Author: John Fladd

A lot of us feel a crisis of confidence in December. We like to think of ourselves as imaginative, creative people, but then we find ourselves surrounded by actually creative people bringing their crafting A-games. We are inundated with pine cone wreaths, hand-knitted sweaters of llamas drinking eggnog, and festive crocheted door knob cozies. It’s enough to make a person anxious. It’s easy to say that nobody is crafting at you, but any time spent in book clubs or PTO meetings puts the lie to that.

Here is an easy way to win some crafting street cred.

What you will need

Some white chocolate – I use white chocolate disks, made for bakers and candy-makers, but a bar of white chocolate from a convenience store would work just as well.

Powdered food coloring – Melted chocolate (you will be melting the chocolate) is extremely finicky. If it comes in contact with even a tiny amount of moisture, it will seize up. Liquid food coloring, and even gel, will make your chocolate very difficult to work with.

Something to stir your melted chocolate with – popsicle sticks are good for this, although the stem end of a spoon would work just as well.

A dry-erase marker. Also, tiny brushes to paint with.

Paper towels

A plain cocktail glass

Your overly excitable plastic container – see Hint No. 1

Using your dry-erase pen, draw a simple picture on the outside of your martini glass. Let’s try something fairly straightforward, a Christmas tree with a couple of presents.

OK, it’s not great. Don’t worry. This is one of the few times in your crafting life that you can be confident in the process. This will turn out well.

Put a small amount of white chocolate on your overly excitable plate. (In my case, it’s a tiny soy sauce dish, presumably for sushi.) Use a smaller amount of chocolate than you think you need. Heat it in the microwave for a surprisingly short amount of time, 15 seconds or so, to start.

Stir the solid-appearing chocolate. If your plate is as excitable as you think, the chocolate will quickly collapse into a molten state. If necessary, hit it with a few more seconds in the microwave.

Stir a little powdered food coloring into your melted chocolate. Start with a small amount, then more, if necessary. Again, if the mixture is a bit stiff, a few more seconds in the microwave will loosen it up.

With your tiny paintbrush, paint the colored chocolate on the inside of the glass, using your drawing as a guide. Because you are painting on glass, think of this like a store window, where you will start with all the details in the foreground, then fill in the background later.

Let’s start with red ribbons on the presents and red ornaments on the tree.

Let’s add some details further in the background: blue presents and ornaments and a brown tree trunk. You could color the white chocolate brown, but I just melted a single chocolate chip and used that.

For the tree itself, I’m going to use two slightly different shades of green. I added a little yellow food coloring to one batch to lighten it up, then a tiny amount of black to darken another. Your first set of blotches will look, er, blotchy. Trust the process.

Hey, suddenly, this is all coming together!

Until you turn the glass around and look at it from the front.

No. Don’t panic. Trust the process. Wipe off the dry erase marker.

Wow. I mean, it’s not perfect, but it would totally shut up Simmons from Accounting at the office party.

You know what we need? A cocktail to go in it.

Pomegranate martini

• 2 ounces Pama Pomegranate Liqueur
• 2 ounces mid-shelf vodka – I’ve been enjoying New Amsterdam lately.

Pour both ingredients over ice in a cocktail shaker. Shake until you hear the ice start to shatter.

Pour your very cold drink into your newly decorated cocktail glass.

Considering it’s only got two ingredients, this is a surprisingly sophisticated drink. The sweet/sour fruitiness of the pomegranate hits you first but is replaced by a fairly bracing booziness from the vodka. The sourness of the liqueur activates your salivary glands, so you get a really “juicy” overall impression from it.

Now the question you are probably asking is, “Won’t the drink wash away the chocolate?”

Actually, no. Your drink is very cold, so the chocolate is unlikely to melt. And, remember when we talked about chocolate’s tendency to seize when exposed to liquid? We’re using that to our advantage here. The water content of the vodka, plus the diluted ice, panics the chocolate, which clings to the side of the glass for dear life.

If you rinse this glass out gently with very cold water, you can probably get three or four uses out of it.

Featured photo: Pomegranate Martini in hand painted glass. Photo by John Fladd.

There are two great scenes in 1947’s Miracle on 34th Street:

“Hey, Lou! How many letters do we have to Santy Clause down at the Dead Letter Office?”

“I don’t know — there must be fifty thousand. Bags and bags of them comin’ in every day….”

Charlie — because I’ve decided that his name is Charlie — gets thoughtful for a second. The scene cuts to the courthouse, where things don’t look good for Santa Claus, or maybe Kris Kringle, who is defending his sanity in court. He doesn’t want to be institutionalized. The D.A. doesn’t actually want to institutionalize him and risk alienating his own children. The judge, who is worried about re-election, doesn’t want to fit Santa with extra-long sleeves on Christmas Eve.

