Category: Drinks

January is… Hot Tea Month & Soup Month

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Honestly, if you’re given the choice between Armageddon or tea, you don’t say ‘what kind of tea?’ ― Neil Gaiman

I confess that I am not a huge tea fan. If pressed, I can manage a cup of hot tea as an excuse to inhale scones with great globs of clotted cream – but even then it’s something I do solely to get at the scones and cream.

Still it’s better than iced tea which I loathe with the heat of a thousand suns. My attitude toward tea was never a problem until I moved to England – Land of Tea, where 165 million cups of tea are consumed daily. As a coffee drinker, I am considered some sort of beverage blasphemer. This is me every year…

Coffee is available, yes and is increasingly popular but it’s still only cracking 70 million cups of coffee a day across the UK. So I am keeping my head (and coffee mug) down. Can I help it is I come from a place that – according to the Tea Association of America – only consumes 154 million cups of tea a day? Continue reading “January is… Hot Tea Month & Soup Month” →

January Starting Rough? Drink Up! It’s Bloody Mary Day!

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Hey kids! It’s Jan 1 and you know what that means? What? No, not hangovers! Well, yes – for some it means hangovers but it also means it’s Bloody Mary Day!

The Bloody Mary – a classic American cocktail. Favored by brunch eaters everywhere, popularly believed to cure hangovers (it doesn’t but it explains how Jan 1 became devoted to this particular drink) and a drink of such infinite variety that you could declare it Bloody Mary month and have a different version everyday without duplication. What makes it such a contortionist of a cocktail? The complexity of it and also the simplicity. Sounds contradictory, right? It isn’t.

The basis of the Bloody Mary is vodka and tomato juice. Simple enough. Beyond that, there is a dazzling array of spices and flavors designed to produce a drink both sweet and savoury, sour and spicy. Continue reading “January Starting Rough? Drink Up! It’s Bloody Mary Day!” →

A Story for Piña Colada Day

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Happy Piña Colada Day! Possibly it is a bit early where you are to indulge – it’s only 8:15am here. If so, then indulge in THIS classic tune ’till the bar bell goes off.

Lyrical Musings

The residents of TransAtlantic Towers often discuss this song and its story. We’re puzzled as to how and why this song ends the way it does. I mean, don’t get me wrong – I like a happy ending as much as anyone else. I hope those two kids worked it out and lived happily ever after.

But does it make sense as given? Surely, once they arrived at O’Malley’s, one or both would ask in affronted tones, “What the hell were you doing placing/answering personal ads?” Then there would be a row, someone would huff off. Or they’d make up over piña coladas. But I feel there may be unresolved issues in that relationship.

And that’s not the only potential dust up linked to the fruity tropical drinks. Just try to establish who invented it. See, it’s like this – there were these two Puerto Rican bartenders. Come to think of it sounds like the beginning of a joke (“two Puerto Rican bartenders walk into a bar…”) but it is really the beginning of a great cocktail mystery. Continue reading “A Story for Piña Colada Day” →