Heavens above, where does the time go? It seems like it’s only been a few days since I last posted but instead it’s been two weeks. Weeks. I’ve finally managed to eke out these few scant minutes away from work to come back and talk about a few things. First, there is a drink. (Isn’t there always a drink?) Second, there is a new blog. Third, there is…well, it’s kind of tied to number two, but there’s Tales of the Cocktail.

I’ll start with Tales news so that it doesn’t get lost when your mind blanks out in joy at the words “fresh strawberries.” (Whoops, guess I let the cat out of the bag.) Tales of the Cocktail is returning for a fifth fantastic year July 16-20 and I am finally going. Myself and some other like-minded people you might recognize are going to be blogging up to and during the drunken revelry event this year at talesblog.com. Oh, and did I mention that my birthday coincides with the last day? As if Tales itself weren’t reason enough to celebrate…

So now that I’ve wormed out of the shackles at my desk and talked about Tales, on with the cocktail. Though Southern California has many negatives, one of its major positive qualities is the produce. We get fresh produce year-round because of our exceptionally mild climate, which also brings us strawberries in March. I’ve been exercising Herculean restraint by not buying and eating a flat per day—a feat which also led me to consider ways I could consume the berries besides just shoving them in my mouth like a two year-old.

Naturally, this led me to drink. (Much like a two year-old, my reasoning ability is very straightforward.)

I found the recipe for the Fresa-Fresa in Trader Vic’s Bartender’s Guide, Revised. A simple concoction of tequila, fresh strawberries and sugar, it sounded lovely but I just couldn’t resist tinkering with it—not that strawberries need much embellishment, but they play so nicely with others. I rooted around in the fridge and settled on the spice syrup that I concocted for the Tiki Puka Puka as my secret weapon. Some girls have the Miracle Bra, I have simple syrup with allspice and cinnamon. How’s that for priorities?

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I swear I haven’t forgotten to blog—I’ve just been too busy. Besides working until eight every night for the past two weeks, I’ve been in and out of cat hospitals with O’Malley during the same period. Those of you who have been through this know that emergency veterinary care is not a business of expediency, so it’s been a very long, very exhausting two weeks.

One upside, though, is that my sister kindly purchased us a bottle of Rothman & Winter Créme de Violette which will soon make an appearance on this very site. Until then, I’ll make do with a photo featuring our new star ingredient.

Cheers!

Unlike last month, I am being a responsible blogger and participating in the newest installment of Mixology Monday. Generally I procrastinate pretty much up to the last minute but, given the creativity of Rick’s “Limit One” theme I had to break some of my bad habits and actually do my homework beforehand. As I have already mentioned here, the weather has been turning toward spring breezes and sunny days—a phenomenon which always brings rum to the forefront of my thoughts. As such (and considering Rick’s love of tiki cocktails), I aimed for tropical themes when searching for an appropriately boozy drink.

I picked up Trader Vic’s Bartender’s Guide, Revised mostly for inspiration. I wasn’t expecting to find the drink in it, but I felt that some of his heartier rum concoctions would help me along the path to enlightenment. Being an orderly sort of person, I went A-Z, marking interesting ideas as I went, until my eye fell upon the Tiki Puka Puka. It appealed to me right away because the name itself is subtly warning you—too many of these and you’ll be praying to the porcelain tiki god.

So it was the Tiki Puka Puka I wanted…except that I didn’t have Navy Grog mix. Damn! I don’t generally keep mixes of any sort on hand, and I find the constant need for Mai Tai mix or Navy Grog mix to be one of the most consistently irritating things about Trader Vic’s recipes. Granted, they do still sell the stuff, but I don’t make enough Mai Tais or Navy Grogs to warrant making space for yet more bottles in my fridge. As such, I hit up the Tiki Central Forums looking for a recipe that remotely resembled Trader Vic’s Navy Grog mix. I hit pay dirt and, per the discussion in the thread, fiddled with things until I came up with the mixture I’ve included below. I can’t vouch for its authenticity (oh, the horror!) but it is tasty, regardless.

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Spring has finally sprung. I didn’t actually realize how much I’d missed having my windows open until the weather turned warm enough to force me to have them open, and now I’m loathe to close the place up again. Spring is a wonderful time in my neighborhood—you see, we live on the fourth floor of a very old building with no air conditioning in an area of Los Angeles that regularly tops 95º most days during the summer. During July and August being at home feels sort of like being roasted alive, so the 75º-and-breezy days of March–May are little slices of heaven. Well, heaven with the added bonus of fresh strawberries, but I digress.

We’ve had a rash of particularly fine days this week and decided to celebrate by breaking out a little tiki. I combed and combed through my various tiki tomes looking for a bright, cheerful, springtime sort of drink—of course, most of them fit into one of the categories, but I was feeling demanding and wanted all three. When I hit upon the Lei Lani Volcano in Intoxica!, it was the clear winner.

Well, it was until I started to pour the pineapple juice and was confronted with a very strange, crumpled, green-and-white chunk of…something. It smelled like pineapple but looked like a morel mushroom, thus leading me to the conclusion that our pineapple juice had been taken over by an alien being, thus rendering it useless to my plans. Damn! Necessity being the mother of invention, I juiced a blood orange in the hope that its mild tartness could hold up in the place of pineapple and got to shaking.

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Since I managed to completely flake on last month’s Mixology Monday, I’m posting a drink that was posted by Jeffrey for the Variations event. I know, I know—another Jeff Morgenthaler post?!?! Don’t I read any other cocktail blogs?

The answer is, of course, yes. If you could see my daily cocktail RSS feeds you would probably goggle a bit. I stopped counting at fifty, so I couldn’t even give you an accurate count of how many blogs I read on any given day. Be that as it may, it is nevertheless a coincidence that I made the Flor de Baya so soon after the Richmond Gimlet. Jeff just happened to post the recipe right after I found both a bag of fresh cranberries in my freezer and a bottle of Sauza lurking in the back of my bar. I chose to take that convergence as a sign…but then again, it doesn’t take much to encourage me to take up the shaker. Or the beaker, as the case may be when making a gastrique.

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