NATIONAL MARGARITA DAY? YES, PLEASE!

By Lisa

Who’s going to be celebrating National Margarita Day with me today? America loves margaritas. Its the number-one-selling cocktail in the country. A great drink can transport you emotionally to summer and you’ll imagine sitting on the beach with a margarita in hand. (I would love nothing more than to be on a sunny beach right now, sipping a delicious margarita on the rocks instead of freezing in Peoria, AZ with the crazy, bi-polar weather of late. It’s cold. It’s warm. It’s cold. I’m over it!) Anyway, back to the margarita. The margarita is typically made with tequila mixed with Triple Sec and lime or lemon juice, often served with salt on the glass rim. The drink is served shaken with ice, on the rocks, blended with ice or without ice.

Boy do I love me some margaritas and I’m not kidding. I used to buy bottles of Jose Cuervo ready-to-serve margaritas a couple of times a week. I could drink a bottle of the Classic Lime flavor by myself. Obviously, I stopped drinking “real” margaritas when I went Paleo. It never even occurred to me to look at the label to check out the nutritional content of those margaritas. Well, I just researched it for this blog post. Holy Hell! One 6oz pre-mixed margarita has 208 calories in it and 29.2g of carbs. Guess how many calories and carbs are in an entire bottle? The answer to that questions is 2078 calories and 291.7g of carbs. OMG! For comparison sake, an In-N-Out Double Double Protein Style Burger has 520 calories and 11g of carbs. I’m no mathematician, but it looks like the bottle of pre-mixed margaritas is equivalent to almost FOUR Double Doubles. Wow. I would never even consider drinking a traditional margarita now. That sugar headache would kill me.

Now that I’m in my Paleo-Era, I still drink margaritas, but they are known as a NorCal Margaritas. I found out about the NorCal Margarita when I read Robb Wolf’s, “The Paleo Solution.” Like most everyone else, I thought of tequila as that gross thing I did shots of while on Spring Break in Rocky Point. I couldn’t stomach the smell of tequila, let alone the taste. I now know that quality tequila makes all the difference in the world.  The NorCal Margarita is fantastically refreshing. This lighter version of a traditional margarita will soon become your drink of choice, too! Here’s my recipe:

Lisa’s Verson of the NorCal Margarita

16oz cup of ice

1 shot Espolon Tequila (blanco)

1/2 lime squeezed in with a lime squeezer

Fill with Pellegrino Sparkling Water

Enjoy!