Drink 164: Hot in the City

Captions require
effort

Oftentimes when I look at a drink recipe I think, “Whoever created this drink gave it very little effort.”   Sometimes that can work.  Other times you end up with the Sun Kiss, a mix of amaretto and orange juice.  You don’t even put it in a shaker.  You just pour into an ice- filled glass.  The lime wedge only gives the façade of effort.  The drink was unremarkable in every way.  It looked okay and it tasted okay.  It pretty much I suppose if you love amaretto you would probably like the Sun Kiss a bit more than we did. 

Since the drink’s creator gave the drink such little effort, I am going to make up for it by giving this entry very little effort as well.  It is for the best as we here at the Bottle Wonderland Estate are not immune from the heat wave that is both captivating and destroying our great nation.  I never knew it got so hot in the summer.  I don’t want us to expend too much energy and end up with some heat-related malady.  It is supposed to be 98° today with a heat index of 105°.  If the heat index was only 98° you would be nearing the beginning of the third paragraph.  Instead you are nearing the end of today’s post. That extra 7 degrees of perceived heat makes all the difference. 

Overall Rating for the Sun Kiss

Taste: 3

Presentation: 4

Ease of Preparation: 5

Drinks Until Blackouts: 11 – 9% Alcohol

Ingredients

2 oz Amaretto

4 oz Orange 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 162: Too Much Ado

You probably remember when the main road to the Bottle Wonderland Estate was closed earlier this year because of a downed power line.  It was all over the national news.  It caused logistics issues not seen since Hurricane Katrina.  Wait, you don’t remember?  Oh yeah, that’s right, it actually was no big deal.  That’s because every person on the planet who doesn’t live in Los Angeles can deal with a temporary road closure without it being major news for a week.  That said, I was glad to see that Laker Girl tryouts were unaffected.  

Local news coverage

No sunrise and no smog

In honor of the so-called Carmageddon we bring you the L.A. Sunrise, a mix of vodka, crème de banana, rum, orange juice, and pineapple juice.  We aren’t sure why it is called the L.A. Sunrise since the drink doesn’t have a “sunrise effect” like the Tequila Sunrise or its grosser cousin the Hairy Sunrise. It isn’t even covered with a thick haze of smog. Maybe if we had used dark rum instead of the called-for “rum” it would have tinted everything brown and had a more realistic appearance.

The drink ultimately left Mrs. Bottle unsatisfied (insert too-easy joke here (and here)).  She felt the drink too weak and somewhat pointless (also too easy).  I thought it tasted pretty good with a nice pineapple-orange juice flavor.  She noted that she couldn’t even taste the alcohol and said that she might as well just drink some pineapple-orange juice.  To her it is hardly worth writing about, but it is still more newsworthy than a road closure thousands of miles away.

Overall Rating for the L.A. Sunrise

Taste: 4

Presentation: 2

Ease of Preparation: 4

Drinks Until Blackouts: 10 – 10% Alcohol

Ingredients

1 oz Vodka

.5 oz Crème de Banana

.25 oz Rum

2 oz Orange Juice

2 oz Pineapple Juice

Drink 161: Three Minutes to Wapner

If you look closely
you can catch a glimpse
of the mysterious Mr. Bottle

Before we get to today’s drink the Rain Man we must make some corrections to our last post.  First, and this is embarrassing, we inadvertently called the Drink with Jerry blog Drinking with Jerry.  That is a horrible mistake and we apologize sincerely.  I hope Jerry didn’t kill himself because he made the same error.  The second correction is that Jerry is not dead.  He was nice enough to comment on yesterday’s post and we hope he resumes his blog soon.  Technically this isn’t a correction since we did not say he was dead, just that we like to imagine that he was dead.  In fairness, I often like to imagine certain people are dead. It is a fun way to pass the time.

