Oscar Wilde is credited with perhaps the world’s best quip about manners: “A gentleman is one who never hurts anyone’s feelings unintentionally.” Yeah, just take a minute and let it sink in. I feel the same way about cocktails: “A good cocktail will never get you drunk unintentionally.” My preference is for drinks that leave no room…
Cocktails
The Rosemary Gin Gimlet
On New Year’s Eve I went to one of my favorite restaurants with my favorite people and drank a Gin Gimlet. (Okay, okay, three Gin Gimlets. You know me so well.) It was nice to get reacquainted with the Gimlet – it’s an old friend I haven’t quaffed in a long while. The Gimlet is…
Grandpa's Cold Cure Cocktail
At this time of year, no one would blame you if you were a bit partied out. From Thanksgiving to New Years tends to be a glutton-fest of rich food, sweets and frequent libation. I’m eager to revive the ol’ Friday Cocktail Tradition around here, but sympathetic to folks who may be feeling like a…
The Basil Bliss
It’s been an unseasonably warm, late spring day and we’ve been digging a duck pond. It’s time for a drink. It’s not quite warm enough for the icy summer staples (gin and tonic, I’m looking at you) but the moody drinks of winter are just too emo for a day of high cirrus clouds against a clear…
The Rhubarb 75
It’s not quite strawberry season, cherries look like small, hard green marbles and peaches are just a fuzzy dream. But there is rhubarb. Rhubarb is a strange edible. Not really a fruit but typically used as one, poisonous except for the stalk, tart and astringent and stringy when raw. Who was the first brave gatherer that…
Chocolate Mint Mojito
Mint isn’t just mint. There’s peppermint, spearmint, ginger mint, apple mint, pineapple mint, chocolate mint, lime mint and on and on. (Anyone ever seen Best in Show? Yeah, varieties of mint are kinda like the “I can name all the nuts” scene.) Different mints have different levels of super potent compounds that give them their…
Tamarind Tequila Rita
Right, I know. Tequila. You’re saying to yourself, “I don’t drink tequila. See, there was this one time in college and all I remember is I woke up on that grassy patch in front of the Mechanical Engineering building when the sprinkler started and hit me in the face and somehow my underwear was on…
The Hemingway Daiquiri
Ernest Hemingway is one of my father’s favorite authors. I grew up surrounded by The Old Man And The Sea, The Sun Also Rises and For Whom The Bell Tolls (about that last one – don’t ask). My favorite Hemingway piece has always been The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber. Or maybe A Clean,…
The Gin & Ginger Cocktail
If one were really, truly stretching the definition of healthy, one might consider this cocktail medicinal. Fresh citrus combines with raw muddled ginger root, a bit of botanically infused gin and bitters and just enough sweetness to help the delicious medicine go down. The result is a bit spicy, a bit lip-tingly and undeniably delicious:…
The Dark and Drizzly Cocktail
I keep trying to love that classic cocktail, The Dark and Stormy. Perhaps it’s my lack of Gosling’s Dark Rum, or my lackluster appreciation for rum in general that does it, but The Dark and Stormy’s combination of dark rum, lime and ginger beer has yet to win me over. To me, The Dark and Stormy…
How To Make Simple Syrup
I was at my local Yuppie-Hippie market and saw that you can actually buy Simple Syrup for cocktails. Like, pre-made, with a label and everything. A beautifully designed 12-ounce bottle of the stuff will only set you back about $7. Wait, SEVEN DOLLARS? For sugar water? It’s really quite shocking that I don’t get thrown…
The Marmalade Old Fashioned
Inspiration, Part One I picked up a bin of what I thought was “chicken scraps” from my local yuppie-hippie market a few weeks ago and found myself in possession of a lot of free organic citrus. Since my chickens don’t eat citrus, and since I hate food waste, I made marmalade. My dad used to…