Venetian Spritz

Last Summer when Matt and I were in Italy (Venice to be exact), we happened upon a drink that we both fell in love with. This drink was
a Spritz. During our two weeks in Europe had the privilege to spend my 27th birthday in Venice. It was by far my best birthday EVER. We had so much fun. The evening of my Birthday we (our tour group) took part in a Cicchetti Crawl (the Venetian version of a pub crawl).
During this crawl you go around from bar to bar, and get food and drinks. Each bar serves little appetizer type items for around 1-2 euro. They also serve glasses of wine or spritz' for about the same.
A Spritz consists of White Wine or Prosecco (Italian sparkling wine), soda water, and either Aperol or Campari. The good ones were garnished with a green olive, but some were garnished with a lemon (I like it with both). Neither Matt or I were very fond of the Spritz made with Campari, but we both fell in love with the one made with Aperol.
As soon as we got back from our trip we tried to find find Aperol at a liquor store near us, but had no luck. A few months ago we were told by a friend that we should check a liquor store in the Pearl. Tonight we finally checked them out and lo and behold, they carried Aperol! This is great until you think about the fact that for 7 months we were only 10 blocks away from said store, and never went in. Anyway we were finally able to make Spritz' at home and they were just as good as we remembered.
I would really recommend trying this drink out. It is well worth the trip
to NW Portland for a bottle of Aperol, or even better, a trip to Venice
for the real thing!

My Jam Plan.

Just after moving into our new house we discovered a very large rhubarb plant in out backyard. This made me happy because one of my all time favorite pies is strawberry rhubarb. Since I really don't like to bake, I figured the next best thing would be homemade strawberry rhubarb jam. I found this great recipe that uses the microwave. All you have to do cut up your fruit, coat it with sugar, microwave it for 10-12 minutes (more in my microwave because it is an old piece of crap), and put into jars. This process is genius! Not only does it save a mess of time but it, uses like a quarter of the sugar as other jams.

Since I liked how much the strawberry rhubarb turned out I decided to try out some other concoctions, using the microwave technique. I made some strawberry, rhubarb, orange, pineapple jam. And some pear, plum, rhubarb jam. All three are very tasty. I Love to make jam

I can't wait to come up with new recipes this summer. I want to try out some savory jams, like a pepper jam, and we are going to grow all kinds of peppers in the garden, so I will have plenty of great fruit to work with. So stay posted for more jam.