Cheers to Pawcurious with the Italian Greyhound!

We're super excited for our client, Pawcurious, is nominated for a Weblog Award (or a Bloggie, as they are also known) for Best Pet or Animal Blog. If you haven't a favorite, you should definitely vote for Pawcurious. I'm not biased at all or anything. No, but seriously, Dr. V's site is chock full of great information and animal antics.

For this week's Champagne Thursday, we'd like to honor Dr. V and Pawcurious with a pet-themed beverage: The Italian Greyhound.  (I couldn't find a Labrador cocktail, sorry, Koa and Brody!)

You can find the original recipe for this beautiful Italian Greyhound with Rosemary Sugar, along with other delicious looking recipes on FamilyStyleFood.com.

Congrats again, Pawcurious. We hope you win! 

Shaken, Not Stirred

Source: greygoose.com via Joelle on Pinterest

Kathy re-kicked off our Champagne Thursdays last week with her favorite adult beverage and the namesake of this (hopefully, weekly) feature, but now it's time for me to bring you an example of my kind of drink -- one with booze, like nature intended.

I do like champagne, but I don't drink it that often. It gives me a wicked headache.  When I choose to libate, 95% of the time, I choose an old school classic -- a vodka martini, preferably made with Grey Goose, but I'm open to most top shelf vodkas.  I've never been one for sweet drinks and always preferred the retro cool factor that a classic martini offers. It's a slow sipper (at least the first one) and isn't full of sugary fruit juices or creamy milky whatnot.

Plus, olives. Mmm... I prefer mine stuffed with blue cheese, if the establishment has them lying about. Ultimately, the olives should be plump (but not huge) and firm, not tiny, hard, speckled or pruned up or that weird shade of green-yellow that happens to olives that sit in a garnish tray too long.  If you're going to indulge in what is basically straight, expensive vodka, please -- for the love of all that is decent and holy -- don't use crapola olives. Do it for the children!

I like my martinis very light on the vermouth. Like, light -- a mere suggestion, a hint, a whisper. So I prefer to use a martini mister for the addition of the vermouth to the shaker. Others prefer to add the vermouth, swirl to coat the shaker and then dump it out (which is my second-most preferred method).  And yet others feel vermouth should be heavy, as once upon a time a classic martini was almost half vermouth.  To that I say, bleh. Also, yuck.  

I also am not one of those girls who seductively asks the bartender to "make it dirty".  I like a little "dirty" (meaning, a bit of olive juice) in my martini, but very, very little and find most bartenders tend to be heavy-handed here, so I end up with a murky drink that looks and tastes like seamonkeys. So I just skip it and let my olive garnish add the "dirty" for me.

Anyway, I picked up this recipe from the website of my favorite vodka, Grey Goose. They include orange bitters, which I've never tried, but am intrigued about, so I may ask for that next time!

The Classic Vodka Martini

Ingredients

• 2 parts Grey Goose vodka (or the vodka of your choice)
• 1/2 part Dry Vermouth
• 1 Dash orange bitters

Instructions

• Fill a shaker with ice.
• Add vermouth. Stir to coat ice and strain out.
• Add  Vodka and bitters, if desired, and stir well. (I shake, not stir. I know some people say that "bruises the vodka", to which I say ,"whatever!".)
• Strain into a chilled martini glass.
• Present with an olive or lemon twist. (Olives! Three for me, please.)

Feel free to experiment with garnishes. Mix olives and lemon twists or use a fresh bay leaf instead. These additions will give subtle yet unique changes to the cocktail.

You can view a video on the Grey Goose website of their mixologists whipping one up if that blows your dress up. 

Finally, please, please drink responsibly -- this is straight-up booze, my friends. Have a snack with it or something so you don't make an ass of yourself. Not that I've ever done that. *cough*

Move Over, Barbie.

We love Pinterest -- as you may have noticed from the images in our sidebar and our links on our about page.  I didn't totally love it in the beginning -- it was a lot of soft focus photos of cupcakes and cheesy inspirational typography.  I like both cupcakes and typography, but it was a little too schmaltzy for me.  So I eschewed it for a while until more people started using it and there was more variety.

I started a board that Kathy and I both contribute to called Moxie Dream House. We've always fantastized about what it would be like if we could live in the same city and have a brick n' mortar studio.  Of course, our fantasy studio wouldn't likely include a bed -- we're not a cam girl site, much to the chagrin of some of our spammers -- but our Moxie Dream House board contains basically anything fabulous, pink, leopard or otherwise something we deem appropriate for our "fantasy studio were it potentially a giant mansion in which we could find room for all this stuff".

