Author: John Fladd

For a variety of complicated, therapy-inducing reasons, we spent Christmas in 1974 with my mother’s twin sister and her family in southern California. I was 10 years old and my cousins were all teenagers, so everything that they did filled me with wonder and awe.

Like, when my cousin’s boyfriend showed me how to use my new magenta gas-powered airplane — not a remote-controlled one, but one of the ones that was controlled by nylon strings connected to the fuselage. He got the engine started and I watched in wide-eyed amazement as he got it airborne, circled it around us twice, then plowed it, nose first, into a parking lot. Clearly, the guy knew what he was doing, so I dutifully packed up all the pieces, brought them back home with me, and checked in on them dutifully every month or so for years.

Or when another cousin elbowed me firmly in the stomach and I found that I couldn’t breathe.

“It’s OK,” he said to me, “you’ve just got the wind knocked out of you.” His use of the passive voice terrified me, because it implied that this was something that just happened randomly – that you could be walking around, living your life, and suddenly discovering that you couldn’t breathe. My uncle confirmed that yes, I had indeed just had the wind knocked out of me, and that I’d be fine. After 25 minutes or so (OK, it was probably more like 15 seconds) I discovered that I could take tiny breaths, then slightly bigger ones, and could finally look a little less like a blobfish in a Shaun Cassidy haircut, gasping on a pier.

But for me, the best memory of the holidays that year was New Year’s Eve.

The adults all dressed up and went out to some unimaginably sophisticated grown-up party, leaving me in the care of the teenagers. My youngest cousin, who must have been around 16, watched old movies on TV with me all night; then, at midnight, we went outside and honked the car horn to ring in the new year. Afterward we came in and ate buttered noodles.

It was far and away the best New Year’s Eve of my life.

Grown-up New Year’s Eves have been less magical.

Take Champagne, for example. I realize that I have the taste buds of a rhinoceros, but cheap and moderately priced Champagne can best be summed up in a quote from Fozzie Bear in 1981’s The Great Muppet Caper: “You know, if you put enough sugar in this stuff, it tastes just like ginger ale!”

So, here’s the thing: I get it. New Year’s is largely an adult holiday, where adults gather with other adults and celebrate how adult they are, talking about adult things — dental plans and conspiracy theories, mostly — and drink the most adulty drink they can think of, Champagne. But unless you are a supermodel or a guy with a yacht, most of us never really develop a taste for the stuff.

Is there an alternative?

Yes. Yes, there is.

The Manhattan

Ingredients

• 1½ ounces rye or bourbon. This week I’m using Bulleit Rye. (I’ve recently discovered that I like rye. Who knew?)
• 1½ ounces sweet vermouth — the red kind
• 10 drops cardamom bitters
• 10 drops orange bitters
• 1 cocktail cherry, the fanciest you can find. I like Luxardo.

Add all ingredients to ice in a mixing glass. Stir gently. This is one of those martini-like situations, where you probably wouldn’t like the result if you shook it in a cocktail shaker. This will have a cleaner, more vibrant flavor if it isn’t aerated.

Pour into a rocks glass. Sip gently. A Manhattan is not a drink that lends itself to drinking quickly. You’ll want to — actually, who am I to say what you want? You will probably be happier with your Manhattan experience if you drink it a little at a time, trying to identify the different elements that you can taste.

Grown-up/shmown-up; the best part is finishing this drink and eating the cherry. Don’t let anyone try to tell you different.

So, are there drinks out there that are more adult? Probably. At this moment, there’s almost certainly some guy working his way through a bottle of scotch, while the bar owner says, “Hey Mr. A-Bailey, why you so a-sad? Go a-home to you wife, huh?” Or maybe that’s It’s a Wonderful Life; at this time of year it’s hard to tell the difference between melodrama and real life.

Anyway, there are probably other drinks as adult as a properly constructed Manhattan, but very few that are as enjoyable. It is sweet, but not too sweet — that’s what the bitters are there for — and boozy enough to let you know it means business. There is a mixture of flavors that will distract from any boring adult conversation you find yourself in.

Keep your chin up; we’ve got this.

Featured photo: The Manhattan. Photo by John Fladd

So you’re finally a full-blown grown-up. Congratulations.

