Drink 200: Mr. and Mrs. Mix a Lot

I hate looking like a jackass.  Which is unfortunate considering the frequency with which I look like one.  I am also kind of a cheapskate.  These two traits are in a constant struggle for superiority each morning when I view my daily emails from Groupon, LivingSocial, AmazonLocal, DealSaver, Vactionist, and Google Offers.  On the one hand am saving money when I take advantage of an offer.  On the other hand I look like a jackass when I hand the cashier my creased piece of paper to save $7 on $14 worth of food and drinks (alcohol excluded). 

Sometimes Mrs. Bottle and I will take advantage of one of these offers to try something new.   It could be a restaurant we wouldn’t normally try or some activity we haven’t done before.  We have an upcoming zip line adventure and we have recently taken an archery lesson and had a Segway tour of our fair city (which really pushed the “don’t look like a jackass” threshold).  These skills will come in handy once the zombie apocalypse finally arrives as I ride at up to 12 MPH and pick off zombies with my bow and arrow.  Just like Katniss Everdeen.

Artist Concept

We recently received an offer that allowed us to try something new, save money (presumably), not look like a jackass (since it was online only), and do one of our other favorite things: drink.  It was for a molecular gastronomy cocktail kit from a company called MOLECULE-R (emphasis theirs).  In case you are unfamiliar with molecular gastronomy, it is when you take food that is somewhat natural and add chemicals to it so it becomes something unnatural.   Think of it like making a Dorito into a taco shell, only with different chemicals.

Our kit recently arrived and we decided to try it out.  The first step was to pick out a drink.  Unfortunately the kit didn’t come with a recipe book.  Instead it came with a DVD.  In case you are unfamiliar with DVDs, they are plastic discs that contain video recordings.  People used to use them to watch movies before FSM invented streaming.  We dusted off our DVD player and perused the choices.  That is, after we watched the mandatory 30 second musical introduction with no option to bypass.

It turns out that many of these recipes require either a lot of time, pre-planning, culinary whippers, or liquid nitrogen.   Since we didn’t have any of those items, we went with something simple, emulsification.  They have several drinks that featured emulsification but we only had ingredients on hand for two: the kamikaze and the margarita.  We have already featured a kamikaze in the blog, but our last two entries were both for margaritas we decided to go with the kamikaze.

Chemistry is messy business

The molecular gastronomy piece of this drink was lime foam. That meant adding soy lecithin to some water and lime juice and whipping it until it became foam. That was the theory, anyway.  Mrs. Bottle whipped the hell out of that stuff but it never really foamed up as much as it did on the DVD. I don’t know if the mix was a little off or if it was something else.  It is possibly related to the fact that chemistry was the only science class I didn’t like.  Too much memorization for my taste.  But I digress.

We were able to salvage a little foam from the top of the bowl and add it to our drink, though.  The rest of the drink is just vodka and orange liqueur.  Mrs. Bottle pretty much hated it.  It is all alcohol and we didn’t chill any of it so she found it kind of warm and gross. I sipped mine making sure to get some foam in each taste and thought it was decent.  If it had been cold it might have actually been pretty good.

Probably should take a lint roller to the backdrop, eh?

We remain undeterred, though.  As soon as my bottle of liquid nitrogen arrives, we will be trying again.

Overall Rating for Kamikaze

Taste: 3

Presentation: 3

Ease of Preparation: 1

Drinks Until Blackout: 2 - From whipping fatigue

Ingredients

Vodka

Triple Sec

Lime Juice

Water

Soy Lecithin

Drink 191: I Did Not Dealt It



At least it was free.



I can smell your fart.  Fast Five is playing on the tiny screen in front of me and I can smell your fart.  I was beginning to doze off to the dulcet tones of Vin Diesel delivering lines as he tears towards a cliff in his 1966 Corvette Grand Sport but thanks to your malodorous cloud I am still awake. We are somewhere over the North Atlantic and I am in the type of haze caused by two free beers and an Advil PM. It is either 3:30 AM or 9:30 PM depending on whether you have adjusted your watch yet.   And you farted.  And I smelt it.





