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February 25, 2006
The Usual, Jeeves. Thank You.
Since my stress level has been slightly elevated lately, I've been having cravings for quick drinks at the end of the day and the phrase "something to take the edge off" suddenly makes much more sense (don't worry, I still hardly ever drink so I'm hardly at risk for alcoholism). The problem is, I'm not a big drinker and I don't have a favorite drink. I've dabbled in fruity cocktails like cranberry and vodka or Sex on the Beach, but those seem sort of wimpy and more appropriate for college-aged kids. Derek and I both love Malibu rum and pineapple juice, but that's kind of like a pina colada -- you just can't have it every day. It's also a one- or two-season drink, like a mojito -- it's great in the summer but it doesn't seem quite right in the winter. I spent last summer drinking gin and tonics, and I had a serious affair with Bailey's while in Barcelona in high school, but neither regularly appeals to me. As for beer, I'll drink Magic Hat #9, but I can never seem to finish a pint before everyone else has finished two.
More sophisticated drinks, like good scotch or a martini, involve too much alcohol for my taste (and I don't really like whiskey, try as I might). Wine is great, but sometimes I feel like something different, and the wine in bars isn't usually worth the expense. I need something classy that I can order in some swanky, time-honored institution. Something I'll enjoy drinking. I feel like this sort of thing comes with adulthood but I must have missed that part of my 20s. I obviously didn't drink enough.
My parents both have signature drinks: Dad a bloody mary and mom a rum and tonic. My grandmother drank vodka and water right into her 90s. Friends of ours love whiskey and drink it straight. Other friends own an ice crusher, keep martini glasses in the freezer, and have mastered a whole host of classic cocktail recipes. And most people we know just seem much more familiar with cocktail names -- over the holidays a group of us were matching people up with the drinks they most resembled (I think I was something rather simple, bordering on a Shirley Temple, which I still resent), and someone was a sidecar. I like the name and it matched the person, but what the hell's a sidecar? I've never had one. And what's a Rob Roy? Or a Tom Collins? Dad just mentioned a "Singapore Sling" and a "Boiler Maker". Clearly his time at debutante balls during the 50s educated him well in this area. He's talking now about how coal miners in Pennsylvania drink Boiler Makers (a beer with a shot of whiskey dropped in, which you drink quickly) and chase it with pickled eggs. "They're probably all dead," he says (I'm writing this in the car as we're driving home from a cousin's 80th birthday in MA. We're heading to NJ to celebrate Dad's 70th tomorrow -- Happy Birthday Dad!). But I digress.
Last summer, I tried to catch up by mixing my own concoctions -- the recipes in books always seem so simple. It's harder than it looks, though -- my drinks were pretty awful. I would spend 15 minutes in the kitchen mashing up lime and other fruit and randomly combining fruit juices and sodas and alcohols and the result would always be completely unimpressive. Derek wouldn't even drink them. I don't seem to have any talent for it.
I think there must be some rite of passage involved in selecting a signature drink. The drinker probably has to go through a particularly difficult time or, alternatively, spend a summer working as a bartender. Since I'm not really up for either option, I'm thinking of a Julie-Jullia project, only with alcohol. I recently bought our whiskey-drinking friend a book called "Mr. Boston", which seemed to be a definitive collection of standard cocktail recipes. I wonder if my liver could survive a drink from that book each evening? If I try every recipe I have to find something, right? Or maybe I just bring the book to Commonwealth, randomly flip open the book and hand it to the bartender. I'm thinking Derek's not going to be too enthusiastic about this plan, since neither of us can really handle any sort of drinking on weeknights anymore. But this is a predicament, no? Not having a signature drink? We have to do something!
Posted by csageday at February 25, 2006 07:48 PM