One of the things that comes with that is learning how to give good, thoughtful presents to other full-blown grown-ups. For a lot of us, that leads in one of two directions: gift cards, or something homemade. Gift cards: on the plus side, they’re easy; the minus, they’re expensive and clearly lacking in effort. Something homemade: on the plus side, it’s thoughtful and offers a chance to show off; the minus, there is no chance you’ll be able to learn to knit in the next week.

Here are some suggestions for easy, cocktail-centric, homemade gifts that will hint that you might have hidden depths:

Infused alcohols

This is where the gift-giving process gets budget-friendly. If you are flavoring alcohol with strong flavors, you don’t want to use expensive booze; any subtleties in the base liquor will be covered up. You probably don’t want to use the absolute cheapest stuff, though, because you might find some off flavors in your final product. I try to steer toward a respectable bottom-shelf vodka or white rum — Mr. Boston, for instance.

Method: The great thing about infusing alcohol is that, at its simplest level — which, let’s face it, is about all you can handle at this point in the year — it is pretty much foolproof. You add a flavorful ingredient to a clear spirit, shake it, then store it in a warm, dark place for a few days, shaking it twice per day. I use the laundry room. Strain and bottle it when it tastes right to you.

Ideas:

• Chocolate Vodka — ½ cup/60 grams cocoa nibs to a 750 ml bottle of vodka. Shake and age for four days.

• Graham Cracker Vodka — Blend 1 sleeve of graham crackers with three cups/710 ml of vodka. Shake and age for seven days.

(These two would make a great matched gift set for making s’mores martinis)

• Jalapeño Rum — 4 spicy jalapeños to one liter of white rum. Shake and age for four days, then taste each day until it is flavorful and spicy enough for your Auntie’s taste.

• Banana Rum — Muddle a very ripe banana, the type you find next to the cash register at a convenience store, with two cups/475 ml white rum. Shake and age for a week.

• Cardamom Vodka — ½ ounce/14 grams lightly crushed cardamom pods to 1½ cups/350 ml vodka. Shake and age for 12 hours. This is delicious but potent. Give in very small bottles with instructions to use judiciously.

•Basil/Fresno Vodka — 3 chopped Fresno chilies (~50 grams) and 20 grams of hand-torn basil leaves to 1¼ cups/300 ml vodka. Shake and age for four days. (Excellent for bloody marys.)

Fruit syrups

Method: Heat equal amounts of frozen fruit and white sugar in a small saucepan over medium heat. Use frozen fruit, because the freezing process produces jagged ice crystals that poke holes in the cell walls of the fruit and help this process along. As the fruit thaws, it will weep juice — far more than you are expecting. (You might want to help the process along with a potato masher.) Bring to a boil. Let the mixture boil for another 10 to 20 seconds to make sure that the sugar is completely dissolved. Remove from heat and let everything steep for another half an hour. Strain and bottle. (You might want to put the leftover fruit glop as jam on an English muffin.)

Surprisingly good syrup fruits:

• Cherries, cranberries, rhubarb, cucumbers (yes, really), wild blueberries, honeydew melon, raspberries, strawberries.

Infused syrups

Method: Make a simple syrup (equal parts water and white sugar), and bring to a boil. Remove from heat, add an aromatic ingredient, cover and steep for 30 minutes. Strain and bottle.

“Wait — Can I Put This On Pancakes?” (Yeah, probably.)

Dried hibiscus blossoms, dried jasmine blossoms, dried butterfly sweet pea blossoms (this is a deep blue color, which turns a fantastic shade of violet when combined with citrus juice), whole garam masala, cracked nutmeg, broken cinnamon sticks (steep overnight), lightly crushed coffee beans (steep for a couple of hours).

Also, not for nothin’, but this is the time of year when it’s easy to get down on yourself. Your anxiety will tell you that nobody loves you, your depression will add that you deserve it, and your guilt will tell you that you should be doing much more for other people than you are. My advice to you — and bear in mind that I have the emotional depth of a parking lot puddle — is that you might not be the best judge of your own worth.

You are special and magical and bring joy to people who will never tell you about it, but would miss you like oxygen if you weren’t around. (And if you need help remembering this, reach out to the National Suicide Prevention Hotline at 1-800-273-8255.) The fact that you are thinking about what you can give to others is a good hint that you do have hidden depths.

