Category: food

Cocktail of the Week: Honey Bourbon Toddy

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I could only avoid making the Hot Toddy for so long. This is the Quintessential cold weather cocktail. Sure, there’s Irish Coffee but it doesn’t have the universality of the Hot Toddy. Irish Coffee is something you drink after eating or when you first wake up (Hey, Lushes! How ya doing?) the Hot Toddy can be enjoyed any time of day and with or without a meal. It’s warmth and love distilled into a cup.

The ingredients
The ingredients

Honey Bourbon Toddy

  • 3 oz. bourbon
  • 1 oz. honey
  • 1/2 cup of hot water
  • 1 cinnamon stick
  • lemon peel

Stir honey and water until honey dissolves. Add bourbon. Pour into a toddy cup or mug. Twist a strip of lemon peel over each drink, then add to glass. Stir with a cinnamon stick and serve.

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Oh, wow. This was an amazing cocktail and just perfect for the overcast and windy day that I made it on. The warmth of the water and alcohol and the sweetness of the honey feels amazing when it goes down your throat. D didn’t want to have a cocktail but once she had a sip of mine she changed her mind! She was surprised at how warming the drink was and after finishing declared *this* version of the Hot Toddy her new favorite cocktail. I can’t disagree with her. This was really, really good and the perfect cocktail for a cold, cold night.

Wine Club!

We joined one! We’ll be getting 12 bottles (six red, six white) every two months from Solano Cellars! D and I are hoping that with this we’ll get a good selection of wines and start to learn a little more about the various types of wine, what makes them good, and what pairs well with what wines! We picked Solano Cellars because they deal in small production wineries!

The wine list
The wine list

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Cocktail of the Week: Martini

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As promised this week’s cocktail is the classic Martini. Being a classic one this martini is made using gin. Vodka martinis are good but they’re not a real martini. On top of that gin martinis taste a better than vodka ones. Yes, I said that. Wanna fight about it? Anyway let’s get to it!

There are numerous ways to serving a Martini, too many to go into here. You can splash in a little olive brine (Dirty Martini), you can replace the gin with vodka (Vodka Martini), you can use both gin, vodka, and a little Kina Lillet (Vesper Martini), and a thousand other variations that aren’t really martinis just cocktail served in a martini glass (appletini’s cherrytini’s, etc., etc.) You can even serve it over ice in an old fashioned glass. I went with an older recipe for the drink, common in the mid 20th century, that calls for more vermouth than is now used.

The ingredients
The ingredients

Martini

  • 3 oz. Gin
  • 1 oz. dry vermouth
  • lemon peel or olive (garnish)

Pour all ingredients into mixing glass with ice cubes. Stir well. Strain in chilled martini cocktail glass. Squeeze oil from lemon peel onto the drink. Add garnish.

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I didn’t know how to squeeze oil from a lemon peel. What I did instead was to pour the gin and vermouth through a sieve full of lemon zest. It seemed to impart a little of the lemony freshness into the drink. I’m not going to surprise anyone when I say this is a great cocktail. Simple, delicious, refreshing. All of that while imparting a sense of class and sophistication. Or that could just be me…

Cocktail of the Week: Maiden’s Prayer

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There was no Cocktail last week. I can’t recall exactly why now. I’m going to assume it was because D and I were very busy and/or I didn’t have time to do any research or go to the store and expand our home bar. I’m back this week with a drink I had never heard of containing a liquor I have never imbibed before. The cocktail is the Maiden’s Prayer and the liquor is Cointreau, a French orange liquor. We were gifted the bottle when friends of ours were moving across the country (literally, they drove from California to Florida) and didn’t want to drag along extras like wine and booze. The bottle has been sitting on the bar because we already had a bottle of Triple Sec and I’d never used the stuff before. D wanted to try it though and so she did some searching around and found this recipe!

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Maiden’s Prayer

  • Gin 1 1/2 oz.
  • Cointreau 1 oz.
  • Orange juice 1 oz.
  • Lemon Juice 1 oz.

Combine all ingredients into a shaker with ice. Shake. Strain into a cocktail glass. Garnish with a lemon/orange twist.

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These were good! Not really what I’d call Fall cocktails… The Cointreau blends perfectly with the juices and the gin is a good compliment. They were boozier than I expected or maybe the juices just didn’t mask the alcohol as much. D says that I’m a real sweetheart for making her lots of girly drinks. Whatever. A cocktail is a cocktail and so far they’ve all been really good. I’m not so insecure with my masculinity that I can’t enjoy booze mixed with fruit juice!

Art shot!
Art shot!

The fact that next week’s cocktail is going to be a Martini is completed unrelated!

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