Tag: cocktails for summer

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Classic Recipe with a Twist: Meet Me in the Woods at Midnight (a take on the Scofflaw)

You could do a lot worse than spend a week or two or your summer in Maine.  I’ve spent some time with my family up on Mount Desert Island the last few summers, near Acadia National Park.  One favorite activity there is hiking on one of the many trails on the oceanside mountains; another is making cocktails at happy hour with made-in-Maine ingredients.  This year is no exception, and after one of these hikes I wanted to make a cocktail that captured the beautiful Maine woods on a foggy, misty day – a drink I called Meet Me in the Woods at Midnight, which is a slight variation of the classic Scofflaw:

Meet Me in the Woods at Midnight

I always feature the drink first in these posts so you can see what you’re getting into.  But that makes this post sort of backwards because you’re seeing the ultimate creation before its inspiration.  So without further ado, let me share a bit of what I saw earlier in the day.  The first part of the hike featured a long stretch of woods immersed in fog – with living trees standing comfortably next to the dead.  The forest floor was covered with almost glow-green moss that added to the eerie effect.  It was a beautiful, almost haunted scene:

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Recipe: Founder’s Fizz

Happy Fourth of July!  Today we celebrate American Independence, which, as a recent article in the Atlantic noted, a European visitor once described as “almost the only holy-day kept in America.”  As the same article noted, drinking has long been practiced in observation of the day.  In that spirit, I bring you this short post to offer you a recipe for the Founder’s Fizz – a refreshing drink perfect for a hot summer day, conceived by Michael Anthony, the bar manager at the Richard Rodgers theatre, the Broadway home of Hamilton:

Founder's Fizz

Like many classic and enduring drink recipes, this recipe is very simple, consisting of gin, simple syrup and lime juice, topped off with seltzer.  Pour that over a glass full of crushed ice and you’ve got a drink that will help keep you cool as you wait for the sun to set and the fireworks to commence.

Now, to be clear, the Founder’s Fizz is a modern creation.  But here’s a bit of history to put you in a July-4th-type of drinking mood.  On July 6, 1803, the Washington Federalist recounted the Independence Day festivities in the District that year.  On that day, “the Artillery and Grenadiers under their Captains, Edgar and Benjamin Patterson, with several respectable citizens, retired to the Federal spring on Rock Creek.”  Following an “elegant dinner,” several “toasts were drank, under discharge of cannon and musketry.”  As one does (don’t tell me you forgot to order the cannons and muskets for your Fourth of July party?).  And here were the toasts:

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Classic Recipe: Piña Colada

Today’s forecast is 95 and sunny, with more of the same (and even hotter) for the next two days.  When this part of the summer comes around, I resort to standard survival methods:  crank the air conditioning; put out the inflatable backyard pool; and blend up some frozen drinks.  To help you in your fight back against the heat and humidity, I offer you a recipe for the classic frozen cocktail:  the piña colada.

Piña Colada

The piña colada combines pineapple and coconut flavors with ice and rum and – through the power of these tropical flavors and the position the drink has come to occupy in the collective imagination – mentally transports you to a breezy tropical island.  Suddenly, the blazing heat and humidity of the Washingtonian jungle feels right – almost as if you really are at the beach:

Tropical island

Even if all you are really doing is filling your inflatable pool for that inflatable-pool party you’re hosting later (but trust me, this is a good idea – it helps with the tropical-island fantasy):

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