View of Paris? from the window.
Might have missed this
 without the fart



What the hell is wrong with you?  Are you lazy or vindictive?  I already know the answer: “Yes.” There is a bathroom no more than 10 feet from your seat unless you managed to throw your fart from the back of the cabin.  Go down the stairs and fart up a storm.  Please. On this plane the bathrooms are even downstairs so you can rip away without detection.  Instead, you decided to release your intestinal gas right in your seat and now I, along with the rest of the passengers in the vicinity, am breathing your micropoopballs.  Gross.   Luckily for Mrs. Bottle she slept through it.  Actually, there are times in the middle of the night when I’m glad she has that ability.



On the bright side I will now get to see more of Paul Walker and The Rock Dwayne Johnson driving fast and blowing crap up.  That really translates well on a 320x240 screen with headphones with one ear intermittently cutting out.  All the while smelling your fart.  Did you eat a cabbage and broccoli salad before the flight?  Next time, please try some of these tips.  I recommend asking the flight attendant to move you to an empty corner of the plane.  That should also enhance you chances of getting a date with her later.  They love honesty.

Yep, that's what happened.



Not purple.



Since we are discussing honesty I feel obligated to let you know that today’s drink the Purple Pancho has a misleading name.  It is not purple at all.  It is kind of teal which is pretty far from purple unless you are talking about proximity on the Charlotte Hornets’ uniforms.  The drink is a combination of tequila, blue Curaçao, sloe gin, lime juice, simple syrup, and lemon juice.  Once you get over the confusion about the name, the taste is pretty good.  It is essentially a slightly sweeter Margarita.  I couldn’t really detect the sloe gin other than a slight prune-y  bouquet which would have been extremely welcome on my flight.  Mrs. Bottle found the drink a little too sweet but I had no problem with it other than the name.  I am going to rename it the Teal-a Tequila though.

Overall Rating for the Purple Pancho

Taste: 4

Presentation: 0

Ease of Preparation: 3

Drinks Until Blackout: 9 – 11% Alcohol

Ingredients

1 oz Tequila

0.5 oz Blue Curaçao

0.5 oz Sloe Gin

2 oz Lime Juice

1 oz Lemon Juice

1 oz Simple Syrup

Drink 179: Do Youngsters Understand the Phrase "Mailing It In"?

Normally it takes me about an hour to write a TBIAW entry.  That includes the photograph, research (those Google searches don’t run by themselves), proofreeding, and about 20-45 minutes of checking Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Tumblr, Renren, Myspace, Orkut, Badoo, Cougarlife, and Frühstückstreff.  Tonight I am in a bit of a hurry so I am going to try to keep it quick, which isn’t a problem for me.

No time for a caption

Our drink is the Blue Maragarita and it is composed of tequila, blue Curaçao and lime juice.   I was excited because Mrs. Bottle let us use the blue Curaçao instead of sending us on a Wumpus hunt like she did for our previous drink. It is a good thing, too, because the blue Curaçao is the only difference between this drink and the regular Margarita, which we have already reviewed.  Since we have already reviewed it, there isn’t much point in talking about this one.  It is left as an exercise for the reader to figure why this one gets a five while the other one only got a four even though they tasted the same.

Overall Rating for the Blue Margarita

Taste: 5

Presentation: 4 – Needed a garnish

Ease of Preparation: 4 – Had to salt a rim

Drinks Until Blackout: 5 – 24% Alcohol

Ingredients

1.5 oz Tequila

0.5 oz blue Curaçao

1 oz Lime Juice

Drink 177: Some Of Our Best Friends Are Turkish

Today’s drink the Midnight Express is made from dark rum, triple sec, hashish, lime juice, simple syrup, and lemon juice*.  Whatever you do, do not smuggle this drink out of Turkey.  You will be tempted to try, though, if you happen to be in Turkey when you first have one. That’s because this drink was very good and you will want to have it again when you get back to the States.  The primary taste was citrus with a hint of dark rum.  It was a more complex taste than I was expecting and it was a pleasant surprise.  Mrs. Bottle and I both thought it reminded us of another drink.  Sadly neither of us could think of what it was. You are probably happy I shared that little tidbit.

We used the giant version of the image
 to mask the lack of content today

I was planning on writing some other stuff about the movie Midnight Express, which is one of my favorites (“Oh, Billy!”).  Then I read that a lot of the stuff in the movie wasn’t even true.  In fact, director Oliver Stone even apologized to the Turkish people for their portrayal in the film.  C’mon Ollie, stand behind your work even if it unfairly stereotyped an entire country.  You don’t see George Lucas apologizing for Star Wars: The Phantom Menace even though he should.  You certainly won’t catch us apologizing for anything we write on TBIAW.  Unless, of course, someone were to ask us to.  

