A Watermelon Summer Cocktail

One of my favorite summer fruits is watermelon. I've always loved the flavor and even not being a huge melon person, there's something very refreshing about watermelon. Side note: watermelon was also my favorite Jolly Rancher flavor, so there's that.

As part of my Azoti farm share a few weeks' back, there was the cutest little butterball of a seedless watermelon. It was totally fun sized. I should have taken a picture of it whole but I didn't. Pooper.

This is it cut into two quarters though:

It was completely perfect in sweetness, consistency, meatiness - just perfection in melon form. 

Baby watermelon was a lot to eat, especially as Spouse is not a fan (I know, it is truly inexplicable), so I was trying to decide what to do with it. Ohio went through the last gasp of Summer and a watermelon cocktail sounded pretty delish at the time. 

So I needed watermelon juice or at least the puree. 

First step was to cut the lovely pink meat off of the rind. 

Next, mash the sweet meat down with a potato masher, which was super fun and a good stress reliever, I'll be honest. 

I drained off the actual juice into a mason jar but still had a decent amount of juicy meat left over, so decided to push it through a finer sieve with a soup spoon, to get every last sweet drop. 

The juice alone gave me a full 16 oz. mason jar + some of straight juice. 

I'll be honest, there was de-juiced watermelon meat left but well, it got tossed. It looked really pretty but I had no earthly idea what to do with it. 

Bye, bye sweet watermelon meat.

Onto cocktail island!!!! WOOT!

I took about 8 oz of the watermelon juice, added a generous dollop of fresh lime juice, a shot of vodka and stirred it well. Deciding it needed just a little something extra, I added about 2 oz. of lemon-lime soda (I had "Natural" - ha! - Sierra Mist) and restirred. 

The stirring made it frothy, which I enjoy in a fruity alcoholic beverage. The color of it was really stunning. All it was missing was a paper umbrella. 

I had enough to make 2+ drinks and since there wasn't a ton of alcohol in it, was only slightly inebriated. Not to mention, I was at home and drank these over a 4-6 hour period. Drink #2 was made with Watershed Distillery's Four Peel Gin. instead of vodka and was quite delicious. Drink #2+ was made with gin and fresh lemon juice, instead of lime and was also quite delicious.

One word of caution with fruit puree beverages: if you don't drink them quickly, they will separate so keep a spoon/whip/tool on hand - unless you guzzle it and then you will be fine. 

Happy drinking, folks!