Then Lou and Charlie and the other postal workers give them all a legal loophole and save Christmas. It’s a brilliantly cynical bit of emotional manipulation. I love it.

Even better is at the beginning of the movie, when it’s discovered that the Macy’s Parade Santa is soused and can’t finish the parade. How can that not have happened at least once in real life?

In that spirit, here are a trio of drinks to enjoy while you watch the parade this week.

Macy’s Parade

• 1 ounce apple brandy – I like Laird’s Applejack
• 1 ounce rye – I’ve been enjoying Knob Creek
• ½ ounce cranberry syrup – see below
• ¼ ounce Cynar – yes, the stuff with the artichoke on the label
• 2 dashes Angostura bitters

Pour all ingredients over ice in a mixing glass. Stir gently.

Let rest 15 to 20 minutes, to let the ice chill and dilute this very authoritative cocktail.

Strain into a coupé glass, and drink while singing show tunes along with the lip-synching, float-riding Broadway stars with overly bright eyes. Do this until your teenage child threatens arson.

This drink, courtesy of Craig Eliason in Minnesota, is not a light, frivolous cocktail. It is sweet, boozy, and a little herbal, courtesy of the Cynar and the bitters. It stares you in the eye and dares you to get cynical about the parade.

“Don’t you dare make fun of Al Roker,” it tells you in a low growl.

Cranberry Syrup

Combine frozen whole cranberries with an equal amount of white sugar, by weight, in a small saucepan. Bring to a boil, mashing the berries with a potato masher once they have thawed. By using frozen berries, you have forced ice crystals to stab through all the cell walls of the cranberries, encouraging them to give up their juice.

Bring to a boil, to make sure that all the sugar has dissolved, then strain, battle and cool. This should last a very long time in your refrigerator, but the point is somewhat academic, because the odds are very good that you will use it all to make cranberry margaritas throughout the holiday season.

Parade Route

• 1½ ounces rye
• ¾ ounce fresh squeezed lemon juice
• ¾ ounce simple syrup
• 2 dashes Peychaud’s bitters
• 4 to 5 ounces sparkling rosé

Combine the rye, lemon juice, syrup and bitters with ice in a cocktail shaker. Shake and chill thoroughly.

Strain into a small Collins glass. Top with sparking rosé.

This is light and delicious. For reasons that defy mere logic, it turns out that rye and sparkling wine go really well together. The sweetness from the syrup takes the edge off the booziness, and the lemon juice keeps things from getting too sweet.

If you decide to double down, here’s your next stop:

34th Street Miracle

• 1 ounce cognac
• 1 ounce orange curaçao
• 1 ounce orange juice
• 1 ounce fresh squeezed lemon juice

Combine all ingredients with ice in a cocktail shaker. Shake and chill.

Strain into a cocktail glass

The orange juice and orange liqueur go together extremely well in this drink — no surprise there. The cognac adds a boozy backbone to keep things from getting too orangey — not vodka or gin boozy, but something a little more gracious and civilized. The lemon juice keeps everything from taking itself too seriously.

At this point, when the Parade finally gets to Macy’s, is where you should weepily sing “Over the River and Through the Woods” in at least three different keys. Your family will encourage you to go take a nap. Everybody wins.

OK, this one is going to be fun.

First, you’re going to need about a pound and a half of bee pollen — the Italian stuff, if you can get it, otherwise whatever you can get your hands on. After that, you’re going to need some small-batch bourbon. This particular label is a little hard to track down, but if you—

No.

And, of course, you’re going to need to sculpt some ice into—

No.

I beg your pardon?

I said no. Every couple of weeks, you come here and get very excited about some fancy, or exotic, or, worst of all, “interesting” cocktail, and I go along with it, because it’s mildly amusing and you seem like you need the attention.

But I just can’t do it this week. Do you have any idea how many soccer games are involved in the end of a season? And I hurt my knee in Zumba class. And my mother-in-law has decided that she’s coming for a visit. Not at Thanksgiving, not at Christmas — next week. Do you have any idea how much house cleaning that involves?

So, no. Don’t come at me with freakin’ bee pollen. What else do you have?

A Champ—

If you’re about to say “Champagne,” you can stop right there.

[A thoughtful pause.] What if you can get almost everything at the supermarket?

[Suspiciously] How many ingredients?

Three. Four, if you count ice.

Special artisanal ice?

No. Just ice.

[A pause.]OK, hit me with it.

Dark and Stormy

A Dark and Stormy is a classic drink. If you’re making it for yourself, it is cold, refreshing and quick to make, but just a little different from your standard highball. It feels a little bit like giving yourself a treat. If you’re making it for a special friend, they might have had it before and if so it might bring back that summer they spent with Fancy Yacht People. If not, it will probably sound familiar and thus non-threatening.