*Does not contain hashish

Overall Rating for the Midnight Express

 

Taste: 5

Presentation: 3 – It ain’t pretty

Ease of Preparation: 4

Drinks Until Blackout: 4 – 26% Alcohol

Ingredients

1.5 oz Dark Rum

.5 oz Triple Sec

.75 oz Lime Juice

1 splash Simple Syrup

1 splash Lemon Juice

Drink 167: Slop Sloppy Joe

Today’s drink is the Sloppy Joe’s Cocktail No. 1, a mix of rum, triple sec, dry vermouth, grenadine, and lime juice. According to the USDA’s MyDrink, a cocktail should never be more than 23.3% lime juice.  This is an improvement over the outdated Tipple Pyramid’s maximum of 34.0%.  Regardless of whether you follow the old-school Pyramid or the new-school MyDrink, the Sloppy Joe’s Cocktail No. 1 exceeds the limit since it is 38.7% lime juice.

Seems strangely specific

Note: I literally spent hours working
on the video in Sunday's blog. Since
no one actually watched it, I decided
to spend no more than three minutes on
any future customized pictures for TBIAW.
This is the type of quality to expect
going forward.

Due to the high concentration of lime juice, the primary taste of this drink was tartness. In fact wasn’t the just the primary taste, it was the only taste.  It was so tart that if we had tried the SJCN1 during the first few weeks of our journey, we would have probably given it a rating of one.  Since we have become more accustomed to these sour assaults we were able to up the rating all the way to a two. There was some extra credit given because the lime juice thankfully overwhelmed the vermouth.

Not Sloppy

It also didn’t help that the drink called for only a quarter teaspoon of two of the other ingredients.  Pouring a quarter teaspoon is kind of a pain. You can almost justify the quarter teaspoon of grenadine since it makes the drink a pleasant pink tint. The quarter teaspoon of triple sec is another story. It isn’t enough to add any sweetness or orange flavor to the drink.  It is as superfluous as this picture:

Image:  scottchan / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Overall Rating for the Sloppy Joe’s Cocktail No. 1

Taste: 2

Presentation: 4

Ease of Preparation: 2

Drinks Until Blackouts: 7 – 17% Alcohol

Ingredients

1 oz Lime Juice

0.25 tsp Triple Sec

0.25 tsp Grenadine

.75 oz Light Rum

.75 oz Dry Vermouth

Drink 165: Blue Friday

The Wallis Blue Cocktail isn’t what you might expect. Namely, it isn’t blue.  This is due primarily to the fact that none of its ingredients are blue.  Instead they are gin, triple sec, and lime juice.  Think of it as a gin-based Margarita, but a bit sweeter. We liked the traditional Margarita a lot, but the Wallis Blue Cocktail was better.  The extra sweetness was the tipping point, perfectly balancing the tart lime juice.  The sugar-rimmed glass probably helped, too.  Has there ever been a beverage that wasn’t improved by a sugar-rimmed glass? Actually, yes.

As far as I can tell, not blue

It has been a while since we have had a bad drink. In fact, we haven’t had a drink rated lower than a three in over two weeks now.  This streak is long enough that I’m beginning to get nervous.  There will surely be an epically bad streak some time in the future providing karmic retribution.  It will likely feature several drinks with Scotch, Galliano, and prune juice.

Now we clumsily transition back to the drink at hand.  I was curious about the name of the cocktail so we launched a massive TBIAW investigation.  One of our iReporters quickly discovered that a fashion designer named Main Bocher created a color “Wallis Blue” named for Wallis Simpson and used it in her wedding dress. The dress doesn’t look blue to me, so that might explain why the drink isn’t blue.  Maybe the absence of blue is a statement on the patriarchal nature of pre-World War II society. 

Blueberries, as named by Main Bocher

In case you are not up on your anglophilic studies, Wallis Simpson was an American woman who tried to destroy the English monarchy using only the power of her femininity and almost succeeded.  For you youngsters, think of her like the Monica Lewinsky of the 30’s. Coincidentally Lewinsky is also known for a blue dress. But we recommend that you stay away from the Monica Blew Cocktail.