Featured photo: Cocktail-centric, homemade gifts. Photo by John Fladd.

A palate-cleanser

This is your first big, blow-out meal of the decade. You’ve been locked away for two years and you fully intend to throw yourself into everything Thanksgivingy.

But, if you’re going to eat cheese and snack mix and olives and pigs-in-blankets before dinner, while simultaneously avoiding getting sucked into your brother-in-law’s conspiracy theories, you’re going to have to be light on your feet.

Then comes turkey and stuffing and far, far too many mashed potatoes. You can’t afford to get bogged down with something heavy. You need something light and fascinating to keep you light and fascinating.

Elderflower Collins

1½ ounces gin
½ ounce St. Germain – a sweet elderflower liqueur
1½ teaspoons absinthe
½ ounce fresh lemon juice
Seltzer – I like Topo Chico; it’s aggressively bubbly

Combine everything but the seltzer in a cocktail shaker with ice and shake thoroughly.
Strain into a Collins glass with 2 or 3 ice cubes.
Mix 50/50 with seltzer and stir gently.

On first sip, you might be forgiven for asking yourself if this is too light. Then, you’ll remember the fascinating part. Although there is very little absinthe in this drink, it pushes its way confidently to the front of your attention. The gin brings a clean, bracing quality, which is rounded out by the gentle sweetness of the elderflower liqueur. If you’ve ever heard a drink described as “dancing on your tongue,” this is what they were talking about.

This is a drink that will help you go the distance.

Full-blown decadence

You’ve been stuck in your house, listening to Baby Shark on repeat since Valentine’s Day two years ago. This is Thanksgiving. You’re going to start drinking during the parade and drown out your mother’s parenting advice with the sound of your slurping.

This is pretty much the richest, most wanton excuse for a cocktail that you are likely to have had in the past 22 months. It has bourbon, cream, port, An Egg Yolk, and Absinthe for crying out loud. Do it.

New York Flip

1½ ounces bourbon
¾ ounce tawny port
¼ ounce nutmeg syrup (see below)
¾ ounce half & half
1 egg yolk

Dry shake all the ingredients in a cocktail shaker — this means without ice. (Trust me, you really, really want to mix the egg yolk thoroughly with the other ingredients before introducing it to ice.) Shake it for at least 30 seconds.
Add ice, then shake for another 30 seconds or more.
Strain into a coupé glass.

Decadent as it is, this cocktail isn’t all that alcohol-heavy. There is a modest amount of bourbon, but bourbon always tastes a little boozier than it actually is. The tawny port adds a touch of sweetness that builds on the nutmeg syrup. The cream and egg yolk are there to fortify everything and hum Victorian holiday songs in the background.

Nutmeg Syrup

¾ cup white sugar
¾ cup water
2 whole nutmegs

Using a mortar and pestle — or alternatively a tea towel and a hammer — break the nutmegs into medium-sized pieces, about the size of roughly chopped nuts.
Bring all ingredients to a boil in a small saucepan over medium heat. Let the solution boil for 10 to 20 seconds, to make sure the sugar is completely dissolved.
Remove from heat and let the syrup steep for 30 minutes.

Strain and bottle. This should last at least a month in your refrigerator. It is appallingly good.

Featured photo: Elderflower Collins. Photo by John Fladd.

As I skid into late middle age, I’ve had to face up to some limitations:

I think I’ve missed my window for running with the bulls in Pamplona.

I’m increasingly unlikely to ever rescue Minnie Driver from a gang of teenage miscreants with an impressive display of capoeira.

I’ll never be able to have my flunkies remove an undesirable party guest by telling them, “Show this cat to the door.”

But I do have an outside chance to meet one modest goal:

I’d like to be handsome.

I’m not talking about being consistently handsome or anything. I haven’t become completely detached from reality. I’d just like to clear the bar once or twice. I figure I’ve got about 10 years before that becomes an impossibility. I’ve been putting a plan into action that I call “Project Handsome.”

Again, at this point in my life, it’s vanishingly unlikely that I’ll be able to lose a lot of weight and achieve the chiseled physique that’s escaped me thus far. But there are other large, gray-haired men who have successfully solved the handsomeness problem.

Yes, other than Santa Claus.

And what do they have that I don’t? Aside from money and self-confidence?

They dress well.