Ingredients

• 2 ounces dark or black rum — I like to use a black rum, but Meyer’s will work very well.
• ½ jalapeño or Fresno pepper — My preference is for the heat and flavor of a jalapeño, but they can be undependable. You never know what you’re going to get heat- and flavor-wise.
• 5 to 6 ounces ginger beer — I like Goya, but whatever they have in the soda aisle at the supermarket will be fine. Just remember to get ginger beer, not ginger ale.
• A lime

Cut your pepper in half lengthwise. Cut a little bit off the tip and taste it to see how hot it is. If it seems a little too aggressive for your taste, scoop out the seeds and membranes with a spoon; that should knock the heat down a little bit. If you’re happy with the heat level, put it in a cocktail shaker.

Muddle the pepper thoroughly against the bottom of the shaker. You can use an actual bartender’s muddler for this, but a wooden spoon will work just as well. I use the pestle part of a large mortar and pestle to do this sort of thing.

Add the rum, and dry-shake the two ingredients. Dry-shaking means shaking it without ice. The reason you’re doing that in this case is that the capsaicin in the pepper is not water-soluble but it is alcohol-soluble. That means that the rum will be able to strip away a maximum amount of flavor and heat from the chile. Ice and melt-water would only get in the way at this point.

Strain the rum over ice, in a tall glass. Top with ginger beer, and stir gently.

Garnish with a quarter of a lime. I would slice the lime in half lengthwise, then again, but that’s a personal preference.

Rum goes extraordinarily well with lime, and just as well with warm spices, like ginger. This is a cold, delicious drink that will help you get a little distance from the chaos and entropy in your life. This is the “self-care” people are always encouraging you to practice.

Though maybe not at work. Although it might make budget meetings more interesting.

I’ve got a firm rule for buying old photographs at flea markets; I’ll definitely buy one, if the price is right, but there has to be some sort of identification on it, so I can do some research and find out who the subjects are. I want to know more about them. Where did they live? How were they related to each other? What happened to them? Were there any shocking skeletons in their closets?

One look at this family, though, convinced me that they almost had to have a minimum of three literal skeletons. In the time it took me to get $5 out of my pocket, I constructed a backstory for each of these (technically unknown-to-me) people. I named the daughter Hortense.

From the quality of the photograph and the style of their clothes, I suspect that the picture was taken in the very early 1900s, perhaps 1904 or 1905. In very old photographs, from the mid-1800s, subjects did not smile, for fear of blurring the image in the several minutes that the film was exposed, but by the beginning of the 20th century the exposure time was down to a few seconds, so this somewhat forbidding-seeming family did not have to look this way. I get the feeling that it was just their default expression.

I don’t know about you, but I feel like drinking something bitter.

Negroni – Two Ways

Perhaps the best-known bitter cocktail is the Negroni, a mixture of gin, Campari, sweet vermouth and a splash of soda water. If you are a fan of bitter-sweet flavors, it’s a lovely break from the sweet/sour/boozy rut a lot of us find ourselves in from time to time.

One of the reasons you’ve heard of Negronis but rarely see anyone drinking one is the Campari. I like Campari enormously and use it for background bitterness in many drinks, but there are some cocktail fans, perhaps with less enlightened palates, who are not strictly fans of the red liqueur.

So here are recipes for two variations on the Negroni theme:

Mostly Traditional Negroni

• 1 ounce Campari
• 1 ounce botanical gin – I’ve been enjoying Uncle Van’s
• 1 ounce sweet vermouth – I’ve been using Dolin Rouge
• 3 to 4 ounces plain seltzer
• 1 very large ice cube

Pour the Campari, gin and vermouth over a large ice cube in a rocks or highball glass.

Pour the seltzer over the other ingredients, and stir gently to combine.

Drink while looking at a photo of Audrey Hepburn and Gregory Peck in Roman Holiday.

As advertised, this version of the Negroni is both bitter and sweet. The addition of so much soda is somewhat controversial, but I feel that the cocktail benefits from the dilution and carbonization. It is a complex, adult drink.

But pink.

An Alternate Negroni

• 1 ounce Campari
• 1 ounce gin
• 1 ounce sweet vermouth
• 1 ounce Amaro Lucano
• ½ ounce plain seltzer
• Another very large ice cube

This version is made in the same way as a traditional Negroni except that it replaces the Campari with another bitter Italian liqueur, Amaro Lucano, which uses different herbs and is less flamboyantly colored. The resulting cocktail is less frivolous-looking and doesn’t need the extra soda.

Is it bitter? Yes. Is it delicious? Yes. Is it pink? Not even a little. Would the mother from the antique photograph drink one out of a teacup? Probably.

Featured photo. Negroni. Photo by John Fladd.