Overall Rating for the Wallis Blue Cocktail

Taste: 5

Presentation: 3

Ease of Preparation: 3

Drinks Until Blackouts: 6 – 21% Alcohol

 

 

Ingredients

1 oz Gin

1 oz Triple Sec

1 oz Lime Juice

Drink 163: Mock It To Me

Am I a clown to you?

Today we have the Tequila Mockingbird, a mix of tequila, green crème de menthe, and lime juice.  We already knew that mint and lime complement each other but were still nervous about mixing it with tequila.  I almost suggested to Mrs. Bottle that we use some cheap tequila so we didn’t waste the good stuff but we decided to forge ahead giving the drink its best chance of success.  It turned out that the Tequila Mockingbird was delicious and nothing went to waste.  As usual, the mint and lime were delicious and refreshing together and the drink packs a bit of a punch, too.

I’m not sure why it is called the Tequila Mockingbird but I don’t usually let lack of actual knowledge keep me from commenting.  A mockingbird mimics the sounds of other birds so it is safe to assume that this drink must mimic another drink.  While it looks a lot like the Jade that drink isn’t well known enough to be mimicked and/or mocked.  That would be the equivalent of TBIAW mocking a blog that is less well known.  Something like the concisely named “Addiction help life coach Ontario, Success life coaching - Certified Life Transformation Coach” blog. It just wouldn’t be right.  Since we’ve ruled out the Jade, I think I’m going to go with the Mojito instead.  The artificially colored mint liqueur is clearly mocking the Mojito’s fresh mint and the absence of club soda is an obvious slap in the face.

Another thing that probably deserves mocking is what we ate for dinner last night, DiGiorno Pizza and Wyngz.  We can be mocked for eating junk food and Wyngz can be mocked for being Wyngz. In turn, Wyngz are mocking real chicken wings with both their content and zpelling.  I was going to mock Wyngz with a scathing send-up but I learned that Stephen Colbert already discussed them on his show.  Some people find him funny, so instead of wasting any more of my time with this sub-par blog post I will just share what he did:

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Thought for Food - Wyngz & Wal-Mart
www.colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor & Satire Blog Video Archive

Overall Rating for the Tequila Mockingbird

 

Taste: 5

Presentation: 5

Ease of Preparation: 3

Drinks Until Blackouts: 6 – 20% Alcohol

Ingredients

1.5 oz Tequila

.75 oz Green Crème de Menthe

1 oz Lime Juice

Drink 159: Cop a Squat

Do not judge a Bajito by its outward appearance

Today we have the Bajito, a mix of dark rum, fresh lime, simple syrup, mint leaves, and basil leaves.  The Bajito continues our mini-run of drinks that feature fresh mint although at a week old we are stretching the definition of “fresh”.  The basil we used was as fresh as fresh can be, though, coming directly from the Bottle Wonderland back forty into the cocktail shaker.  You might be surprised that the Estate features an extensive farm. Despite our affinity for the green plastic lime, Mrs. Bottle and I are actually big proponents of sustainable local food. That is why I plan to move very close to the Jelly Belly Factory.

Even better than food from the local farm is the food you grow yourself. Knowing we raised that basil from a small basil plant purchased at Lowe’s all the way to its current incarnation as a medium sized basil plant brought extra satisfaction to every sip. It would have brought even more satisfaction if we could have actually tasted the basil in the drink. While there was a hint of basil, the drink pretty much tasted like a regular Mojito. That isn’t a bad thing since a Mojito is delicious and so is the Bajito. 

Where the Bajito falls down is in its appearance.  Bajito is Spanish for “squat” and I have to assume it is called that because it is shorter than a Mojito and not because it looks likes like something that happens when one is squatting.  The good news is that it has 3 ounces of rum so after one or two you won’t care how it looks.  Four or five of them will probably make a lot of things look better than they are.  I recommend it before reading TBIAW.

