Tag: alcohol

Seeking an autumn cocktail

September 29th, 2021

In a little over a week, I will join four women I’ve known for 30 years for an annual Girls’ weekend. We’re all trying to figure out what we want to drink in our few days together, and we decided we’ll each come up with a signature cocktail and bring the ingredients for it.

We wondered whether we should do themed drinks: something seasonal? Something historical? Regional? A cocktail inspired by our favorite book?

I promised everyone I wouldn’t choose a gin-based drink. Though gin is wonderful, and maybe my love for it is tied to my love for literature from the 1920s, I’m the only one of us who appreciates it.

But gin-free is fine. I like bourbon, too. And whiskey. And rum (dark). Scotch, not so much. Nor vodka; too bland. I love Manhattans, Boulevardiers, Old Fashioneds. I also love a basic Daiquiri (lime, simple syrup, and rum — not sweet frozen dacquiries, though those have their place on summer vacations). So a little bit of darkness, a little bit of tart or bitters, a little bit of sweet. But I want something special, something different for this time together with my oldest friends.

We’ll meet on the South Carolina coast in early October. I’m leaning into autumn right now, so I’m kind of feeling something seasonal. Do y’all have any ideas?
Grandma’s Gin and Milk

December 24th, 2014

Grandma loved to go to Sunday brunch, and when I was a kid, her favorite brunch spot was Shoney’s. We’d drive over the drawbridge from St. Simons Island to Brunswick, Georgia, and once we had waited in line for a large enough table, all the grown ups would order coffee and tea. My older brother would order the buffet, as would I, though all I ate off it were the French toast or the pancakes.

Grandma, after studying the menu as if she might get something new, would eventually order liver and onions. Every time.

My dad, her son, must have made involuntary gagging faces after a lifetime of hiding liver in napkins, out the window, under the rug, on liver Wednesdays at home, because I finally asked Grandma one time at Shoney’s, “Grandma, do you like liver and onions?”

She flicked her hair, “Of course I do!”

Then she thought a little bit and said, “Well no, not really.”

I knew this. “Then why do you order it every time?”

She looked at me as if even she knew her answer was ridiculous and said, “Because it’s good for you.”

I looked at the congealed brown mass on her plate, smothered in soggy onions, and thought, I doubt that.

Given her utter disregard for her taste buds in honor of her “health,” her reasoning for drinking gin and milk should have come as no surprise to me. But one evening, when she settled into her chartreuse chair, she sat a rocks glass filled with a thin, milky cocktail down on a cork coaster. I had seen her with this strange drink before, and it unsettled me. Milk diluted in any way is offensive, especially to an eight year old, and yet she drank this every night.

Finally, I asked, “Grandma, what is that you’re drinking?”

“Gin and milk,” she said.

Even at my young age, I knew that combination was just wrong. “Why?” I asked.

She looked at her dewy tumbler, the milky liquid even thinner around the ice cubes, and rolled her eyes at the things she did for her health. “Well, I’m on Weight Watchers now.”

I waited for more.

“And on Weight Watchers you have to have a certain amount of milk every day.”

She looked at her sad drink on the end table, polluted with skim milk. She lifted it off the coaster, which had the words “Bottoms Up” printed in thick black ink on it, flicked her bangs out of her eyes, and said, “And I have to have a certain amount of gin every day.” And she tipped the glass into her mouth.
Emergency Gin

December 27th, 2012

When we were 18 or so, my best friend and I drove two hours down the coast of Georgia, from Savannah to St. Simons Island, to visit my Grandmother. It was a Sunday, and she loved to lunch on Sunday, so she offered to take us to Spanky’s, the restaurant that had recently replaced Shoneys as her favorite Sunday eatery. At Spanky’s we could watch boats on the river from our table.

Before we ordered, Grandma asked my friend and me if we wanted a drink. I knew what kind of drink she meant.

My friend and I looked at each other and giggled with our eyes. “No Grandma, we can’t. We’re not 21 yet.”

“Well, it seems rude of me to have a drink if you’re not.”

I told her, “You go ahead, Grandma, we don’t mind.”

When the waitress arrived, she recognized Grandma, chatted with her, and then asked for her drink order.

“I’ll have my regular please.”

Our server shifted on her feet. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Smith, I can’t serve alcohol before noon on Sunday.”

Grandma did a little shake of her blonde hair and said, “Oh brother. Just bring me a Diet Coke then.”

She rummaged through her purse while the waitress went to get our drinks, and after some digging, she pulled out a prescription pill bottle. After our drinks arrived, Grandma looked my friend and me in the eye and said, “You have to be prepared for situations like this.”

Then she unscrewed the lid on the plastic orange pill bottle and poured the emergency stash of gin into her icy cold Coke.

I have committed to posting every day for a week in response to the WordPress Weekly Writing Challenge: Just Do It. I wrote about my stupid decision to make this commitment, and all my “buts,” here.
Visions of rum balls danced in her head

December 6th, 2012

We’ve been going non-stop for 7 days, packing, lifting, loading. Moving boxes, unloading, unpacking. Organizing, cleaning, eating crap food. Stressing. And I can’t do anymore tonight. All I can think about is alcohol, and drinking lots of it. And the rum balls I want to make but can’t because I left the Karo corn syrup at the other house. I was over there all day cleaning, and I’ve got my slippers on now, and I don’t want to go back. Not even for rum balls.

I wish there were a rum ball fairy, though. That would be awesome.

The kitchen is unpacked, and my husband assembled the dining room table, so at least we can eat a real meal when we get up the gumption to make one. Which I’m doing now, despite my exhaustion-induced delirium. I’ve got sweet potatoes in the oven, I blanched some green beans, and when hubs gets home, I’ll broil salmon with honey drizzled on it. Hopefully I won’t be three sheets to the wind already when he walks in the door. I made sure to plan a meal that doesn’t involve knife work. Just in case.

I’m sure I’m not making sense, and you know what? I don’t care. I just want to tap the keys on the keyboard right now. I’ve got bits and pieces of a week’s worth of essays in my head, but they are swamped in a quagmire of to-dos. It’s been a challenge to not run away from all the work of moving so that I could write. But our daughter’s birthday is Monday, and we want more than anything to get “settled” so we can give her a decent, stress-free birthday where she gets our undivided attention.

Then there’s the small matter of Christmas. The tree, the lights, the four bins of decorations that are tapping their feet, waiting to be released. And we’re down to two days now before birthday, tree, and decorating are upon us.

So I have abstained from writing, until now. I’ve got nothing left for the art to hang, for the bins of Halloween paraphernalia, those last boxes of odds and ends – wrapping paper, the paper cutter that doesn’t fit in the desk, the bin of fabric that doesn’t fit on the shelf, the tape and clothespins and spare keys and rubber bands when we haven’t designated a junk drawer. The suitcases we are living out of because we don’t have enough furniture or closet shelving.

Instead I’m just going to drink my wine, and dream of rum balls, and listen to The Nutcracker while the screen goes blurry and the keys go clackety-clack.

Tag: alcohol

Seeking an autumn cocktail

Grandma’s Gin and Milk

Emergency Gin

Visions of rum balls danced in her head