Because I’m built more or less like a walrus, I find it hard to find good, adult clothing off the rack. So, a few months ago, I had an inspiration; I went to a tailor and had myself professionally measured, then ordered some bespoke clothing from a couple of online tailors. It turns out that I can afford nice clothing if I don’t actually go to a clothing store.

I ordered a vest from a tailor in the United Kingdom who specializes in Jane Austen-era clothing. It is far and away the nicest piece of clothing I own and will, inevitably, leave me for a classier fat guy. It had to be disappointed that I wore it to work its first time out, instead of an awards banquet or a royal horse race.

But it has inspired me to reformulate a classic British cocktail, the Tailor Made:

Internet Tailor

¼ ounce honey syrup (See below.)

1½ ounces bourbon – I’m still using Evan Williams. I like it.

½ ounce St. Germain, an elderflower liqueur

1 ounce fresh-squeezed pink grapefruit juice

1 ounce pomegranate juice

Dry-shake (without ice) the honey syrup and bourbon in a cocktail shaker to mix them thoroughly.

Add ice and the other ingredients. Shake until very cold.

Strain into a chilled cocktail glass. Garnish with a strip of grapefruit peel.

The key to this cocktail is the relatively modest amount of bourbon, which allows the drink to taste grown up but not too assertive. The very sour juices are balanced by the flavors of elderflower and honey. It is best drunk bracingly cold.

You may or may not look handsome drinking this, but you will feel at least 40 percent more handsome.

Honey syrup

Essentially this is a classic simple syrup but made with honey instead of white sugar. The better the honey you use, the classier your cocktails will taste.

Ingredients: Equal parts, by weight, of honey and water.

Add the honey and water to a small saucepan and heat over medium heat.

Bring to a boil, stirring occasionally.

Boil for 10 to 20 seconds, to make sure that the honey is completely dissolved.

Remove from heat, cool and bottle. Make sure you label your bottle and keep it in your refrigerator for a month or so.

Featured photo: A handsome drink. Photos courtesy of John Fladd.

There’s a guy who lives about a block over who goes all out for Halloween — the one who puts cobwebs all over his front porch and hides speakers, so he can play moans, or the sound of clanking chains, or Alice in Chains, or something similarly unnerving. There will be fake gravestones all over his front yard, and maybe a mottled, fiberglass hand forcing itself out from the ground. This was the guy who rigged a 15-foot tube from his second-floor window last year to slide candy to trick-or-treaters.

That seems like it would be exhausting.

And there’s the family down the street who dress up in themed costumes every year. Dad might be Chef Boyardee, Mom is a sexy can opener or something, the toddler is covered in tangled yarn and is spaghetti, and the baby is a meatball.

Seriously, there’s not enough therapy in the world to make that worthwhile.

There are the kids in their 20s at work who have been spending the last few weeks putting together extremely niche costumes to wear to excessively hip parties:

“No, you wouldn’t have heard of her — she’s a really obscure secondary character from Hello Kitty, but the joke is, I’m telling everyone that I’m wearing Korean underwear, but I’m not actually wearing ANY underwear!”

Presumably there will be a lot of drinking and associated lifelong regrets involved. That sort of thing is behind you; you promised yourself, “never again” after the Battlestar Galactica debacle of 2010.

So, what’s your role in Halloween this year?

Judging a reality competition show.

What you will need:

• 2 lawn chairs

• a best friend

• candy

• raspberry margaritas (See below.)

The object of the game is to pretend each trick-or-treater is a contestant on a costume competition show. You are the judges and neither of you entirely understands the rules. You can greet each kid with a slightly bewildering compliment:

“Batman! The little-black-dress of the costume world! You pull it off effortlessly, darling!”

“Charizard! Pokémon is so last season, but you make it work. I choose you, Little Man!”

To a parent: “Are you her manager? Make sure she gets this outfit trademarked.”

To the teenager with a pillowcase and no costume: “I’m sorry, we’re going to have to send you home this week. The others just wanted it more.”

Will the children be amused?

Not even remotely.

Will you and your friend?

More with each successive margarita.

Raspberry Margarita

2 ounces blanco tequila – I like Hornito’s for this.

1 ounce fresh squeezed lime juice

1 ounce raspberry syrup (See below.)