Overall Rating for the Bajito

Taste: 4

Presentation: 0

Ease of Preparation: 2

Drinks Until Blackouts: 4 – 29% Alcohol

Ingredients

3 oz Dark Rum

1 tbsp Simple Syrup

5 Slices Fresh Lime – How much is that, anyway?

4 Fresh Basil Leaves

4 Fresh Mint Leaves

Drink 158: Cool as a Cucumber

Anyone who knows me (and that is a select group!) will tell you that I rarely complain and never whine.  When little indignities or injustices strike, I receive them stoically or apply a devil-may-care attitude. That is why you won’t hear me wailing about the fact that Bottle Wonderland Cat has been waking me up at all hours of the evening for no reason whatsoever.  I certainly won’t bore readers with woe-is-me accounts of Bottle Wonderland Kitten #1 hurling himself against the door at 4:00 AM and making an egregious amount of noise simply because he wants a kibble.

Waiter, there's a plant in my drink

A lesser blogger might cry about how his lack of sleep prevents him from formulating a rational thought or from making insightful asides in his entries.  He might even try to drag out his complaint to constitute the majority of a post and blame said sleeplessness for his lack of focus.  You won’t see those types of shenanigans here, though.  We will keep any of our problems to ourselves and simply present our latest drink, the Cubeltini, a mix of vodka, lime juice, simple syrup, mint, and cucumber. The Cubeltini happens to be the signature cocktail of Trina, a restaurant in Fort Lauderdale, FL. 

Where the boys were, circa 1984
img

As I’m sure you already know, Fort Lauderdale is also the setting for the classic film Where the Boys Are ’84, where a bunch of 38 year-olds pretend to be 18 year olds and try to have sex with each other.  In that way it is just like a 20 year high school reunion.  I think in either case the Cubeltini could probably help, but only with a little modification.  The cucumber, mint, and lime juice create a refreshing combination, but they are overwhelmed by the cloying sweetness of the simple syrup.  There is an ounce and a half of that stuff, which turns out to be too much.  Instead of whining about it (which if you recall, I never do), I would recommend cutting it down to ½ an ounce or so.  The reduction in sugar will also help keep the pounds off which is beneficial whether you are entering the hot bod contest or trying to impress your old high school flame.

 

Overall Rating for the Cubeltini

Taste: 3 (4 if you cut down the sugar)

Presentation: 5 – It has an entire plant in it!

Ease of Preparation: 2

Drinks Until Blackouts: 8 – 18% Alcohol

Ingredients

2 oz Vodka

1 oz Lime Juice

1.5 oz Simple Syrup

3 Cucumber Slices

5-7 Mint Leaves

Drink 155: Ain't That a Jicama Head

While our drink selections may at times appear completely random it is only because they are usually random. The genius of it is that sometimes they appear random when they are really carefully chosen by our selection committee (Mrs. Bottle).  Sometimes she chooses a drink because it is related to a holiday.  Other times it is because she wants to make sure we don’t have too many good drinks in a row. Today it is because we had an ingredient that she didn’t want to let go to waste.  That ingredient is fresh mint.

If you know what this is it is attractive.
Otherwise it might skeeze you out

We have fresh mint because Mrs. Bottle was going to make a delicious orange and jicama salad this past weekend for the neighborhood 4^th of July blowout.  Not the big blowout down the road, but the one we got invited to.  It happens that the salad includes fresh mint and we had a lot left over.  Why did we have so much mint left over?  Because Mrs. Bottle couldn’t make the salad.  Why couldn’t she make the salad?  Because we could not find a decent jicama within a 30 mile radius of the Estate.

Don’t get me wrong, we found jicama at our usual grocery store (we won’t name it here, but it rhymes with Ferris Jeter); we just didn’t find a good one.  When Mrs. Bottle picked up the first one she found, it had a hole in it and then bug flew out of said hole.  That is considered good luck in some countries, but in America it is considered gross.  She picked out a second one but when she cut it open at home it too had a hole in it cleverly concealed within the center of the root. The non-hole portion was black with rot.  Mrs. Bottle ignored my suggestion of using the rotted tuber anyway and insisted I find another one.  I spent the next several hours trolling every grocery store that wasn’t too inconvenient but still came a cropper. 

