Category: Drinks

January is… Hot Tea Month & Soup Month

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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” →

My Own Mock-jito

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You never know when the “create my own drink” mood will strike. Recently it struck as I was looking for a way to use up the VAST QUANTITIES of mint. The results are a refreshing, “too early for the bar bell” version of a mojito.

MY OWN MOCK-JITO.

Assemble the following items:

  • A sturdy tumbler
  • Lemon-lime soda
  • Dash of either lemon juice or lime juice. Even better a slice of lemon or lime
  • Ice
  • Mint leaves.

Take the following steps:

  • Muddle the mint with a slice of fruit or a squirt of lemon juice (or lime juice) at the bottom of the tumbler. Use the handle end of a wooden spoon if you don’t have a wooden muddler.
  • Add lemon-lime soda and stir. No need to use sugar in the muddling as one would do with an actual mojito because the soda has sugar in it already.
  • Add ice, stir briskly.
  • Add bendy straw (cause ALL my drinks involve bendy straws)
  • Drink.

If you’ve heard the bar bell, imagined the bar bell or just figured the bar bell must have rung SOMEWHERE – switch from mock-jito to mojito and add rum to taste. Or vodka – also to taste. It won’t be a mojito in the strictest sense of the word but if it tastes good, who cares?

Happy Margarita Day

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And you thought it was just Cook a Sweet Potato Day.  As I do not care for sweet potatoes, I neither have them on hand nor intend to cook any. Margaritas, on the other hand, I have the makings for and as soon as I can do so without being accused of morning dispomania, I intend to assemble and celebrate.

We don’t know who created the margarita (or the sweet potato for that matter) but since it was introduced there have been variation upon variation blended, poured, tested, tasted and enjoyed by millions all over the world.  Cheers my friends!