I am the only (straight) woman in America who does not find Tom Brady attractive. Moreover, I am perhaps the only one who finds him vaguely repellant; when I see him I get the same creepy, itchy feeling as when I’ve walked through a spider web. It’s a very alienating position—even my mother, with whom I am in total agreement on George Clooney’s smoking hotness—has defected to the dark side. Granted, I may be a little sore because she mentioned how “handsome” Brady is as Favre was kissing his Super Bowl hopes goodbye, but I don’t think that’s any reason to cut Brady some slack.

This segue is mostly an attempt to justify why I am posting the same drink again, albeit in revised form. It’s been a humdinger of a week. Since the Bears are out for the season, the Packers winning the NFC championship was the last hope of any team I cared about making it to the Super Bowl and crushing the Patriots beneath their cleats. That dream is dead and I’m fairly sure that it’s why I had a dream that Bill Belichick was trying to have me killed. By tigers. Big, hungry tigers.

Further, LA has been swallowed up by intense rainstorms (which, in fairness, we desperately need); sadly, one such rainy day I was rear-ended before the sun even came up. Sigh. Nothing worse than LA drivers in inclement conditions. So, to cope with stress, my wayward subconscious and car accidents, I went to work perfecting the michelada. Not exactly your prototypical winter drink, but whatever. Rain notwithstanding, this is Southern California! We have perpetual summer and (apparently) stripey assassins!

1 12-oz Mexican-style beer, chilled*
¼ lime
½ teaspoon Maggi seasoning
½ teaspoon Tapatío hot sauce
3-5 dashes Tabasco sauce, to taste
salt
chili powder
cumin
garlic powder

Mix together salt, chili powder, cumin and garlic powder to suit your taste; I use about ¼ teaspoon spices total per tablespoon of salt. Rim a glass with your spiced salt, then squeeze in the juice from your lime (if your limes aren’t very juicy, use half a lime). Add the Maggi, Tapatío and Tabasco, then pour in the beer. Stir quickly to mix well and serve.

*I recommend Carta Blanca or San Miguel. You want a beer with some body and moderate carbonation for this.

Since I last posted about the michelada, I’ve had some time to work with it. The boyfriend became enamored as things developed (the previous version was not his favorite way to drink beer) and we found out all sorts of interesting things through research.

We discovered that Maggi and Tapatío are traditional parts of the michelada in Mexico while Tabasco is a Southwest American addition, and that a rim salted with chili powder and cumin is used in other countries, like Honduras. Oh, and no matter what Budweiser tells you, there’s no tomato or clam juice in a michelada. A little of this, a little of that, we mixed everything up together and came up with a cold, spicy, savory beer that could very well be breakfast all on its own.