Not to scale
Moth

Since Mrs. Bottle also ignored my other suggestion of making an orange and rutabaga salad, we had a lot of mint left over.  We ended up using the mint in the Frozen Mint Daiquiri which also has rum, lime juice and sugar.  This isn’t to be confused with the previously reviewed Daiquiri which has no mint and is not frozen but conversely also tasted good.  Mint and lime is a good combo, but the Frozen Mint Daiquiri was too tart for our liking.  This is likely due to the fact that it called for sugar instead of simple syrup.  I guess no one told Mr. Boston that sugar doesn’t really dissolve in a frozen drink.  We salvaged the drink by adding some simple syrup, making it quite tasty.  If only the recipe called for “simple syrup to taste” like the Dragon Street Cobra Tamer No. 1, it would have been a big hit. Then again there are few drinks that are as big as the DSCTn1.

Overall Rating for the Frozen Mint Daiquiri

 

Taste: 2 (4 if you add simple syrup)

Presentation: 5

Ease of Preparation: 3 – Frozen drinks are an automatic 1 point deduction

Drinks Until Blackout: 12 – 7% Alcohol

Ingredients

2 oz Light Rum

1 tbsp Lime Juice

6 Mint Leaves

1 tsp Sugar

1 cup Ice

Those Who Can't Do, Blog

This certainly looks like the
next big thing to me

Over the past few months we have reviewed scores of drinks, critiqued liquors, rated beers, and even made the occasional restaurant review (what happened to that feature?).  Even though we have been reliably informative, hilarious, and touching, TBIAW still hasn’t caught fire with the masses.  We need something to set us apart from other blogs about drinking, and that something is a signature cocktail of our own.

That’s right, you read correctly, we are going to come up with our own original drink.  Once we perfect it we fully expect it to become the next big thing.  The current big thing is planking.  If something as dumb as that can become popular then I think we have a real chance.  Of course we are hurting ourselves by unveiling our first attempt on a holiday weekend when most people will be outside doing something fun instead of avoiding work by reading our blog.

This is a fad, really?
Img: whataplanker.com

Creating a signature cocktail isn’t as easy as it sounds.  The most difficult part is coming up with something original in light of the thousands upon thousands of recipes available online.  The easiest way to develop something unique is to invent your own liqueur.  Then any drink you make with it will be new.  You can put the brand of the liqueur in the name of every recipe to further strengthen your message.  To publicize it sufficiently it is also a must to create a web site with an annoying splash page with music and slowly developing graphics.  A cool logo and weird bottle don't hurt either.

Alas, I searched the entire grounds of the Bottle Wonderland Estate and I could not find a distillery or a cadre of web developers so we will have to use ingredients that have already been invented. For our first attempt we decided to use science to determine the right ingredients.  And by science, I mean an Excel spreadsheet.  We chose to use Excel 2003, widely agreed upon by the top spreadsheetologists in the country to be the version installed on our laptop.

Notice the sophistication, precision, and cell formatting

We took our spreadsheet and created a model to determine which ingredients were most likely to lead to a tasty beverage.  The model was quite sophisticated and used formulas such as SUM and COUNTIF.  The laptop smoked and sputtered and caused an area brownout but eventually it spit out a list of vodka, orange juice, lime juice, and lemon juice as the top four.  After determining that this was a unique set of ingredients we used a variation on the Hodge conjecture to optimize the proportions. 

Naming the drink was quite easy.  With the selected ingredients the only logical choice was to call it the Dragon Street Cobra Tamer.  With that settled, Mrs. Bottle carefully measured and mixed the inaugural Dragon Street Cobra Tamer (3 shakes over purified ice in a metallic shaker)  and poured it into our fanciest chilled cocktail glass.  It was good but a little too tart.  Recognizing that mixology is both art and science, we decided to add a little simple syrup to balance it out.  This was really a genius touch because by adding “simple syrup to taste” to the recipe it is on you if you think it is too sour or too sweet and we remain blameless.

Nailed the logo!

We ultimately felt that the drink was not a perfect five, but it was a solid four.  There is nothing wrong with a four and that gives us the opportunity to create additional drinks. Mrs. Bottle began planning out the ingredients of our next drink before we had even finished this one (sneak preview: there will be coffee liqueur).  The only downside is that we had to change the name of our drink to the Dragon Street Cobra Tamer No. 1 so we have room to grow.