Long, long ago, when I was a child in the Late Cretaceous, late September was one of the low-key best times of the year. That’s when the new cartoons premiered on Saturday mornings. I’m at the age when strong feelings of joy and anticipation are largely a pale memory, but at the time, the prospect of new episodes of Jonny Quest filled my world with a sparkle and wonder that I miss dearly.

For adults, weeks crawl by, seasons bleed unremarked into each other, and the next thing you know, you’re having earnest conversations with strangers about dental plans and snow tires.

So — what to do about it?

Another fall has rotated into place. Perhaps, the key to being more alive and in-the-moment might be to look to the past and do what our ancestors did to mark the change of seasons.

The ancient Celts believed that grain spirits were trapped in the last grain to be harvested and needed to be set free, so they would weave the stalks of the last of their harvests into a Wicker Man, then symbolically burn that and scatter the ashes across their fields.

My fear of confrontation is such that I think I’d have trouble murdering even a piece of glorified deck furniture.

Perhaps the best plan is to lean into our own fall tradition — Pumpkin Spice.

Pumpkin Spice Simple Syrup

• 7 grams whole cinnamon sticks, broken
• 5 grams fresh ginger, chopped
• 3 grams allspice berries
• 3 grams whole cloves
• 5 grams whole nutmeg
• 1 cup/200 grams sugar
• 1 cup/225 gram (ml) water

Lightly crush the allspice, nutmeg and cloves in a mortar and pestle. You might want to start with the nutmeg, because it is probably in one big chunk. You’re not trying to grind these spices down to powder, just to crack them all open to allow more surface area contact with the boiling syrup.

Put all ingredients into a small saucepan and bring to a boil. Let the mixture boil for 15 to 20 seconds to make sure that the sugar is completely dissolved.

Set aside and allow to steep for an hour.

Strain with a fine-meshed strainer, then filter with a coffee filter to take out all the bits of spices.

Bottle and label. Store in your refrigerator.

Because this recipe measures the spices by mass, not by volume, theoretically, it should work just as well with ground spices, but the end result will probably be a cloudier syrup.

An easy cocktail to make with this:

[Your Name] Special

• ¾ oz. pumpkin spice syrup (see above)
• 2 oz. applejack
• ¾ oz. fresh squeezed lemon juice

Shake over ice.

Pour into a coupé glass.

Drink with a glad heart, full of good will.

Is this a glorified daiquiri? Possibly.

A brandy sour? Well, yes, that, too.

Lemon juice and simple syrup are a classic combination, because the lemon brings a bright acidity, without too much baggage, flavor-wise. In this case, the heavy lifting is done by the pumpkin-spice syrup, which reminds you of hay rides and stuff, while the applejack, an apple brandy, gives the whole enterprise some boozy authority.

This is one of those drinks that you can make for a friend, and when they sip it and ask what it is, you can call it a “[Their Name] Special.” When they ask what’s in it, you reply, “Trust.”

Then you sit on the deck together and make fun of the squirrels.

Featured photo. Pumpkin Spice Simple Syrup. Photo by John Fladd.

I called an Über a couple of months ago. My driver got right back to me and said she would pick me up in just a few minutes.

I was enjoying watching the little cartoon of her car drive along the little map to where I was, when my new friend Shanikqua texted me:

“I’m pretty much there. What do you look like?”

I thought about how I should explain what I look like — my choice of jaunty tropical shirt, my gray beard, the twinkle in my eye — then decided to give her a more concise description:

“Hipster Santa Claus”

“Yup, OK. I see you….”

I’d like to say that I’ve struggled with style for my entire life, but honestly, I haven’t put up much of a fight. My fashion icon has always been Billy Joel in the 1970s, with a loosened tie and rolled up sleeves. I spent the ’80s and early ’90s dressed almost exclusively in Hawaiian shirts and painter’s pants. A new century, marriage and fatherhood have not brought any form of sartorial enlightenment.

Two things have changed that: late middle age, and the internet.

I’m not sure when it happened, but a year or two ago the internet algorithms learned my taste in clothes. I would be up late at night, arguing with the L.A. Times crossword puzzle, trying to explain that not every puzzle needs to have “Oreos” as an answer, when a pop-up ad would, er, pop up, and show me a really cool bowling shirt covered with skulls and roses.

“How about this, Boss? Wouldn’t you like to own this? It’s on sale….”

And the next thing you know, I’d be the owner of a Dia de Los Muertos bowling shirt, which of course only encouraged the internet to show me the clothing that a more interesting version of myself would wear.

And since I’ve started looking more grandfatherly, I haven’t had to worry about anyone taking me seriously anyway, so here I am, at a point in life where I should probably be looking at cardigans, actually developing a personal sense of style.

Which is how I ended up in a hat shop in Wichita.

I was drawn in by a spirit of morbid curiosity.

“I’ll just look around for a minute or so,” I told myself. “This is Wichita; you know that it’s going to be all cowboy hats and stuff I couldn’t wear if I wanted to.”

