Author: John Fladd

A tale:
I work my way through the party, smiling, waving, shaking hands. I check with the bartender, who assures me that she has everything she needs.
I field a couple of compliments on my new jacket. I wanted to wear my velvet smoking jacket, but it’s still a bit too warm, so I went with a double-breasted silver lamé one that I have nicknamed “Charlie,” and he’s striking just the tone I wanted.

I pause briefly as the background music reaches the greatest improvised lyrics of all time:

“She loves that free, fine, wild, knocked-out, koo-koo … groovy wind in her hair,” Frank Sinatra assures me, and I close my eyes and stab the air with my finger as he gets to “groovy.” Man, he was good!

In an easy chair by the window, I see a pretty, sad-eyed woman sitting and staring at the peacocks on the lawn. She is a friend of a friend, who has recently moved here from Jalisco, and rumor has it that she is a bit homesick.

“Hi,” I say, and she nods politely.
“Are you Flora?” I ask, and she nods again, and she smiles, but her eyes are still sad.

“Robin,” I call to one of the caterers circulating through the party with a tray.

“Yes, Boss?” she asks, coming over.
“Did Susan make that thing we talked about?”

“I’ll bring it out.”
I thank her and make small talk with Flora until Robin returns with a dish of ice cream on her tray. She presents it to Flora with a small bow.

Looking confused, Flora takes it, then tentatively takes a very small spoonful of it.

Her smile only reaches the Mona Lisa stage, but her eyes sparkle.

Cornbread-Tres Leches Ice Cream

Small box corn muffin mix
12-ounce can evaporated milk
14-ounce can sweetened condensed milk
1 cup half and half
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

Make an 8×8” pan of cornbread, according to the instructions on the box.
Let it cool, then stab it all over with a fork. If you are feeling dramatic, use a pair of forks.

Mix the dairy ingredients and cinnamon together, then pour onto your pre-stabbed cornbread.

Chill for at least three hours.

Transfer the sopping wet cornbread and any unabsorbed dairy to a blender, and blend thoroughly for about a minute.

Churn in an ice cream maker, according to the manufacturer’s instructions. (If you do not have access to an ice cream maker, freeze the pan of cornbread solid, then blend. You will get similar results.)

Transfer the soft-serve-consistency ice cream to serving containers and freeze.

If you’ve ever had proper tres leches cake, you are aware that it is the king of cake, moister than moist, and silky smooth. Eating it is like getting a kiss from a cake. This ice cream is inspired by that, but with a chewy texture and the background flavor of yellow corn. The hint of cinnamon makes it taste a bit like Biscoff cookies. This is easy enough to make and delicious enough that it will quickly become a regular part of your dessert rotation.

Featured photo: Courtesy photo by John Fladd.

I have had to face the harsh reality recently that I have aged out of some of my travel-related bucket list items. As much as I would really, really like to be able to put an alligator wrestling certification on my resumé, I’m afraid that it’s not going to happen at this point.

Likewise, my dream of meeting the eyes of a dark-eyed stranger in a smoke-filled bar in Buenos Aires and shocking the room into awed silence with the skill of my interpretive tango.

In the aggregate, I’m reluctantly resigned to shelving some of these dreams. There are other, new dreams to replace them, after all. I hear good things about the SPAM Museum in Austin, Minnesota, and just today I learned that there are specialized rat tours in New York City, which I am fully committed to going on. Age can be worked around, and I am the master of my own destiny, right?
I may be in charge of my destiny, but my wife is in charge of me. I share some of these dreams with her, and on the surface she seems supportive, but over the years I have learned to read her micro-gestures, which generally say, “It’s so cute that you think you’re going to do that,” when I propose anything more adventurous than a trip to the hardware store, and even then she has learned the hard way to keep a close eye on me.

The Steamer Trunk
1½ ounces rye – I like Bulleit; it has a spicy sourness that plays well off fruity ingredients.
¾ ounce St. Germain elderflower liqueur
½ ounce simple syrup
¾ ounce fresh squeezed lemon juice
1 ounce cantaloupe juice (see below)
1 ounce sparkling wine
cantaloupe cubes for garnish

To make cantaloupe juice, slice a fresh cantaloupe into quarters. Scoop the flesh of one quarter into a small blender, or half the melon into a large one. Blend thoroughly, then strain through a fine-meshed strainer. One quarter of a medium cantaloupe will yield about half a cup of juice, the color of hibiscus blossoms in an Egyptian sunset.

Combine the rye, elderflower liqueur, simple syrup and the lemon and cantaloupe juices over ice in a cocktail shaker. Shake thoroughly, until the cold bites your hands like a rope on a tramp steamer to Macau and the ice rattles like the hooves of angry bulls in Pamplona.

Strain over fresh ice in a rocks glass, and top with sparkling wine, which will spray up a fine mist that reminds you of that semester you spent on the coast of Spain, and of the Vazquez Twins.

Stir gently, then drink while flipping through an atlas and listening to the collected works of Paolo Conte. This is a riff on a classic called a summer rye, but with a focus on fresh melon in place of the traditional apples, which brings a wistful quality to the experience. Melon and sparkling wine are a classic combination, and elderflower provides a hard-to-identify poetic element. The rye is the leader of this expedition, but this is definitely a collaborative project.
Much like a camel safari in Morocco, with a dedicated camel to carry ice and gin for the proper appreciation of a desert evening.

Pending spousal approval, of course.

John Fladd is a veteran Hippo writer, a father, writer and cocktail enthusiast, living in New Hampshire.

Featured photo: Steamer Trunk. Photo by John Fladd.

You promised your therapist that you would try to take better care of yourself. And you really meant to. But the kids had camp, and then your sister had a fight with her boyfriend and showed up at your house with three suitcases. And then the weekend you thought you might actually get away, the dog came down with food poisoning, and then all the water in the faucets turned rusty.