Combine all ingredients over ice in a cocktail shaker.

Shake enthusiastically.

Serve in whatever glass you feel like, from a standard martini glass, to a rocks glass, to a vintage Flinstones jelly jar.

The beauty of this drink is that while it is blood-red and seasonally spooky-looking, it is a straightforward margarita. There are only three ingredients, and it takes about 30 seconds to make. The bracing, smoky, slightly musky taste of tequila is balanced by the sweetness of the raspberry syrup. The raspberry flavor gives this drink a fruity roundness, without ever making it candy-like. If you want candy, you’ve got a giant, plastic bowl of it next to you.

Raspberry Syrup

Frozen raspberries

White sugar

Combine a bag of grocery store frozen raspberries with an equal amount (by weight) of sugar in a small saucepan.

Cook over medium heat. As the berries thaw, the sugar will pull out a surprising amount of juice.

Bring to a boil. Boil for 15 to 20 seconds to make sure all the sugar has dissolved.

Let the mixture cool, then strain it through a fine-meshed strainer. It will keep in the refrigerator for a month or so.

Featured photo: The Trick or Treat Margarita. Photo by John Fladd.

The first time I made my new commute, I used a GPS app to get to work and spent my time worrying about whether I was driving fast enough but not too fast and whether the guy in the truck with all the bumper stickers actually hunts that much big game or this is all some sort of elaborate role-playing for him.

The second time I drove there, I vaguely remembered that I needed to take Exit 9 off the highway. As I drove past Exit 10, I made a mental note to keep my eye out for signs for the next exit.

Somehow, I found myself at Exit 8.

That’s odd, I thought, I must have really lost myself in singing along to that Lionel Richie cover. I couldn’t be very far from where I wanted to get off the highway, so I decided to take the exit, then circle back if I needed to.

But it turned out to be the exit I actually wanted. Weird though, how I missed Exit 9. I decided to look for it on my way home that night.

I missed it again. This time I blamed Whitesnake and visions of Tawny Kitaen dancing on the hood of a Jaguar.

I didn’t see Exit 9 the next day. This time, I blamed the podcast I was listening to. Not to go into too many details, but it turns out that pigeons are fascinating.

As one week turned into the next, though, even I couldn’t be absent-minded enough to forget about Exit 9 every single time.

It turns out, there is no Exit 9, southbound or northbound. Just a suspiciously uninteresting stretch of highway. I wondered if this was one of those no-13th-floor-in-a-hotel things, but I had vague memories of other Exit 9s on other highways so that probably wasn’t it.

I started to research the missing exit, but I stopped short when I realized that any answer I found would be a dry, profoundly boring, bureaucratic answer that would strip away another layer of my rapidly diminishing sense of childlike joy and wonder. It would have something to do with zoning, or population density, or a ballot referendum or something.

In other words, exactly the sort of cover story the government would cook up to cover the secret entrance to a covert military base, or an academy for mutants, or the entrance to an underground facility where they train sexy kung fu accountants or something. In other words, something I’m probably better off not knowing about.

But, you might ask, would the government actually be dumb enough to go to all that work and still mess up on the exit’s numbering?

Have you met our government?

It’s enough to make a vigilant citizen need a cocktail.

The Secret Exit

This is a riff on a classic drink called a Missing Link. It’s extremely simple, but also suspiciously difficult to remember the details of.

What was I supposed to pick up at the liquor store?, you might ask yourself. I really like that new drink and I’ve used up all the … all the … you know, the stuff that’s like triple sec, but not triple sec?

Almost like an agent in a black suit had hypnotized you, or something.

Ingredients

2 ounces really good rum – the best you’ve got

¾ ounce freshly squeezed lemon juice

¾ ounce orange curaçao

5 drops rose water

Wet a martini glass and put it upside-down in the freezer to frost.

Add all ingredients, with ice, to a shaker. Shake, until unbearably cold.

Strain into your frosted glass.

This is one of those drinks that is at its best when you start with it blisteringly cold. At the first sip, it might seem the slightest bit too acidic. You might wonder if you should have added some simple syrup or something to mellow it out. Subsequent sips will taste more and more well-rounded, though, as it warms up and the rose esters start to hit your palate. You will make a mental note to make this drink more often.

Let’s see if you can remember to.

Featured photo: Courtesy photo.