Happy Hour Friday: The Hangover

It happens to everyone. Everyone who drinks, anyway.

Even the most careful drinkers among us occasionally overindulge.

And when that happens, it pays to be prepared. Most of us are not
natural Mrs. Liliens (even her hangovers are glamorous).

That's why I just read this from cover to cover:

Milton Crawford knows what he's talking about. 

His recipes are simple and sound great, his writing is crisp and hilarious

and the book's design is fantastic. All of which is no surprise - Crawford is British.

The Brits are notoriously good at drinking.

But if your hangover leaves you feeling adventurous, National Geographic has you covered with

this feature about hangover helpers from around the world.

Strong green tea (China) or coffee (Italy): Absolutely.

Shrimp (Mexico): Sure, especially if it's attached to a bloody mary. 

A beer (Netherlands): Sometimes - I am partly Dutch, after all.

Sour pickle juice (Poland): Well, maybe.

Tripe soup (Romania): Oh come on.

But at least we've got options.

Happy Hour Friday: Cinqo de Derby

Big day tomorrow!

 

Kentucky Derby AND Cinqo de Mayo are two big drinking occasions (plus, of course, a horse race and a celebration of a Mexican victory over the French, which gets entirely swept under the rug in the U.S.).

Cinqo de Mayo is more of a bar holiday than one for home parties, but if you're celebrating at home, check out Chowhound for two "perfect" margarita recipes (they're both heavy on the citrus; I'd add simple syrup to either) and one recipe for pitcher margaritas that sounds very easy and also pretty good.

As for the Derby, if you're having a party, Garden and Gun has you covered, right down to a
simple and proper recipe for mint juleps.

I don't really have a favorite horse in this race, though it's hard to resist an animal named "Gemologist." Though I should probably be rooting for a Maryland horse, right? Done Talking and Went the Day Well both have Maryland connections.

Happy Hour Friday: Are Honey Drinks Over?

I've got at least four jars of honey in my kitchen - multiple local varieties, a habanero honey, and at least one regular little bottle. I love the stuff.

I also love it in cocktails and I'm happy to see honey-related drinks on menus about town - they're de rigeur for Prohibition era cocktail bars. The Bee's Knees Cooper had at Rye earlier this year was excellent.

But...I think drinks with honey might be kind of over already. Thanks to West Elm.

Now I like West Elm as much as the next girl. I was thrilled when they opened a store in my mall. I can even almost get behind West Elm's Brooklyn/Etsy/blah-blah-blah thrust. I get why they're doing it, though I actually think it just makes Brooklyn/Etsy/anything handmade seem (more) overdone, rather than making West Elm seem hip.

Here's where I'm going with this: in its most recent catalog, West Elm featured a honey cocktail, which, inconveniently, I cannot find online, so you'll just have to take my word for it. My reaction to the recipe was not, "Oh, look, I love honey! I'll make this!" Instead, it was, "Well, I guess honey cocktails are over, now that they're gracing the pages of West Elm's catalog."

I'm a little perplexed by my reaction: I'm not usually the kind of person who shuns something becuase it gets popular. I celebrate mainstream popularity! I like The Beatles! So I'm not sure why this is rubbing me the wrong way. But it is.

That said, I may make myself a Bee's Knees for cocktail hour today. But it won't make me feel cool, I can promise you that.

**If you're not ready to say sayonary to the honey, read this 2009 Imbibe article. It's a nice little primer, with a simple honey syrup recipe included.

Happy Hour Friday: Go Outside

It's that time of year again, when I want to close out every day with a drink in my yard.

Needless to day, I'm feeling this print, which has been alllll over Pinterest

(from ExLibris Journals on Etsy):

House Beautiful agrees with me.
They must, since last week's newsletter included a slideshow of about a million outdoor rooms. 

Doesn't this look like a nice weeknight dinner spot?

Hello, yellow chairs! I love how sunny this looks:

It's probably just as well that I don't have anything like this at my house,

since if I did, I wouldn't get any work done. Ever.

It's going to rain all weekend, so make sure you get out and have a drink outside today!

When Happy Hour Goes South

For when happy hour turns into several hours....and several more (ugly) hours:

I want, so badly, to give these to someone as a gift.

[Cards from Mrs. John L. Strong. Via Necessary and Proper.]

Happy Hour Friday: Light Beer Tasting Party

At Christmastime, at the annual Carol & Crawl, an idea sparked. This year's C&C was a wine tasting party, focusing on pinot noirs. A few people wondered, why do we only taste wine? What about beer? What about light beer?

Fast forward a few months, to last weekend, when much of the same crowd found itself in Bill's newly redecorated (thanks to Alicia!) dining room, facing down a selection of 10 light beers. The job was simple: vote for your favorite.