Half an hour later I had tried on a dozen different hats and been fitted for a for-real, no-kidding-around bowler.

So now, apparently, I’m that guy.

All of which is beside the point, except to remind you that Thursday, Sept. 15, is National Felt Hat Day. But of course you knew that already.

The felt hat

Ingredients

• ½ ounce or so of absinthe, for rinsing a glass
• 1 ounce rye whiskey
• 1 ounce sweet vermouth
• 1 ounce crème de violette, a violet-colored and flavored liqueur
• 2 dashes orange bitters

Rinse the inside of a chilled cocktail glass with the absinthe. Roll the absinthe around in the glass, until it has left a layer on the entire inner surface.

Add the other ingredients and ice to a mixing glass, then stir until thoroughly chilled.

Strain into the cocktail glass. Drink while wearing a felt hat.

This is a riff on a drink called the trilby, which is traditionally made with Scotch and pastis. It is whiskey-forward but sweet enough to make you take a sip, tilt your head slightly and raise your eyebrows. The vermouth and crème de violette do a lot of the heavy lifting, and would probably make this a little too sweet, if not for the bitters. The absinthe hovers in the background, advising you not to let your guard down too much.

How good is it?

You’ll be filled to the brim with satisfaction.

Featured photo. The Felt Hat. Photo by John Fladd.

I remember the first time I drank a gin and tonic.

It was my first week at college. There was some sort of reception with an open bar. (The drinking age in Vermont was 18 at the time — a fact that led to a great many questionable decisions over the next few years.) Being 18, I had never actually ordered a cocktail from a bartender before, and I was flying blind. At some point, I had heard someone mention something called a gin and tonic, and it sounded like something a grownup would order, so that’s what I ordered.

It was cold and clean and tasted like pine needles and magic.

Gin is like that. It is so aromatic that it easily evokes sense memories:

That time you were invited to a party on a yacht. The sound of soft music and clever conversation.

The smell of cigarette smoke and your uncles accusing each other of cheating at poker every Christmas.

Sitting on the veranda of the officer’s club in the jungles of Burma after playing a few chukkers of polo in the tropical heat, hoping to stave off malaria.

Well, your memories will be specific to you, obviously.

But most gin and tonics taste pretty much the same, right? We all have our own individual memories, but they’re all centered on more or less the same taste, yes?

That would be true, if any two gins tasted the same. There are some that are close in flavor, but others are staggeringly different. Gin is a neutral grain spirit (vodka, in other words) that has been infused with botanical ingredients — think herbs, roots, flowers, etc. The most common of these is juniper berries — that’s where the pine taste comes from — but different recipes might have very different supporting botanicals, and a few omit the juniper altogether.

The recipe for a classic gin and tonic is deceptively simple: 2 ounces of gin, 4 or 5 ounces of tonic water, ice and a squeeze of lime. Boom! About as easy as it gets — no shaking, no mess, 30 seconds or so of concentration, and you’re ready to build some new neural pathways in your hippocampus.

But four different gins might give us four different pathways into the forests, deserts and Victorian lilac gardens of your mind.

Gin No. 1 – Uncle Val’s Botanical Gin

I don’t know who Uncle Val is, or even whose uncle he is, but he knows how to make a gin. There are two varieties of Uncle Val’s, a botanical one and a “restorative” one. I eagerly anticipate trying the restorative one — I could frankly use some restoration — but we are talking about the botanical variety right now.

Earlier this year I got to check off a bucket list item and went to an actual fancy speakeasy, where extremely talented bartenders will talk to you very earnestly about strange and exotic cocktails.

“What am I tasting?” I asked. “The rosemary? Is it the beets?”

“Well, I hope you can taste those, but it’s the gin.”

“No, I think it’s the rosemary.”

My new friend didn’t bother arguing but poured about a quarter of an ounce of Uncle Val’s into a cordial glass and slid it across the bar to me.

He was right. It was the gin. It is very good gin.

In a gin and tonic, Uncle Val’s has a round, floral taste. There are times when you get a G&T in your hands, it is gone in two or three minutes, and your wife has switched you over to diet soda. With this gin, you find yourself sipping enthusiastically but slowly. It is complex enough that even if you aren’t a gin snob you will spend a very long time trying to identify the background flavors.

Good luck with that.

Gin No. 2 – Drumshanbo Gunpowder Irish Gin

A few months ago I went to an event hosted by the Irish Whiskey Council that presented a bunch of New Hampshire liquor people with five or six Irish alcohols. While not a whiskey, this gin was far and away my favorite part of the presentation, with the possible exception of taking a morning off from work to drink Irish alcohol in the first place.

Drumshanbo has a sharper, slightly more medicinal flavor. There are definitely some background flavor notes, but it has a crisp, dry taste that plays really well with the lime. This is the gin and tonic to seal an important business deal.

