Creative Challenge: Day Seventeen

Tonight I'm hosting a GLEE Season 1 (second half) viewing party. I am SO EXCITED to see the second half. I've been waiting for what feels like an eternity (I just checked and it's only been 2 months)  and with Season 2 starting next Tuesday, I need to be ready!!

I invited a few fellow GLEEks: Rachel, Ashlee and a few of her co-workers. True to form, Rachel emailed me with a brilliant idea for our viewing party...

What is going to be your creative challenge for the day? If you need inspiration, home-made spiked slushies could be fun, as an ode to Glee. I have an old family recipe from my grandma that I remember loving, and would be more than happy to share!!

Brilliant? I know. Rachel is good like that. So last night I whiped up the vodka slush (recipe below) that is currently chilling in my freezer. As an added element to the now theme party, I made GLEEk slushie cups. Thank you Michael's $1 bin, once again for supplying affordable beverage containers. To make these I printed the 'i am a gleek' on white labels and stuck them to the cups. They will not last more than one party, but that's ok!

Before I share the recipe, I wanted to share Rachel's story of where it comes from...

My grandparents live in a small town two hours north/north west of Minneapolis/ St. Paul called Pierz. There were about 1,000 residents in its hayday, when my parents lived there, about 800 now, and it was a solid farming town of German descent. A few years ago Pierz found it's way onto the national scene by accident. A Martha Stewart staffer was on his way north for a weekend at a lake and stopped at this random town's butcher, Thielen Meats, to buy breakfast meats. The rest is history... their bacon is FAMOUS!!

Besides eating this bacon since I was a little kid, (we didn't need a celebrity to tell our family it was the best), I would also snitch spoonfuls of a particular vodka slush for which my Grandmother was famous. She would make this following recipe in huge quantities, freeze it in old ice cream pales, and then bring it weddings and other parties.



Vodka Slush 

1 cup tea (2 tea bags in hot water, steep 10 minutes)12 oz Frozen lemonade concentrate (in the cardboard canisters)

12 oz frozen orange juice concentrate (same as above)

3 1/2 cup cold water

1 cup sugar

1 or 1 1/2 cup cups vodka

1 bottle 7up

~
Defrost lemonade and orange juice.

Mix warm tea with sugar, stir to disolve.

Add lemonade, orange juice, water and vodka. Stir well.

Freeze mixture overnight.

Serve mixture with 1/2 7 up.

  

Enjoy!