Bohemian

So my financial woes have seriously derailed the progression of this project, and the damage might be fatal. We'll see as summer approaches how much money I have to put toward my efforts, but I might have to ask for an extension past September.

As to the bohemian, I didn't follow the recipe exactly as it stated because I had just gotten back from the store when I realized I didn't have cranberry juice. How do I not have cranberry juice? Talk about bar essentials. I subbed blueberry pomegranate juice that my roommates had in the fridge.

Overall, the drink was fruity and nice, but I think the tartness of the cranberry would've been a good addition.

2 ounces vodka

1 ounce pineapple juice

1/2 ounce passion fruit juice

1/2 ounce cranberry juice

Mix with cracked ice and strain into a chilled cocktail glass.

Enjoy and bottoms up!

Mai Tai and Piña Colada

Unfortunately I had only had blue Curaçao instead of regular, so we drank blue mai tais the other night. Blue drinks will just never seem classy, I don't care what they are called or what they contain.

In fact, the mai tai is a pretty tasty drink, and a nice choice for the nicer weather we had here on Saturday. A lot sweeter than what I am now accustomed to, but still delicious. I can only imagine how amazing these would taste in their proper environment, but those musings will have to stay in my mind until I get some cash money in my bank account.

2 ounces golden rum

1/2 ounce Curaçao

1/2 ounce orgeat (almond flavored) syrup

1/4 ounce simple syrup

juice of 1 fresh lime

-Shake in cocktail shaker and strain into old fashioned glass.

Two drinks in one post! I haven't done that in awhile, but these two happened in the same night I have very similar things to say about them. Yum, but sweeter than I usually drink. Might be making these come summertime. Yay! Recipe:

1 1/2 ounces golden rum

1 1/2 ounce coconut milk

4 ounces pineapple juice

4-5 ice cubes

-Blend it, pour it, drink it.

Enjoy and bottoms up!

Matador

We have a winner! The matador is one glass of complete delicious and gets four thumbs way up (I shared this one with an amiga)! It's definitely tropical and girly, but why does that have to be a diss? 'This drink actually tastes good, must be for light weights!' Bah, I like it.

I have to admit that I've been a very bad blogger of late, but I've still been doing the drinking, so I'll catch up eventually. I've had some friends back in town, some of my friends who actually drink, so I've had a chance to re-make some drinks of the past, and even did a bit (very small bit) of mixology. Masha was adorably impressed with my cocktail shaker, a I love her for it ;-)

Now I'll spend the next couple days immersed in Christmas prep at my parents' house, and hopefully catching up on a couple drinks I've yet to post about. Hope everyone's having a great holiday!

2 ounces tequila

1 ounce lime juice

4 ounces pineapple juice

splash of simple syrup

-Shake ingredients in cocktail shaker and strain into iced highball glass.

Enjoy and bottoms up!

Algonquin

My drink for night one of house sitting for my parents was an unusual one: I don't know why anyone would think to put these flavors together. It seems like an end of the night drink, when you only have a little bit of several random alcohols/mixers but you don't even care because you've had so much to drink you won't taste it anyway. What's really impressive is that someone had that moment and still remembered the recipe the next day:

2 ounces blended whiskey

1 ounce dry vermouth

1 ounce pineapple juice

-Stir over cracked ice and strain into cocktail glass.

Now, the first sip I was a little unsure, but I actually ended up enjoying this one. I didn't have to grimace or make strange noises in order to get it down at all. It is weird, no doubts there. I don't know how to tell you what it tastes like, other than weirdly pleasant. It's a nice change of pace: I feel like I've been having a lot of lime or cough syrup, lime or cough syrup. The algonquin was a nice little surprise.

Enjoy and bottoms up!

Champagne Punch

Yay! I got my first punch out of the way! I really feel like the punch chapter has the potential to ruin this whole project for me, unless I manage to get a full time job. Sad.

Anyway, I should say that the above picture is just A champagne punch and not THE champagne punch that I made. Mine being much less beautiful but probably just as tasty. Here's what you do:

4 ounces lemon juice

4 ounces pineapple juice

3 ounces grenadine

1 cup brandy

3 ounces triple sec

1 bottle white wine

2 bottles chilled champagne

-Combine everything except champagne over ice and stir. Add champagne just before serving.

