Time to roll out the red cartons — strawberries are in season. And local strawberries, especially those from my CSA farm, are a real treat to start the summer off with. If it weren’t for these bursting-sweet nuggets of bright red, I’d never be able to make this shake half as good. No “five dollar shake” with milk and ice cream for me, please. This one’s just milk, fruit, basil and ice.
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“Honey, I want to see where they make the lite cream cheese” is one of my favorite lines in that irresistibly silly Christopher Guest mockumentary, Best in Show. A wife says it to her husband after he suggests visiting “the place where they make the cream cheese” in Philadelphia. This is the way I feel about Christmas’ favorite drink. Mind you, I have nothing against the classic eggnog, in its rich, frothy, decadence. In fact, it wouldn’t be too far off from combining my recipes for Bourbon ice cream and chai ice cream, and letting it melt to a cool, creamy slush. Custardy cocktails! For goodness’ sake, who can live without them? BUT… all the same. I wouldn’t mind seeing where they make the lite nogs, too.
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When I began this blog a year and a half ago, I made it pretty clear from the get-go that while I shunned restaurant, take-out and sidewalk stand food, I’d never attempt to shun drinking in bars. That was beyond my comprehension. It still is, but as time goes on, you learn some new things. And one thing I learned recently is that drinking in — in someone’s kitchen, with a few friends and as little as three ingredients — can be just as intoxicatingly fun as going out. Mind-blowing, right?

But the actual science of it is easy. I’ve long been intimidated by the term “home bar.” This conjured images of tilted shelves, sticky cabinets and floors over-crowded with dusty, half-empty bottles of alcohol of every imaginable stripe. But you don’t have to be a rampant collector of booze to throw together a few good cocktails. Most cocktails are merely varitions of one magic equation: 2 parts alcohol, 1 part sour, 1 part sweet. Or so I am told by Tobias Rower, who tends the bar at Gramercy Tavern and was kind enough to treat some friends and I to a cocktail tutorial recently.
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I had a lot of leads to mull over for my next recipe, dedicated to Hillary Clinton. As Angeline commented in my Obama Rolls post, Clinton’s favorite food is lamb. Slate recently delved deep into theory on Clinton’s food preferences, citing her dearness towards a Midwestern regional specialty called the Oliveburger, and her overuse of butter on popcorn. Then this week’s Intelligencer column in New York Magazine reported that Hillary eats hot peppers like jalapenos, habaneros and banana peppers “at pretty much every meal,” according to her spokesman. I find this fascinating, if true. (I also think it’d be awesome if Hillary started a food blog called, “Eating Hot Peppers in New York.”)

But it was not a buttery, gamey, spicy or olive-laden recipe that I eventually decided to go with. Because, while she’s assuredly in the race for the presidential bid for the long haul, I think Hillary needs to loosen up. Go easy on the stoic-as-Mount-Rushmore eyebrow furrowing and tough talking like she’s about to take Obama “outside” for a brawl. I’m no doctor, clearly, but I think that Hillary could use a drink.
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Two summers ago it was a bar on Columbia St., at the “edge of Cobble Hill,” called the B61 that I went to every spare happy hour I had and ordered a tall pint glass of bartender Jamie’s magnificent Bloody Marys. Two parts homemade Bloody Mary mix heavy on the horseradish, one part vodka, a splash of Guinness straight from the tap, spice seasoning on the rim of the glass, cracked black pepper at the bottom, three olives speared with a toothpick, a lemon, a lime, and a stalk of celery. It was a meal made in hell. Or Brooklyn. (And one that still doesn’t count as eating out.)
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