Now that we have that out of the way, let’s get back to the Rain Man, a mix of 151-proof rum, melon liqueur, and orange juice.  The drink was not bad as long as you can deal with melon liqueur.  That ingredient constituted only 1/8 the volume of the drink but 7/8 of the flavor.  The orange and rum combined to level the melon out enough that Mrs. Bottle and I both liked it even though she isn’t a melon liqueur fan.  We didn’t even allow its putrid presentation to put us off.  The only thing that slowed us down was concern about the 151 rum.

This is to remind you of the 151 warnings.
We in no way used this picture again because
we were too lazy to come up with something else

We have already covered the dangers of 151 rum but there is one warning they left off the label: overstating drink power.  Upon tasting the Rain Man Mrs. Bottle repeatedly mentioned that she could feel a tingle in her nose due to the powerful 151.  She must have said it 10 or 20* times.  What she didn’t realize is that the overall strength of the drink was the same as our previous drink, 19% alcohol.  She didn’t comment about how the Peter Pan burned her nose, though.  Clearly the 151 triggered some kind of psychological response.  When Mrs. Bottle reads this I suspect it will also trigger a psychological response.  I can’t help that, I must report the truth.

* All figures approximate

Overall Rating for the Rain Man

Taste: 4

Presentation: 2

Ease of Preparation: 4

Drinks Until Blackouts: 7 – 19% Alcohol

Ingredients

1.25 oz 151-proof Rum

.75 oz Melon Liqueur

4 oz Orange Juice

Drink 160: Never Neverblog

Garnish with a faerie

Lately I have been having a little trouble coming up with topics for the blog.  You may have noticed that the frequency has dipped a little over the last two weeks. The quality, of course, is as sterling as ever. Hopefully I will rally soon and a fountain of fresh ideas will spring forward.  The first step is admitting I have a problem.  Now that we have that admission out of the way I am trying to determine the root cause for the idea deficit.  I think it is either concern over the debt ceiling or that I am over 18 hours behind in watching Harry Potter movies.

I’m pretty sure I’m not the first person to run into this problem.  In fact, while researching today’s drink the Peter Pan Cocktail, I ran into someone else who seemingly suffered a similar fate.  His name is Jerry and he has (had?) a blog called Drinking With Jerry that is pretty much the same concept as TBIAW (with the same inspiration).  His version of the Peter Pan Cocktail is the same as ours, too with gin, dry vermouth, orange juice, and bitters.  He thought it tasted like “shampoo” but we didn’t.  We didn’t love it, but it was decent even though it contained dry vermouth.  Mrs. Bottle pointed out that gin seems to have a better relationship with vermouth than other liquors do. I think it is because gin is so delicious it can make anything taste good.  In this case it allowed the drink to be more palatable than one might think.  The orange juice probably helped as well. We both felt that the Peter Pan Cocktail had potential to grow on you if you gave it enough time and if you leave your window open.

  

Not Jerry
img: http://pixyland.org/peterpan/



Speaking of time, it looks like Jerry’s blog was pretty time-consuming.  He clearly went to a lot of effort in his photography and I have to say that the design of his blog is nice.  The pictures are certainly more interesting than our “drink with a black background and occasionally a lame prop” motif.  He had initially been writing a few sentences with each drink but that ended after April 21 and on May 19 he stopped his blog for good.  Maybe the time commitment got to be too much.  Maybe the fact that no one was voting on his drinks made him frustrated. Perhaps his lack of Facebook fans frustrated him (the same as TBIAW!!).  I don’t know Jerry, but I don’t want to think that he just gave up.  Quitting is not cool.  I prefer to imagine that he is dead

Overall Rating for the Peter Pan Cocktail

Taste: 3

Presentation: 4 – It has a faerie!

Ease of Preparation: 4

Drinks Until Blackouts: 7 – 19% Alcohol

Ingredients

.75 oz Gin

.75 oz Dry Vermouth

.75 oz Orange Juice

2 dashes Bitters

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