In general this was good, but wasn't nearly as flavorful as I was expecting. I really thought there would be multiple layers of delicious, complex and surprising. I think it would have tasted pretty similar with just the wine, champagne, and triple sec.

I should say that I didn't drink all this punch alone: I brought it to a house warming party for El, and I am told people drank it completely. I wouldn't know because I'm an old lady who left at 9:00 to go home and sleep.

I did some more imbibing tonight, but I'm super super tired now, so I'll save that post for tomorrow.

Enjoy and bottoms up!

Blue Hawaiian/Purple Haze

So these are both from a couple days ago...I'm getting to be a bit of a lazy blogger already! Thursday night El and I decided to sit around the apartment drinking cocktails and watching Top Chef, which is a pretty magic combination if you ask me.

Since El isn't a big drinker, I thought I would go for something tropical and girly. Blue Hawaiians seemed to fit the bill:

1 ounce light rum

1 ounce blue curacao

1 ounce cream of coconut

2 ounces pineapple juice

-Mix in a cocktail shaker with cracked ice and strain into an iced highball glass.

Okay, seems like it should be pretty delicious, yeah? NOPE! This was the first drink that I didn't finish. I gave it several sips and poured it down the drain. Mine did not resemble the above photo AT ALL. For those of you who have seen Bridget Jones' Diary, it was pretty much like the blue soup she makes for her birthday dinner. To make this drink better, I would go with coconut milk or water instead of cream of coconut. I even went with the more expensive version and it was still awful. Yuck.

The purple haze, however, was pretty decent. It's not one that I would go out of my way to order, but it was pretty good. Decidedly bluish in color and not purple, it still satisfied nicely:

1 ounce vodka

1 ounce blue curacao

cranberry juice

-Mix vodka and curacao in cocktail shaker with cracked ice and strain into iced glass. Fill with cranberry juice.

Curacao is a liqueur with an orange flavor. It can be blue or white and, as far as I can tell, is only blue when you want the drink to be blue. Kind of cheesy, but there you go.

I'm also taking the week off from cocktails so I can get some legit work on grad apps and GRE studying done. Also, I overindulged in wine Friday night and now alcohol is less than appealing. Should be updating by Friday or Saturday though.

Enjoy and bottoms up!

Classic Martini/Sex on the Beach/Cape Codder

Okay, so this the drunkest blog so far by a mile. There will likely be typos and droning on and other forms of confusing nonsense. A predictable flaw when blogging about drinking.

My first cocktail began when I realized that vermouth is a type of wine and can therefore be purchased in Oregon grocery stores, forgoing the annoying trip to the liquor store. I should mention that I do not have a driver's license and the liquor store is not exactly walking distance. I consider it simply another challenge to be overcome along my road to cocktail glory.

I was at local grocery store MoC when I spotted the vermouth for a price I could afford and decided it was time to put a check mark in the chapter dedicated to martinis. I will give you a condensed version of what said chapter has in its introduction: gin or vodka blah blah lounge lizards blah blah purists blah blah 1960s blah blah cold cold COLD COLD! Yep.

The moral of the story is that the traditional martini is made of gin and vermouth, but vodka is often substituted for gin, which is what I did since I haven't purchased gin yet. Also, I hate gin. The less vermouth (or more gin/vodka) a martini has, the drier it is. Over the years, the zeitgeist has moved toward a drier martini. Also, everything involved in a martini, from the glassware to the alcohol to the utensils should be cold...from the freezer where appropriate.

The version I made tonight is the "Classic Martini." There are many different ratios in my book, and I will explore them in the future. There are also other flavors of martini that I will explore. Blather blather here's the recipe:

1 1/2 ounce vodka

1/2 ounce dry vermouth

-Ignore Bond and stir don't shake. Stir over ice cubes, not cracked ice. Strain into chilled cocktail glass.

