Woman in Real Life

While I spent a few weeks cooking all sorts of recipes from various vegan cookbooks, this past week was all about casual, impromptu meals. Lots of wraps, quesadillas, quick noodles and that sort of thing. Like this bean burrito with stir-fried veggies and guacamole, above. We had mashed sweet potatoes on the side.

Ah, summer! Pool parties, sunshine, sand, late nights, picnics, casual entertaining and...vodka cocktails. There's something about sitting out on a deck or patio that's enhanced by a little summer cocktail. While I am a big rum and coke fan, I can't drink more than one before the sugar and caffeine from the cola starts to affect me negatively.

That's why I decided to seek out some cocktails involving vodka and summer-appropriate fruity flavours, such as watermelon, strawberry and pomegranate. While I was on the hunt for alternatives to rum and coke, I came across these five must-try, yummy-sounding, fruity vodka drinks. A little bit of natural Vitamin C with your alcohol is always a good thing!

Before I get to my meal plan for this week, I would like to review some highlights from last week's plan. I deliberately made it a pretty simple cooking week. Although it's still cold here and we had some snow yesterday, I like to pretend it's spring. Once warmer weather comes, we will have lots more simple meals, like our Friday night treat, above.

We enjoyed Sol veggie burgers, Alexia waffle cut fries and rapini sauteed in olive oil and garlic. I also tried a  (tasty) vodka beverage called Sucking Lemons. I can only have one though, because I find this type of drink hard on my stomach.