Or maybe to propose to someone.

Gin No. 3 – Djinn Spirits Distilled Gin

I stumbled across this local gin — it’s made in Nashua — almost completely by accident. I was looking for a gin to pair with a really aggressive flavor — goat cheese, in this case — and this was recommended to me. The theory was that it had so many exotic ingredients that at least one or two of them would pair with whatever you might try to build a flavor bridge to.

It makes a truly excellent gin and tonic.

This is another one of those gins that you might find yourself sipping slowly and thoughtfully, as you try to identify the background flavors you are tasting. A friend and I put a solid half-hour into it and finally — after detouring into some increasingly bizarre stories (including one about Elias “Lucky” Baldwin, the man blamed with introducing peacocks as an invasive species to California. A fascinating man. Look him up.) — decided that maybe maybe we were tasting green apples. This isn’t to say that this gin actually has any green apples in it; that’s what we thought we tasted.

Gin No. 4 – Collective Arts Lavender and Juniper Gin

Let’s say you’ve had a rough week. Not terrible — no literal fires or death or actual hair pulling — but a real grind to get through. Let’s further say that you’ve decided that you would benefit from a little self-care — a small moment of grace and kindness to yourself.

This is the gin and tonic that will help center you before a weekend of mowing or back-to-school shopping or intramural lacrosse.

What makes it so special? The lavender.

I know: Lavender is tricky. Not enough of it, and it hides in the background and doesn’t bring anything to the party. Too much of it, and suddenly you’re at a fancy-soap-in-your-grandmother’s-bathroom party. This gin gets it just right. It’s soothing, civilized and — kind, if that makes any sense. It takes you by the hand and lets you know that you are strong and attractive enough to handle whatever is waiting for you after dinner.

Featured photo. Gin and Tonic. Photo by John Fladd.

A man walks into a bar with a pineapple on his head.

The bartender asks, “Hey, what’s with the pineapple?”

The man says, “It’s Tuesday; I always wear a pineapple on Tuesday.”

The bartender thinks for a second, then points out, “Yeah, but it’s Thursday.”

The Pineapple Man slaps his palm to his face and groans. “Ugh! I can’t believe this; I’m so embarrassed.”

Did you find that joke a little frustrating and confusing? Welcome to the World of Pineapple.

Most of us have been there. You’ll be working your way through the supermarket, trying to decide what to make for dinner tomorrow night.

(You’ll probably go with meet-loaf. You spell it like that because you generally improvise it. Your mother never used a recipe for meatloaf, and pride or stubbornness or something keeps you from looking up an actual recipe for it, so you’ll end up winging it. Again. And like always, your husband or girlfriend will look at the vaguely loaf-shaped dish placed in front of them and ask, “Are you sure this is meatloaf?” And you’ll answer like you always do, “Yes, absolutely. Honey, meet Loaf.” It’s little traditions like this that relationships are founded on.)

Anyway, you’ll be walking through the produce section, eyeing the cilantro suspiciously, when your attention will be grabbed by a giant display of fresh pineapples. Overtaken by the Spirit of the Islands — Oahu, Easter, Coney: one of the islands — you will impulsively decide to buy one.

Until you pick it up and realize that you have no idea how to pick out a good one.

There is a lot of advice out there for picking a ripe pineapple and most of it is iffy at best. You’ll hear that you should try to pull one of the leaves out, or squeeze it, or heft it in your hand to see if it feels heavy for its size. (If you don’t know how to pick out a pineapple, how in the world are you supposed to decide if it’s heavy or not?)

In reality, your best options are to go by color and smell.

Color: Get the pineapple that is the closest to a shade of golden-orange as possible. This can occasionally be deceptive, but the deeper a shade of green a pineapple is, the more likely it is to be underripe.

A better guide is smell. Hold the pineapple in your hand, ignore the people around you and close your eyes. Imagine yourself somewhere warm and tropical. Imagine pushing yourself through the crowd at an outdoor market. Visualize an old man in a straw hat sitting next to a giant pile of pineapples warming in the sun. Imagine the smell that would come off them.

The pineapples, not the old man.

Now sniff your pineapple’s butt. Does it smell like that tropical marketplace? Even a little? If so, you’ve got your pineapple. If all you smell is your own rising sense of awkwardness and embarrassment, move on. (With all that said, you’ll probably have a better chance of scoring a good pineapple at an Asian or Latin market, where they cater to people who Know Their Pineapples, and who will not be trifled with.)

Ultimately, though, from a cocktail perspective, how much does this really matter?

Yes, you could get a great fresh pineapple, take it home, disassemble it and turn it into a Very Nice Drink. Or — and I’m just throwing ideas out, here — you could buy some of the pineapple that the people at the supermarket have already cut up for you, or even — stay with me — use canned pineapple. Once you’ve added lime juice and rum and a Spirit of Adventure, would you be able to tell the difference?