Here are some samples of the kinds of things we dream about:

A pink desk is imperative. And the chalkboard wall is brilliant!

Source: benjaminmoore.com via Katherine on Pinterest

If this was a real thing, we would be all over it.

Source: victoiredesamothrace.tumblr.com via Joelle on Pinterest

I thought they should've named this lamp The Phyllis Diller, but no one seemed to get my joke, which of course, means I'm old and no one knows who Phyllis Diller is anymore.

Source: fab.com via Joelle on Pinterest

A girl's gotta get to work, right?

Source: brookeanneaslett.blogspot.com via Joelle on Pinterest

Follow our Moxie Dream House board -- we're always adding new things and dreaming of ways a hot pink bathtub might be practical in an office...

Hello Champagne Thursday! (Where Thursday Means Almost Friday)

Good day! Welcome to Champagne Thursday! I am your gracious hostess, Kathy. *curtsey*  I'm not 100% sure where we came up with Champagne Thursday but I do think it had something to do with the chick flick where Sarah Jessica Parker is a professional man therapist and tries to force Matthew Mcconaughey to grow up and move out of his parents house.  I'm Googling it.... Ah! Failure to Launch! Anyway, I love Champagne.  I kind of like Thursday since it's almost Friday but not enough to not require a little bubbling happy persuasion to get me through.

I looooooooove Champagne.  I know I said that already but I need to actually convey to you how much I love it. So let's enjoy this recipe we found on Pinterest recently.  This cocktail kind of combines two of our favorite drinks into one beautiful libation.

Champagne Cosmopolitan

Ingredients:

• 1 1/2 ounces vodka (we prefer Grey Goose or Belvedere)
• 1/2 ounce triple sec or Grand Marnier
• 1/2 ounce cranberry juice
• 1/2 ounce fresh squeezed lime juice
• Ice
• 2 ounces champagne (on the sweeter side) 

Combine vodka, triple sec, cranberry juice, lime juice and ice in a cocktail shaker. Shake, shake, shake. (I'll refrain from adding booty to this part).  Pour into a chilled martini glass. Top with champagne and garnish with a couple frozen blueberries or whatever you think looks snazzy.

Cheers!

(Original recipe and photo can be found at InspiredTaste.net)

They Draw and Cook and Travel: The Return of Hashbrown Friday!

Many moons ago, a couple years after Kathy and I started Blog Moxie, we started doing this thing in the (virtual) office where we'd have McDonald's hashbrowns on Friday.  I"m not entirely sure why. We like hashbrowns, but our thighs don't, so I guess we relegated Friday to being a day of food freedom, hashbrowns n' all.  We started calling it Hasbrown Friday (HBF).

In an attempt to watch our girlish figures, HBF became a day when we'd post something fun on our Moxie blog -- something that inspires us or something we saw around the internet -- blog posts, photos, recipes, whatever.  When Kathy got pregnant, while you'd think there'd be a lot more hashbrowns going on, we both got a lot busier between her two kidlets and our growing business, so HBF somehow fell by the wayside.

It turns out, we missed it!  So we want to bring that tradition back -- and we'll start today, with this very cool site that 's new to me -- They Draw & Cook: Recipe Illustrated by Artists from Around the World.

This site is so cool. The gist is this: artists world wide submit recipes in illustrated form. The end. It sounds simple and like, "yeah, whatever, another recipe site", but the delivery of the recipes here are not only an eventual feast for your belly, but an immediate feast for your eyes. I am in love with their illustrations. I'd love to work with many of the artists featured on their site.

You can search for recipes, submit a recipe or use their schmancy "Dial-a-Meal" slot-machine-style generator to spit out dishes -- for herbivore or omnivore. The illustrations definitely make me want to try the recipes -- maybe even moreso than photography. If the passion that goes into the art is anything like the food they're describing, they've got to be good. 

They Draw and Cook is available as a book you can pick up on Amazon or a They Draw and Cook 2012 calendar, if you're so inclined.

I also noticed they have a travel site, too -- same type of concept, this time with travel maps. They Draw and Travel: Maps Illustrated by Artists from Around the World. Totally. Awesome.  (Hey, Deborah Mori, San Diego is my favorite city, too!)

I could easily blow my Friday just browsing through both of these sites, cooing over the awesome illustrations.  But I must get back to work!  Hope you take a second to visit They Draw and Travel and They Draw and Cook and enjoy them as much as I did.

Happy Friday!