quixoticThis is how my brain works. Be glad you don't have to live with me.
First up, I had to find a recipe for mai tais. I like them with pineapple. Thankfully, Wikipedia is always willing to save the day, and provided me with a page that contained more recipes for the mai tai than one woman will ever need. I settled on recipe #5, the pineapple variation, as my "Mai Tai Scripture," the one true recipe against which all other recipes would be measured. At least until I got bored.
According to the recipe, I needed light rum, dark rum, grenadine, orange, pineapple, and lime juices, and triple sec. (The recipe didn't say that I needed a pineapple, maraschino cherries, a lime, or little paper umbrellas. I figured that part out on my own.) So step two was clearly a trip to BevMo. Yay BevMo!
Now, to work at BevMo, one needs a) a decent understanding of alcohol, and b) a sense of humor. Both these things were possessed by the clerk who came over to assist me in my quest. She found me in the rum section, squinting bemusedly at the assortment of bottles. "What are you trying to make?" she asked.
"Mai tais."
"The mai tai mix is over here."
"From scratch."
Beat. "Are you from the university?"
When in doubt, claim college hazing. "Yes."
"Well, then, you'll want this, and this—"
She was awesome, and quickly helped me assemble everything I'd need to make a truly epic mai tai. She also reminded me to buy the little paper umbrellas, without which, the mai tai could bring only shame upon my household. ALCOHOLIC SHAME. So, y'know, thank you, helpful BevMo clerk! You were truly awesome.
After a stop at Safeway to acquire fruit (and fruit juices), I went home, and discovered that putting all my liquor on the counter meant that I couldn't put my laptop there. My laptop, you know, with the recipe. So I did the next best thing, and called Vixy at home, making her read me the recipe. I started off by telling her the wrong recipe, leading to hilarity when she started asking me to put things I didn't have into the cocktail shaker. Oops. We recovered quickly, and I managed to combine all the correct ingredients. Only...I needed ice, and my ice was frozen solid. Cue me smacking the ice with everything I could find in an effort to chip off enough to fill my shaker. More hilarity.
Somehow, I escaped the ice without injury, and was finally able to properly mix my drink. I put it into a glass. I added lots of fruit. And I called it good.
Mai tai! (And My Little Pony, specifically, Wave Runner from the Sunshine Pony assortment. Not that I, uh, knew that or anything.)
Therein endeth the lesson.
October 1 2010, 19:30:41 UTC 6 years ago
I go through cocktail obsessions, which I then force feed (hah) to my cooking club. Last year I figured out how to make really, really, really solid margaritas of various forms (though I am apparently forbidden from making peach ones forever and ever, as they lead to drunken, half nude dancing. My neighbors must have felt VERY lucky indeed that night). Then I moved on to mudslides because my husband is a chick and he usually likes his booze to taste as much like a milkshake as possible (we are forever getting served the wrong drink when we go out). Then I made fruitcake, and if you believe that fruitcake is 1. yucky and 2. not an alcoholic, uh, food, then you have never had a proper home made fruitcake that gets lovingly soaked in a mix of Southern Comfort and bourbon for at least three weeks in my refrigerator before I will even CONSIDER serving it, which I will then top with hard sauce, which is hard because it's mostly rum.
Come to think of it, it's getting close to fruitcake season again.
Then it was bloody marys.
Lately it's whiskey sours, which hubby has come to enjoy.
God that makes me sound like such a boozer. I don't drink often. I just take my drinking VERY SERIOUSLY and it's a heck of a lot cheaper to learn to make my own than it is to drink them elsewhere.
October 4 2010, 20:25:27 UTC 6 years ago
October 4 2010, 21:18:41 UTC 6 years ago
Though honestly if you trust Random Reader in New Jersey not to poison you I'd be happy to send you one. I'm going to make like ten to send various relatives anyway.
October 11 2010, 20:49:37 UTC 6 years ago
October 15 2010, 21:33:32 UTC 6 years ago
October 19 2010, 20:14:22 UTC 6 years ago