Monday, September 24, 2012

Make Your Own Bloody Mary Mix

No, this blog isn't going to turn into a cookbook or bar manual.   But I think this is pretty cool.

I have high blood pressure.  Both my parents had it and I inherited it, as did my sister.  Although my BP is controlled with meds, I still watch my salt intake.

I like bloody mary mixes.   I rarely add vodka to make a bloody mary proper.  I just like the mix.  I look at it as V8 juice that's spiced up.  It's particularly good when I have a sore throat, burning all the way down.

I was idly reading the label on my favorite bloody mary mix one day and was stunned to see that one serving had 25% of the recommended daily dosage of salt, 600 milligrams worth!  Holy crap!  And I was consuming two or three a day sometimes.

I didn't want to give up my virgin marys, so I went online and found many recipes for making your own mix.  I found one that sounded good so I decided to give it a shot.  I hied myself over to the Winn Dixie with a list of ingredients.  As I ran all over the store, repeatedly searching for needed parts, I wondered why is it so hard to find things in a grocery store?  I had a really hard time finding many things, but especially the lime juice.  Why aren't things simply put in alphabetical order in a grocery store?  Or why isn't there a computer with a search engine where I could enter "lime juice" and it would tell me where it was?  Eventually, I gathered up everything.  The lime juice wasn't in the juice aisle as one would suspect.  It was in the produce section, of all places.   Plastic limes right along side of real ones.

When I got to the tomato juice area (nowhere near the orange juice area, I might add, nor even the plastic lime area), I read the labels on the tomato juice bottles.  Every one was loaded with salt.  So, rather than buying high sodium tomato juice, I bought low sodium V8 juice instead which has 140 milligrams per serving, or 6% of one's daily dosage.

Back at the boat, I mixed it all up and left it to ferment overnight in the fridge.  I tried it the next day and it was fantastic!  I usually tinker with recipes, usually making it spicier, but I think this one is fine the way it is.   The only change I made was to substitute low sodium V8 for tomato juice.  Here you go...

3 TB Dijon mustard
3 TB Worcestershire sauce
2 TB horseradish
2 TB red hot sauce
2 1/2 oz lemon juice
1 1/2 oz lime juice
1 TS celery seed
2 TS black pepper
64 oz low sodium V8

So why did I post a bloody mary mix recipe on this blog?   Because I want to share it with you?  Because I'm running out of things to blog about?  Because I'm going to start posting recipes?  

Nope.

Because I know I'm going to lose the little piece of yellow paper with the recipe on it, sitting here next to my laptop, and when I do, I can find it by searching on this here blog.

Really.  It's good.  Try it.

So for today, Pam and I are driving to our new hometown of Green Cove Springs to pick up our Toyota's license plates.  Our temporary paper plates expired three days ago.  Yep, that's us, driving an unregistered vehicle.  We walk on the wild side.

2 comments:

  1. 3 TB of Dijon and 3 TB of Horseradish, yum yum, that ought to have some snap to it.

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  2. I've found it tastier, cheaper, and healthier to avoid mixes.

    One of my heroes is David Kessler, FDA Chief named by GHW Bush (continuing through GWB and into WJC)- he is responsible for mandating nutritional labelling on foods. Until then it was a grab bag. A friend is unable to eat corn in any form; thinking of her, we went down several aisles of a grocery store and were hard pressed to find items that did not have some form of corn - including the insidious high fructose corn syrup. Celiacs need even better labelling (gluten free) or they may face agony. I think of David Kessler whenever I have an aha! moment at the store. Cheers!

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