Sweet cocktails are delicious, beguiling, and…packed full of sugar.

Stirrings, a pioneering producer of quality cocktail mixes, offers a solution with two new five-calorie cocktail mixers:

 
Now you can enjoy these two top cocktails with no added sugar, no preservatives and no guilt.

Instead of sugar (or corn syrup), the cocktail mixes are flavored with a natural-tasting blend of sucralose and acesulfame potassium.

Otherwise, the ingredients you expect—cranberry juice in the Cosmo, key lime juice in the Margarita, are all natural, and there are no preservatives.

How about 5 Calorie Mixers for Mother’s Day:

 
A 25.4-fluid ounce bottle is $6.99.

Head to your nearest Stirrings retailer (here’s a store locator) or buy them online directly from Stirrings.

Then…bottoms up, with far fewer calories!
 
 
CHECK OUT THE DIFFERENT TYPE OFNON-CALORIC SWEETENERS

[1 & 2] The new five-calorie cocktail mixes. Top, Cosmopolitan; bottom, Margarita (photo courtesy Stirrings).

[1] The Full Circle sushi roll from Bamboo Sushi in Portland, Oregon, places a salad in the center of cut sushi rolls (photo courtesy Bamboo Sushi).

[2] Dress the salad with yuzu, if you can. Yuzu is a delicious citrus that combines the flavors and aromas of lemon, lime and grapefruit (photo courtesy J. Patokal | Wikipedia).

[3] You can find yuzu juice at Asian markets. It is worth every cent (photo Pinterest).

Sushi is one of our favorite foods. Occasionally we make it from scratch; but more often we enjoy it at restaurants, and even get take-out sushi from local markets. Often we get seaweed salad to round out the dish.

So we were especially charmed when we saw this Full Circle Roll from Bamboo Sushi in Portland, Oregon, featuring:

 
We’ve been making it for lunch and light dinners, and especially enjoy it with a cup of genmaicha tea, which is green tea mixed with tiny kernels of kernels of toasted and popped brown rice, giving the tea a nutty, toasty flavor.

We still buy the seaweed salad, and layer it on the plate under either watercress or arugula salad—creating a seaweed salad “surprise.”

The only problem: This dish is so refreshing, we want to eat two of them!
 
 
MAKE YOUR OWN

Our market not only has a good sushi selection, but also sells tuna and salmon in sashimi slices, so it’s easy for us to pull the dish together.

If you don’t have the same access to ingredients, you can buy sushi-quality tuna or salmon from a reliable fish market, and:

 
 
LOVE SUSHI?

Learn more about it—and see delicious sushi pictures—in our Sushi Glossary.
 
 
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*Sushi rice is made with a premium grade Japanese short grain white. The cooked rice is mixed, while still hot, with a mixture of rice vinegar, sugar and salt. The vat of rice is fanned to cool it off.

If you try to mix the rice vinegar mixture into regular cooked rice, it will approximate the flavor of sushi rice, but the rice won’t stick together as the short-grain rice does.

Here’s a treat for Cinco de Mayo that happens to be vegan: Tacos Al Pastor

Al pastor is a dish from central Mexico that is an adaptation of shawarma, the spit-grilled meat brought by Lebanese immigrants to Mexico. Shawarma is similar to Turkish döner kebab and the Greek gyros.

The dish— Mexican street food—is made from thinly sliced pork that has been seasoned with chiles and pineapple, and roasted on a vertical spit.

This vegan version from McCormick replaces the meat with nutty, roasted butternut squash and a slew of seasonings.

The tacos are layered in corn tortillas with pineapple, crunchy cabbage or radishes, a squeeze of fresh lime, and an optional onion garnish.

Prep time is 20 minutes, cook time is 35 minutes. Calories per serving: 130.
 
 
RECIPE: BUTTERNUT SQUASH TACOS AL PASTOR

Ingredients For 10 Tacos

[1] Butternut squash tacos with a layering of flavors (photo courtesy McCormick).

[2] Butternut squash (photo courtesy Good Eggs).

 
Preparation

1. PLACE one oven rack in lowest position and another rack in highest position. Preheat the oven to 450°F.

2. MIX the oil, spices, 1-3/4 teaspoons of the salt, and the pepper in a large bowl with wire whisk. Add the squash and toss to coat evenly. Arrange the squash in single layer on parchment-lined shallow baking pan. Set aside.

3. ARRANGE the pineapple slices in single layer on a separate parchment-lined shallow baking pan. Drizzle with 2 tablespoons of the lime juice.

4. PLACE the pan with squash on lowest oven rack. Place the pan with pineapple on highest oven rack. Roast 30 to 35 minutes or until squash is tender and lightly browned, stirring the squash and flipping the pineapple halfway through cooking. Meanwhile…

5. TOSS the cabbage with the remaining 2 tablespoons of lime juice and 1/4 teaspoon salt in large bowl. Set aside.

6. REMOVE the squash and pineapple from the oven and let them cool slightly. Chop the pineapple into bite-size chunks.

7. TO SERVE: Layer the squash and pineapple in warm corn tortillas. Top with the cabbage or radishes and the chopped white onion.
 
 
MORE WAYS TO USE RADISHES

Serve them at breakfast, lunch and dinner. Plus a recipe for Cucumber Radish Salad.