It was a great party with good drinks (margaritas in addition to the beers) and great beer-drinking food (sausages, soft pretzels with mustard, chips and salsa and queso courtesy of Chili's). But most of all, it was kind of hilarious. Everyone took the task at hand somewhat seriously - I took notes! - but it was completely low key.

Even among our very unpretentious friends, wine tasting can get a little pretentious. How can't it? Even a few glasses in, you're swirling and sniffing and talking about tannins. With beer, especially light beer, well, it's not quite that involved.

And the winner? Well, that's the best part of the story. Bill and Jeff were responsible for pouring the beers into pitchers, far from our prying eyes. They had eight beers to pour (including two sets of Red Stripe Light) and they decided to throw in a couple of old standards, just because no one brought them. So they added Miller Lite to the batch. Just as they were about to add Coors Light, Jeff had an idea: why not mix a few beers, just to get a reaction.

So that was how pitcher #10 ended up as a combination of Miller Light, Red Stripe Light, Becks Light and Busch Light. And it won!

My only note about pitcher #10 was that it had "some flavor" - which really did set it apart from most of the other options. On its own, the Becks had a strange skunky smell, but mixed with the others, the smell was distinctive without seeming off. The Miller Lite and Red Stripe were just about flavorless, though actually, the Busch Light, with it's high level of carbonation, drew some praise.

Hilarious, though, we thought. Of course the beer that's not really a beer would be the big winner.

[Photo credit: Alicia Barger]

Happy Hour Friday: Prohibition Chic

The March issue of Vogue is full of images like this:

It's 20s, 20s, 20s everywhere - both in the ads and in the editorial - and it all fits quite nicely with the upcoming release of Baz Luhrmann's Gatsby interpretation (the bottom right pic comes from the set).

No surprise, either - why wouldn't the 20s be hot? What other era combines romance and fun quite the same way? Between the parties, the art and the literature - not to mention the Paris obsession - it's always been my favorite period in American history.

This trend doesn't exactly catch me unawares - and here's where the happy hour tie-in comes in. Since I started writing regular restaurant reviews for the Sun, just a couple of months ago, I've already been to two restaurants focus specifically on Prohibition-era, or "classic," cocktails (Hersh's and Rye). At both places, the drinks were excellent.

At Rye, my Copperhead - a sweet and citrusy cocktail of blood orange and whiskey - even came in a totally 20s-vibe champagne saucer, which set off serious glassware envy on my end. How cute are these Kate Spade glasses:

On top of being more charming than imaginable, they're really quite practical - it's so much easier to sip a drink from a glass with wide mouth vs. a narrow little flute opening. They also lend themselves nicely to rimming the glass - the drinks at Rye are often rimmed with fruit-infused sugars.

Yes, I know that champagne flutes are designed to maximize bubbliness. But let's be honest here. When do I let my champagne linger in the glass long enough to go flat?

I don't. That's the answer. I don't.

So the question is, I suppose, how long will it be before I bring home a whole mess of champagne saucers? And when I do, where, exactly, am I going to store them? Suggestions welcome.

Happy Hour Friday: Tea

Tea is so hot right now - and I don't just mean that literally.

I've had tea on my mind thanks, in part, to Nakiya, who is a huge fan, and who has been posting about tea like crazy on Facebook. With those posts settled in my subconcious, a March 2012 Martha Stewart Living article about Bellocq, a fancy new tea atelier in New York, rang a few alarm bells. Tea is trendy.

Which means that tea cocktails have the potential to be super trendy. Tea offers so much flexibility in terms of flavor...and it also offers so many ways to infuse a cocktail with the extra little oomph that "artisanal" ingredients provide. Hipster bartenders must love it.

Of course, one of nice things about using tea in drinks is that it's easy to make and use at home. These recipes from Veetea, using loose leaves, are all fairly simple and they sound genuinely good. And how cool is this - Tea Forte (a brand I like already) sells cocktail infusion tea bags. That is some sweet product development right there.

And, of course, there's the summertime joy that is sweet tea vodka.

I've been a fan of tea since I was a kid - it's what my dad drinks instead of coffee, which he gave up when he quit smoking, waaaay back in the '70s. I've always thought of it as a bracing morning drink and also as a sweet match for mid-afternoon crustless sandwiches and pastries.

And isn't afternoon tea really just a non-boozy early cocktail hour, anyway? It's only natural that we welcome tea to the adult portion of the evening. So welcome, tea. Welcome to happy hour.

Happy Hour Friday: Snacks

We are swimming in snacks around here lately. Check out the box that arrived in the mail yesterday. It's a gift from Cail and Tom:

Four sausages. Four cheeses. So much awesomeness.

I've also been meaning to write about this little jar of goodness:

As a general rule, I find that if something homemade comes in a little glass jar, it's going to be good. In this case, it's jalapeno jelly made by Mary's parents' neighbor. We spooned it over cream cheese and ate it with triscuits - sweet + spicy + salty. And homemade!