Overall Rating for the Dragon Street Cobra Tamer No. 1

Taste: 4

Presentation: 4

Ease of Preparation: 4

Drinks Until Blackout: 5 – 26% Alcohol

Ingredients

1.5 oz Vodka

0.5 oz Orange Juice

0.25 oz Lime Juice

0.25 oz Lemon Juice

Simple Syrup to taste

Logo images: 1upgamers.com, howstuffworks.com,streetsigngenerator.com

Drink 152: Labor Pains

If you don’t follow sports you may not have heard that the NBA is officially locked out today.  What does a lockout mean, exactly?  I don’t really care but I do know that it means there won’t be basketball until the lockout ends.  The NFL is locked out, too, so this winter it is looking like the only pro sports option will be hockey, which apparently has a pro league.  Who knew?  I hope someone starts a Calvinball league to fill the void. 

In both the NBA and NFL the lockouts are about the same thing: Money.  This is surprising to me because in a million years I never would have thought money could cause a disagreement.  We decided to pay tribute to money by having a green drink today.  It is called the Jade and it is made from rum, green crème de menthe, triple sec, lime juice, and simple syrup.  We’ve already covered that the only difference between regular crème de menthe and green crème de menthe is some food coloring.  Therefore we just used our regular stuff and some Rit dye. I was skeptical about the Jade’s combination of mint, rum, orange, and lime but it actually worked.  The mint and lime balanced each other like they do in a Mojito and there was a nice hint of sweetness from the triple sec and simple syrup. 

The emptiness of the glass symbolizes the
gap between the owners and players

We debated whether it should get a four or five but we reached an impasse.  I thought it rated a four but Mrs. Bottle questioned why it wouldn’t be a five.  I then explained to her that we must have a hard rating cap so the small market drinks like the Jade can compete fairly with the big market drinks like the Cuba Libre. She countered that the careers of these drinks can be short so they need to maximize their ratings when they can.   We are now firmly entrenched in our positions and I don't know when we can resume rating drinks. 

Overall Rating for the Jade

Taste: 4 or 5

Presentation: 5 – Hard to beat a fake green hue

Ease of Preparation: 2 – Lots of half teaspoons

Drinks Until Blackout: 5 – 27% Alcohol

Ingredients

1.5 oz Light Rum

0.5 tsp Crème de Menthe (green)

0.5 tsp Triple Sec

1 tbsp Lime Juice

1 tsp Simple Syrup

Drink 149: Oil of Ole

Today we have the Tequila Matador, a mix of tequila, pineapple juice, and lime juice.  We used our trusty Tres Generaciones Plata tequila which almost always leads to a good drink, and this was no exception. Lime and tequila is always a great combination and adding in some pineapple juice was a nice touch adding enough (but not too much) sweetness. This drink was delicious and it was an easy decision to give it a five even in light of our recent hard line approach to high grades.

This was a little plain
so we added a
Chris Berman bobblehead

The drink was good enough that I could have it frequently, but I probably wouldn’t drink it every day.  That’s because I like some variety in my diet.  Not everyone feels the same. We saw a show on TLC last night called Freaky Eaters where they highlight people with strange eating habits.  The episode we watched featured a guy who only eats French fries. Side note: He blogs about his French fries.  Who wants to read a blog about what some dude is eating?  So narcissistic.

Anyway, it turns out that he doesn’t eat only French fries, he has them once or twice a day. What’s so freaky about that?  I’m pretty sure that in the summer of 1990 I ate a Quarter Pounder with cheese meal every day for three months and no one did a TV show about me.  I guess no one would want to watch someone eat McDonald’s every day. Plus in 1990, TLC hadn’t yet figured out that airing shows about cakes and weirdoes was the key to high ratings.  At that point, their highest rated show was about boat safety.  Riveting!

As far as I know, did not
base Super Size Me on my
summer of 1990
img: David Shankbone 

Don’t worry about the French fry guy, though, as the show reached a happy conclusion.  The two doctors held a pizza party at a skate park for the French fry guy.  Now seems like a good time to mention he is 29, married, and has three kids. At the party he ate some pizza, which he normally finds disgusting.  When he tried the pizza his mother said it was the happiest day of her life.  She better check with this guy’s mom before she gets too excited.

Overall Rating for the Tequila Matador

Taste: 5

Presentation: 4 – Hard to argue with a champagne flute

Ease of Preparation: 4

Drinks Until Blackout: 9 – 12% Alcohol

Ingredients

1 oz Tequila

3 oz Pineapple Juice

0.5 oz Lime Juice