent two cocktails, but didn’t sound like two cocktails of the size I prefer.  I ended up with three generous cocktails, and since the husband doesn’t like tequila I enjoyed two in NYE and the final one on NYD.

Blood Orange Margarita

6 oz silver tequila
8 oz blood orange juice
4 oz lime juice
4 oz Cointreau
agave syrup to taste

Stir first four ingredients together.  Add a generous squirt of agave syrup.  Taste.  Add more.  Taste.  Taste.  Taste.