It's been a busy, tiring week around here. I think we're definitely due for a snack-heavy cocktail hour today.

Happy Hour Friday: Just Purchased

This magical poster:

Classic cocktails + infographics? Yes, please. I haven't figured out where, exactly, it'll be hanging in our house, but as soon as I saw it, I knew I had to have it. So many things I love, all in one place.

From Pop Chart Lab.

Happy Hour Friday: Boozy Ginger-Lemonade

Some moms (good ones) build traditions with their children around storytime, or playground visits. At our house, traditions are built around cocktail hour. For real.

But in a responsible way! I set out a few snacks, turn on some music, then make a couple of drinks - a real one for me and a kiddie version for Dixon. It's fun.

Usually we reserve cocktail hour for Fridays, but this week was crazy busy by Tuesday, so we really  needed a little break. Plus, earlier in the day, I remembered that I had a bag of Meyer lemons in the fridge (a gift from Cooper's mom) that were probably getting soft. An idea was born.

I also had a bottle of ginger syrup (another Patsy gift), which seemed like a good fit for the lemon. Dixon found a spare can of lemon selzer in our downstairs refrigerator...and the cocktail was born.

For my drink: 1 shot of vodka, 1.5 tablespoons of Meyer lemon juice and about a half a tablespoon of ginger syrup, poured over ice and topped with selzer, then stirred vigorously. Very tart, very refreshing.

Dixon's drink was basically the same, minus the vodka and plus more selzer. He took his down immediately.

Just add Trader Joe's sesame honey cashews (so good!) and "Video Killed the Radio Star" on repeat (it's Dixon's new favorite song, as of this week). And there it is - recipe for a great Mommy-and-Me cocktail hour!

Happy Hour Friday: MORE Purple Cocktails

It's week two of the playoffs here in Baltimore, which means it's week two of purple drinking here at M&G (week one is here). Fortunately, this week, Google delivered me some new and interesting options, courtesy of The Kitchn. The commenters there definitely know how to drink!

My new purple favorites:

• The Aviation: gin, lemon juice, creme de violette and a spoonful of maraschino liquor, garnished with a maraschino cherrie (I looove cherries, since I looove Shirley Temples)
• The Stratosphere: champagne, creme de violette and a lemon twist (pretty!)
• The Concord Grape Mimosa: just champers and grape juice - but it would have to be really good grape juice, without too much added sugar

Or maybe this week, blue food coloring + red food coloring + Miller Lite. If you want to class it up.

Either way, go Ravens!

Happy Hour Friday: Purple Reign Cocktails

It's purple Friday here in Baltimore, which explains why I woke up in the middle of the night trying to craft purple cocktails in my head. I was stuck on something involving grenadine and blue curacao, which really doesn't sound good, not even in a retro way (though I did end up seeing an online recipe that mixes exactly those ingredients).

Fortunately, the internet is there for me. Unfortunately, most of the drinks I saw sounded horrendous. "Make a clear drink and drop a purple Skittle in it" - really?

But I did find a couple of decent ideas, courtesy of a Chowhound thread. So if you're in a Ravens kind of mood today and looking for a drink with team spirit, give one of these a try:

• The Superhero: vodka, tequila, blueberry syrup and raspberries
• Lavender Cosmo: vodka, parfait amour, cranberry juice and lime (parfait amour is an orange-flavored liqueur that looks purple - and that's difficult to find, but apparently very good)

Or just stick with the Natty Boh. That works, too.

UPDATE: A mindmeld between Kathy and Sarah G. in the comments sent me searching for the violet-flavored liqueur creme de violette, and that's when I found the Rothman & Winter website. The site has a bunch of cocktail recipes that sound like they might turn out purple...and delicious. I especially like the sound of the Toulouse (vodka, creme de violette and vanilla liqueur) and the Yale Cocktail (gin, vermouth and creme de violette). A quick search shows that the Drillaud brand of creme de violette is available at Beltway Liquors.

UPDATE #2: I just discovered this is my 1,500th post! Good luck for the Ravens, maybe?

Happy Hour Friday: The UFO

First ever "Happy Hour Friday"! Once a week, I'll write about a drink that's caught my eye. First up: the UFO, which is made of one part genever, or Holland gin, and two parts bitter lemon soda.

I have to admit, it wasn't the UFO itself that caught my eye - it was the ingredients. Genever, which is regular gin's juniper-based ancestor, is all over the place lately - clearly the new it booze. Bitter lemon soda is having a bit of a moment in the sun, as well, for some reason. So put them both together, and you've clearly got the Next Big Thing.

Although, the UFO is probably best enjoyed someplace hot and sunny, like, say, Roswell. Because I have to admit, dark, cold mornings don't exactly make me go reaching for the bitter lemon bottle.