The makings of a great bringing home Epcot experience!
December 12, 2013
Because of Southern Girl Travel, we get to travel together as a family often (but like most of us, we don’t get to travel quite as much as we might like).
If you have ever checked out Bringing Home Beaufort – our project exploring one of the places we truly love to visit, Beaufort, NC – you’ll know that when we can’t travel, we do like to bring home the best of the places we love.
We like to explore ways to bring home that vibe we get when traveling to our favorite places.
One of the best – and easiest – ways to do that is through food and drink.
A taste of a particular food and a sip of a special drink can trigger a flood of travel memories and take you back to those favorite places. While its not a perfect subsitute for being there, it can often be even better:
All the comfort of home with the feel of your favorite travel experiences.
On our last trip to Walt Disney World, we were able to spend tons of time at Epcot. Our kids are old enough to really enjoy Epcot, and on this trip, we – the grownups – were able to enjoy the great food and drink that Epcot has to offer.
Many will have heard of the famous (and sometimes infamous) drinking around the world pub crawl in Epcot.
Bringing home Epcot right to our kitchen – read on to learn how!
Great guides to drinking around the world abound, so we won’t attempt to produce another, but on one sunny, but very cool, North Carolina afternoon, we decided to channel a little Epcot by bringing home what was one of my favorite stops on the Epcot libations tour – La Cava del Tequila in the Mexican Pavilion.
We stopped in La Cava to try several of the flavored margaritas. Jenn liked the pineapple one, and I was enamoured with the 100s of tequilas and mezcals, and ended up ordering flights on several different visits.
While I have had a tequilia shot or two in the past, until La Cava I had really never tried good tequilas and never tried mezcal at all.
Both were amazing and paired with chips & guacamole, couldn’t be beat.
What really made the experience for me was the chaser served with each flight. The chaser was a alcohol free shot of a sweet and spicy beverage – almost like a liquid salsa – called sangrita (you can see some above – it’s the red beverage in the shot glass on the left).
I searched a few Mexican cookbooks we had at home, all had sangrita recipes, but none looked quite right. So in a stroke of genious no one else would have ever arrived at, I Googled La Cava del Tequila sangrita recipe…and low and behold, what did I find?
The recipe, straight from Disney.
The recipe is simple and includes:
24 oz. Tomato Juice
6 Serrano Peppers (very finely chopped)
1/2 Red Onion (very finely chopped)
17 Mint Leaves (very finely chopped)
7 oz. Fresh Lime Juice
7 oz. Fresh Grapefruit Juice
7 oz. Fresh Orange Juice
3 oz. Agave Nectar
Salt
I made my list, stopped at the grocery store, and as well call it here in North Carolina, the ABC Store (for Alcohol Beverage Control).
With all the ingredients and a decent bottle of tequila, I set out to bring home a little Epcot.
Here’s how it progressed:
Getting started with the onion and peppers…
Peppers, onions, and mint finely chopped (though not quite finely enough)
All combined with the juices!
Once the sangrita was ready to go, I made some fresh guacamole, opened some chips, sliced a few limes, and poured a shot of good tequila along with a shot of sangrita.
The results:
It actually turned out pretty good.
Two things I would do differently on the next batch:
1. Back off the grapefruit juice just a bit, as it seemed to be just a little to prominent a taste;
2. Chop the onions more finely, as they gave the drink too much crunch.
Otherwise, it was great.
The recipe was easy and the tastes brought home one of the highlights of our last trip to Disney World!
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Hi! I'm Jennifer Newsome and I own and operate Southern Girl Travel with some help from my husband, Mark, and our three kids. This shot was taken in beautiful 