So I tried it out this afternoon. I made three identical drinks, using identical amounts of identical ingredients, except, of course, for the pineapple, and even shook them over identical amounts of ice for identical periods of time.

Using canned, precut, and fresh pineapple, was there a difference?

Yes.

Was it a Very Big Difference?

Not unless you had all three in front of you and could compare them. The fresh pineapple Aku-Aku (see below) was noticeably more subtle and pineapple-y than the other two, but the way I see it, an afternoon spent wrapping yourself around a pineapple drink — regardless of the pineapple you use — is better than an afternoon when you’ve deprived yourself of such a cocktail.

The Aku-Aku

• 5 1-inch cubes of pineapple — 85 grams, or 3 ounces
• 2 grams (.08 ounce) fresh mint leaves — around 2 Tablespoons
• 1 ounce fresh squeezed lime juice
• ½ ounce simple syrup
• ½ ounce peach brandy or schnapps
• 1½ ounce golden rum

Muddle the pineapple and mint together in the bottom of a cocktail shaker. Smash them together thoroughly. Really press the issue. Try not to splash yourself.

Add lime juice, syrup, brandy, rum and five ice cubes (around 80 grams). No, it really doesn’t matter how much ice you use, but since I had weighed it anyway, in the Name of Science, I thought I’d just put it out there.

Shake thoroughly for 30 seconds.

Strain into a coupe glass or other small, stemmed glass.

Face west-southwest — the direction of Polynesia — as you drink it.

You might be forgiven if you think this will be a fairly sweet drink — pineapple, plus peach brandy, plus simple syrup — but it’s a surprisingly refreshing and grown-up drink. The mint gives everything a faint hint of muskiness and sophistication. The glass’s stem keeps the drink cold. Your delightful personality and sense of inner peace keep the conversation excellent.

Take it from the houseplant I spent 20 minutes talking to after testing and drinking three of these.

Featured photo. The Aku-Aku. Photo by John Fladd.

“Hey, Susan.”

“Evenin’, Alice. The usual?”

“Please. Busy night?”

“Well, you know how it goes; everyone’s busy — kinda part of the job description — but they’re not busy here at the moment. What about you? Looks like you’ve had a rough one.”

“Ugh. You wouldn’t believe the day I’ve had. You know Sylvia? The worker on Level Three? Yeah, anyway, she came in with a story about a case of strawberries that fell off the back of a truck and got smashed all over the highway. It sounded like a sweet gig — all the sugar, half the flying — so I shot out of here and went to find it.”

“Sounds like a plan.”

“Yeah, but I’m such a freakin’ genius that I didn’t wait around and watch her whole dance. It turns out she’s got a bit of an accent on account of she’s missing part of her left foreleg and I got the directions muddled. I ended up downtown at a dumpster behind a burger joint.”

“Oof! Sorry.”

“Well, it wasn’t so bad. It turns out there was a library about a block away with a window box full of geraniums, so I ended up meeting my quota.”

“That’s our girl! You always come through for us in the clutch.”

“Yeah, thanks, but it’s not getting any easier. I’m not two weeks old anymore.”

“Her Imperial Majesty should be pleased.”

“The Queen? Yeah, I hope so. You know, I met her once.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, she’s really nice. Turns out her name is Betty. She likes showtunes.”

“Really? I’d’ve figured her for classical.”

“Nah! Our Betty’s real down-to-earth.”

“She’d kinda have to be, though; she doesn’t fly anymore — not since her mating flight. Wow! That was somethin’, huh?”

“I’ll have to take your word for it; a bit before my time, I’m afraid. Hey, set me up with another one, would ya, please?”

The Bee’s Knees

This is a classic cocktail from the 1920s. “The bee’s knees” was a catchy slang term of the time, describing something that was truly excellent, like “the cat’s pajamas” or “the elephant’s instep.” Not surprisingly, this is honey-based.

This is a type of drink I call a Basic Utility Cocktail. Margaritas, gimlets and classic daiquiris all follow a very similar recipe: roughly two ounces of a basic alcohol (blanco tequila, rum, gin, vodka, etc.), an ounce or so of syrup or sweet liqueur (this is where the triple sec or Grand Marnier would come into play in a margarita), and an ounce or so of a sour fruit juice (usually lemon or lime juice, but I’ve used cranberry juice, too). If you find yourself with too much fruit, it’s really easy to make it into a syrup to use in a seasonal drink. (Cucumbers work surprisingly well.)

Ingredients:

• 2 ounces very cold gin – depending on what type of honey you use, you might want to use something a little bracing and not too expensive. I’ve been enjoying Wiggly Bridge lately.
• ¾ ounce honey syrup (see below)
• ¾ ounce fresh squeezed lemon juice

Combine all ingredients over ice in a shaker.