I have heard stories about how terrible martinis are, and I don't think I would have enjoyed this at an earlier point in my drinking career. However, tonight it was pretty alright. It's definitely not a yummy yummy I-can't-even-tell-this-is-booze type of drink, but I liked it. I drank it while re-watching "Goodnight and Good Luck" and eating pasta, which I recommend as a mighty fine trio. Fab film. I used Absolute vodka and Boissiere extra dry vermouth.

Sex on the Beach, however, was a delicious experience, and one that I wasn't particularly expecting. As follows:

1 ounce vodka

3 ounce cranberry juice

2 ounce pineapple juice

1 ounce orange juice

1 ounce peach schnapps

This is pretty much the definition of girly drink. I couldn't taste the alcohol at all. You can also do either all pineapple juice or all orange juice if you aren't mixer rich like me. I couldn't even tell how cheap and terrible the peach schnapps were. Also, was watching From Justin to Kelly while drinking this one. I really think the stars aligned for my movie/drink combinations tonight, haha.

My last drink of the evening was a Cape Codder. I mostly made this because I invested in some cranberry juice the other night and this is an easy drink. Now, I'm usually not such a cran fan, but it's a pretty popular mixer so I made the leap. I stood in the aisle having the debate with myself: cran cocktail or proper cran juice. Cran cocktail seems terrible, but it's cheap for a college student. Cran juice doesn't add sugar: who doesn't want sugar? In the end, despite myself, I went home with the real thing: L&A's 100% no sugar added cranberry juice. BEST DECISION EVER. This drink was about 10 million times better than I thought it would be and I think the quality of the mixer had everything to do with that.

2 ounces vodka

4-6 ounces cranberry juice (I went with 5 personally)

-Mix in a cocktail shaker with cracked ice and pour into iced glass. Can add a bit of lime juice if desired (I definitely desired).

Enjoy and bottoms up!

Flirtini/Vodka Gimlet

really wish I could be bothered to make an accurate count of how many recipes are in my book so I could do a countdown, but let's just say that I did #3 & #4 out of about 150 tonight. Here they are-

Pineapple Flirtini:

1.5 ounces vodka
1.5 ounces champagne
Dash of pineapple juice

-Stir gently over cracked ice and strain into chilled glass.

I think I may have put a little more than a "dash" of pineapple juice because that's all I could taste. It was delicious, but I'm getting to the point in my cocktail drinking where I actually want to taste something other than the mixer. Mostly, I would put a little more champagne in, a little less pineapple and vodka. I couldn't really taste the carbonation. Better than the fuzzy/hairy navels though, but I think that's due to the quality of the ingredients this time. I used Absolut vodka, Cristalino champagne, and RW Knudson pineapple juice. For this recipe, I don't think the vodka quality is that important though.

Vodka Gimlet:

2 1/4 ounces Vodka (you can substitute gin for vodka to make a more traditional gin gimlet - but I don't like gin, so I didn't)
3/4 ounce Rose's Lime Juice

-Stir gently over cracked ice. Strain into chilled glass.

Anybody whose been to John Henry's with me probably knows that this is my drink of choice, but this was the first time I had made it for myself. This is a drink where a quality vodka makes a difference, so I'm glad I had one ;-) Market of Choice didn't have Rose's lime juice though, so I had to get a different one. It was fine, but more tart than usual...I think Rose's probably has more sugar and I should compensate for that next time. Also, DON'T DRINK THIS WHILE EATING RAMEN NOODLES!! It will bring out the taste of the vodka too much and taste terrible. Pre or Post ramen is fine.

I drank these while watching Paris, Je t'aime, which was far superior to Donnie Darko, which I watched earlier today and has to be one of the worst cult classics I've ever seen. Paris, Je t'aime was enjoyable but made me cry a couple times. I'm just hoping that isn't a sign that I'm turning into a weepy drunk.

While I'm reviewing things, I might a well say that I finished The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon yesterday. It's only 152 pages long, but it took me the entire month of August to read because it was so crazy and convoluted (I was also reading another book at the same so that didn't help). I wouldn't put this book on the top of my reading list if I were you: it's kind of like a less inspiring version of a Tom Robbins novel.

Okay, that's it. Enjoy and bottoms up!