With one thing or another, you never got to sit in a cabaña, sipping umbrella drinks and making small talk with attractive strangers.

And now summer is over. This is deeply unfortunate.

I hesitate to give you unsolicited advice, but your sister is still here and there are at least three movies that the kids want to see, so maybe:

1. Do what you have to do to grab two or three hours to yourself. Spring for movie theater popcorn, if you must.

2. Put on a playlist of Harry Belafonte and Don Ho.

3. Drink one — or both — of these Decadent Vacation Cocktails:

Rum Runner

• 1 ounce white or silver rum – Because this is a strongly flavored drink, you probably won’t want to use your best rum for this; any subtle nuances will be overwhelmed. Don’t use the ultra-discount-bottom-shelf stuff, but you don’t need to sweat finding really good rum for this. Captain Morgan or Bacardi would be fine.
• 1 ounce dark rum – Again, don’t let this stress you out; I like Myers’ Dark for tropical drinks.
• 1 ounce crème de banana
• ½ ounce blackberry brandy
• 2 ounces pineapple juice – I like to buy the little 6-ounce cans of juice for this; you don’t end up with a giant, half-empty can slowly going bad in your refrigerator.
• 1 ounce fresh squeezed lime juice
• ½ ounce grenadine

Pour all ingredients over ice in a cocktail shaker, then shake thoroughly. Strain over fresh ice in a large glass. Garnish or not, depending on your mood; too many cherries might be nice. Again though, the key here is to avoid stressing out over sub-crisis decisions.

This is a classic fruity, boozy Attitude Adjustment Tool. The rums play well with pineapple juice — why would they not? Pineapple juice gets along with everyone. The lime juice adds a touch of acid, and the grenadine — which is pomegranate syrup, if that’s weighing on your mind — adds color and rounds off the juices, keeping them from being too acidic.

Bahama Mama

• 1 ounce coconut rum – the sweet kind
• 1 ounce dark, overproof rum – the kind you remember from college as “151”
• ½ ounce coffee brandy
• 2½ ounces pineapple juice
• ¾ ounce fresh squeezed lemon juice

Again, pour all ingredients over ice in a cocktail shaker, shake, and strain into another large glass — or the same one; there’s no one around to make pointed comments — over fresh ice.

On the face of it, these ingredients do not seem like a great match. Pineapple juice and coffee? But I stand by my previous comment about pineapple juice going with anything. Rum — the friendliest alcohol — has already been making sustained eye contact with the lemon juice and trying to organize a limbo contest.

Either — or both — of these drinks will improve your attitude. When your children return from the movies, call them Lola and Sergio regardless of what their actual names are. This will freak them out enough that you will be able to demand that they bring you Cheetos®, and they might actually do it.

Featured photo: Rum Runner and Bahama Mama. Photo by John Fladd.

I think that it’s fair to say that Florida doesn’t have the best reputation.

Take, for example, the “Florida Man” game. If you’ve never tried this, your eyebrows are about to rise higher than you ever suspected was possible. Open an internet search engine, and enter the term “Florida man” and a date — your birthday is a good choice.

Feb. 9, for instance, when, according to the Florida Times-Union, a Florida man “was arrested … and charged with assault with a deadly weapon without intent to kill after Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation officials say he threw a 3.5-foot alligator through a Palm Beach County Wendy’s drive-thru window.”

But it wasn’t always like this. There was a time in the 1940s and ’50s when Florida was seen as a chic and even elegant place. Miami Beach was where the most beautiful and wealthy people went to be seen, to dance in the moonlight and to drink cocktails. Powerful, cigar-chomping men in good suits flashed their brightest smiles — and wads of cash — in an effort to catch the attention of beautiful women in floral dresses. White-jacketed waiters delivered drinks to wide-eyed tourists. Dance bands played, and everywhere there were flowers.

I feel like we need more of that — more white suits and fancy drinks, and fewer fast-food alligator attacks.

Miami Dancehall

• 2 ounces dry gin – I like Wiggly Bridge
• ½ ounce elderflower liqueur
• ½ ounce crème de violette – a violet-flavored liqueur
• 5 or 6 drops rose water – There is a razor’s edge between being floral and delicious, and tasting like your grandmother’s fancy soap. Err on the side of caution until you find the level of rosiness you like.
• ½ ounce fresh squeezed lemon juice
• ¼ ounce simple syrup

Combine all ingredients over ice in a cocktail shaker. Use a medicine dropper to measure out the rose water.

In the classic 1934 movie The Thin Man William Powell gives a master class on cocktail shaking to a group of bartenders and waiters. According to Nick Charles, Powell’s character, a well-made cocktail is all about timing: “Now, a Manhattan, you shake to a foxtrot. A Bronx, to a two-step time. But a dry martini, you always shake to waltz time.” He places his properly shaken martini on a waiting tray, held by one of the waiters, who serves it back to him. He takes the cocktail and drinks it gratefully, implying that making well-mixed drinks is thirsty work. In a similar vein, tell your digital assistant to play Miami Beach Rhumba by Xavier Cugat. Shake your cocktail to the rhythm. Given the time of year, and our climate, feel free to keep shaking until the outside of your shaker is wet with condensation.

Strain the cocktail into the fanciest cocktail glass you own.

Drink it as you dance around the kitchen.

Gin and lemon lead in this particular rhumba, followed by hints of violets and roses. This is one of those drinks that leave you searching for more of the floral finish, which leads to another sip, and then another, until you realize that you need (a) more excuses in your life to rhumba, and (b) another cocktail.

More rhumbas, fewer alligators.

Featured photo: Dancehall cocktail. Photo by John Fladd.