Shake ever so hard, long enough for your hands to start hurting from the cold.

Strain into a small, stemmed glass — a coupé glass, maybe.

This is a seductive cocktail. The sweetness of the honey syrup contrasts with the acidity of the lemon juice. The gin adds a slight harshness to the background that keeps this drink from becoming frivolous. It is absolutely delicious, and the colder it is the more you find yourself wondering where your drink went, then making another. Appropriately for a bee-themed drink, this is a social cocktail; it facilitates conversation.

Honey Syrup

Bring equal parts honey and water to a boil over medium heat.

Let the mixture boil for a few seconds, to make sure that the honey is completely dissolved.

Cool and bottle. Store indefinitely in your refrigerator.

Featured photo. Courtesy photo.

I’ve never been very good at meditating.

I had an instructor tell me once that it’s important to listen to your heartbeat or think very hard about your breathing. The way he put it, your brain is like a monkey that is always looking for something to do, so you need to distract it with counting and stuff.

“That makes sense,” I thought to myself. “Because, when you think about it, monkeys are pretty mystical creatures. It’s weird how wizards and witches have familiars and patronuses like cats or elk, because it would be really something to meditate and manifest a pack of angry mandrills. And actually, Angry Mandrill would be a really good name for a high-proof, banana-flavored rum. Maybe with chilies in it….”

And I missed another opportunity for self-enlightenment.

The only time I actually ever succeeded at meditating, it happened — as so many important things in life do — when I wasn’t trying to.

At one point in my youth, I found myself broke on the streets of Mombasa, on the East Coast of Africa. Well, not broke-broke — not George Orwell broke — but not in a position to be picky about my hotel accommodations. Somehow, I found myself surprised at how hot and humid it was. This should not have been much of a shock, as I was on the Equator, about a mile from the Indian Ocean, but The Obvious has always been a bit of a blind spot for me.

I needed someplace to stay, and I followed a couple of German backpackers to a not-quite-scary, kind-of-OK-if-you-squinted-at-it-hard-enough hotel. I managed to score a room for a couple of dollars a night.

(As it turned out, the reason the cheapest room was so cheap was that its window was right next to the loudspeaker of the mosque next door that called worshipers to prayer at five each morning. But that’s another story.)

Obviously, my room didn’t have anything like air conditioning — though there was a large ceiling fan over my bed — and I didn’t have any money to go out at night, but that was OK, because the sheer, overwhelming heat and humidity sucked away any enthusiasm I might have had to do anything anyway.

For two nights, I lay on my bed all night, under the fan sweating.

I kept two or three liters of water by the bed and I would alternate sweating and drinking, drinking and sweating. Taking in water, and feeling it seep back out of me. Over and over again.

It was the single most meditative experience of my life.

So, as I look at the weather forecast for the next week, with temperatures and humidity predicted to be in the 90s, I find myself somewhat uncharacteristically nostalgic for Mombasa.

Mombasa Michelada

A michelada is a Mexican beer cocktail. Many people make theirs very much like a bloody mary, with tomato or even clam juice, spices and sometimes an extra shot of tequila. I like mine a little on the lighter side to facilitate the whole meditative sweating thing.

1 lime wedge and some chili-lime spice to rim the edge of your glass or mug. I like Tajin.

2 oz. passion fruit cocktail – you can find this on the top shelf in the juice aisle at your supermarket

• ½ teaspoon hot sauce – I like Cholula
• ½ teaspoon miso paste
• A pinch of celery salt
• A pinch of black pepper
• A handful of torn and mangled cilantro leaves
• A bottle of Pilsner or lager beer – you can’t go wrong with something Mexican like Modelo

Rub the rim of your glass with your lime wedge, then set it aside for your garnish. Sprinkle some of your chili-lime powder on a plate and touch the rim of your glass down in it to rim the edge of the glass.

Chop or tear your cilantro and put it in the bottom of your glass. This is optional, if you are one of those people who think it tastes like soap, but it is highly recommended.

Fill the glass halfway with ice. This is somewhat heretical; you have been warned.

In a separate dish or cup, mix the hot sauce, miso, celery salt and pepper into a paste. Slowly mix in the passion fruit juice, until it is all smoothly mixed. Pour the mixture into your glass.

Fill the glass with beer and garnish with your lime wedge. Stir gently.

Beer, spice and acidity are excellent playmates. This is a surprisingly meditative drink.

Hmm. Delicious, but maybe a bit strong — add more beer.

Oh, that’s good! But now the cilantro is taking over a little — add a little more juice.

Repeat.

I’m not saying that this experience will be the same as lying under a fan on the equator, counting the cracks in the ceiling, but I recommend it anyway.

Featured photo. Mombasa Michelada. Photo by John Fladd.