Old Fashioned

I'm told that this drink is a favorite of my friend Jessi's. I can't say I agree. Again, don't like whiskey. Although, somehow its a little better for me when it's not mixed.

Tonight is a bit special, my friend Sarah is here celebrating her birthday, as it's a Monday night, it's nothing to exciting, but I figured we could hit two birds with one stone and try a drink, both blogging and celebrating.

We substituted maraschino cherry syrup for the splash of simple syrup. Somehow, the bitters really takes the edge off the whiskey for me. This is much easier to drink then some of the other whiskey drink.

Sarah says she can't really taste anything but the whiskey. She prefers her whiskey with beer, and likes the malt taste, so the drink isn't ideal for her. As she drinks it down and gets closer to the cherry, she likes it a bit better.

2 oz. bourbon or blended whiskey

Splash of simple syrup

2 dashes bitters

Add ingredients to iced rocks glass and garnish with a cherry.

Perhaps I need to be a bit more brave and just drink my whiskeys straight up.

Bellini

For the record. I really don't feel like doing this tonight. But, we opened the champagne yesterday, and if we don't drink it soon, it won't be much good, and the weekend it packed, so tonight it is, we tried the Bellini. This is the first drink that I knew for sure, I'd like. And sure enough I do. It's sweet and girly, and light, with just a hint of sour. But, it's also not terribly interesting. It's expected. However a nice shake up on the mimosa, and definitely a pick for a girly day at the spa or something similar.

1 1/2 oz peach juice

Champagne

Pour peach juice into a champagne flute, fill glass with champagne and garnish with a peach slice (we skipped the garnish)

For the record, my husband, who hates champagne actually really liked this drink! Approved by all of us, room mate included!

Black Velvet

I am shocked. We have two champagne cocktails right next to each other in the book, the first is this one, and at first glance, my immediate thought was EW. To be honest, I haven't had much opportunity to drink champagne when it wasn't first mixed with orange juice, (a clear first choice for ladies drinking before noon.) However, I was pleasantly surprised by this slightly sweet, full bodied, but light cocktail. The heaviness of the Guinness is well balanced and lightened, and I could definitely drink several of these. Safely the best of both worlds I think!

1 oz Guinnes or other stout

3 oz champagne

Pour Guinness carefully into chilled flute, without creating foam, top with champagne.

I totally fail at the floating thing, turns out you're supposed to let it slip, like a black and lace instead of black and tan. However, I think I still get the main experience. Interesting to note that this drink was invented in order to mourn the death of Prince Albert in the late 19th Century.

American Beauty-almost

Finally, a drink I like! This one is named for it's color, which is a rosy pink when all is said and done. It's very sweet, I think in the future I'll make it with less grenadine. The one thing that makes this not quite so awesome is that in our book, the port isn't listed with the otheringredients, so when I did my liquor store trip last week, I didn't buy any.

So this is American Beauty, minus the port, which we'll have to get some of later, since I

definitely plan to have this drink again. At first I was a bit weirded out by the fact that this drink includes mint and orange juice, but the mint is such a tiny amount that the orange and mint blend and compliment each to give it a bit of tang, without being sour. No pucker lips here.

1/2 oz. brandy

1/2 oz. dry vermouth

1/4 tsp. white creme de menthe (flavor wise, green might work, but it would ruin the coloring)

1/2 oz. grenadine

1/2 oz fresh orange juice

dash of port (excluded this time)

Shake ingredients well with ice, strain into chilled glass. Finish with port.

I did some online browsing, and this drink can be garnished with a rose petal. I can't decide if I like that, or not, but in the mean time I do like this drink!

Algonquin

Ick. Can I just say, I still don't like whiskey. I tend to really like drinks made with pineapple juice so I thought maybe this would be different, but I was wrong.

It's not as bad as whiskey and tonic or some other awful things I've had (whiskey shots!) where the whiskey flavor is over bearing and just takes over your mouth, the pineapple does sweeten it, and vermouth takes the burn off. But in general, the overwhelming flavor is that of the whiskey, which I simply don't like.

Can I also say that I really hate maraschino cherries? Talk about overly processed and sickeningly sweet. With a drink like this I'm not entirely sure what the point of such garnish is anyways. Do you eat the cherry while taking a drink? Should the flavors mix? Is it like some type of chaser? We didn't have toothpicks, so my cherry is sitting at the bottom of my glass, knocking about until I finish the drink.

One thing I CAN say about this drink is it has a kick. If you like the taste of whiskey this drink would probably go down real smooth. The alcohol taste isn't real strong, though the flavor of the whiskey is. Even so, I'm already feeling the fuzzyness in my head, and I'm barely halfway through my glass.

2 oz. rye or blended whiskey

1 oz. dry vermouth

1 oz. pineapple juice

Stir ingredients with ice and strain into a chilled cocktail glass. Garnish with a maraschino cherry.

I think it's also fair to say that the more I drink this, the more I like it. Now I'm not sure if that's a good or a bad sign.

Affinity Cocktail

Cocktail one in our little black book gave us a bit of a whirl. Neither of us like Whiskey, or Vermouth much for that matter. So for the first (and second, as you'll see) drinks of the book to contain both of those ingredients set us a bit off. But biting the bullet so to speak I went ahead and got some mid-range (I think?) whiskey and scotch.

This is supposed to be a winter drink, for before dinner (according to some website a google search revealed to me) and I can see where they're going with that. I like it more then I thought I would, it's a little bit sweet, but it cuts through that to those sour taste buds and really makes you salivate. The aftertaste is light and pleasant, and oder nice, and the orange bitters ads a touch of citrus that makes the sourness tolerable to me as I typically don't prefer sour drinks.

1 oz Scotch
3/4 oz dry vermouth
3/4 oz sweet vermouth
2-3 dashes orange bitters

Stir ingredients with ice and strain into chilled cocktail class

I can see why this simple drink is a classic.

From A-Z

You may or may not have heard of a goal making movement called (among other things) 101 in 1001. The basic premise is that you make a bunch of goals, big, small, silly, serious... (101, in fact) and try and complete them in 1001 days. I did this by myself a few years ago with success somewhere in the 60% completion area. Not bad, considering how much a person changes between the ages of 20 and 23.

Luke and I have decided that we want to make our own goals as a couple. This has been complicated somewhat by the fact that all goals have to in some way apply to both of us together, not an individual, and Luke wants all goals to have quantifiable, measurable success, not something where you wait until the end of the time period, and reflect qualitatively whether or now the goal was achieved or not.

Well, one of our goals is now to try every cocktail in our bar book, as systematically as possible. Our bar book is The Little Black Book of Cocktails, and we're starting at the beginning, and working our way forward, as much as possible. So today I went grocery shopping and also made a trip to the local liquor store. I came home with:

Scotch

Dry Vermouth

Sweet Vermouth

Orange Bitters

Rye Whiskey

Pineapple Juice

Brandy

Creme de Menthe

Peach Juice

Guinness

...and our room mate is getting Champagne.

Let the tasting begin!

Bump in the Road

Right off the bat I knew that one of the big challenges for planning this wedding was going to be my FH's expectations. He simply has no basis for knowing how much Stuff costs. For instance, his only experience with photographers is the guy who does photos for the theater company we work for (incidentally also our wedding photographer, who's amazing btw. Michael Brinkerhoff). Since he sort of got his start with our theater company many years ago, he continues to give us a dirt cheap rate for shooting our shows. FH didn't know this, he just knew how much we paid him per show and figured "A wedding is smaller then a play, so it will cost a little less then that right?" So when I showed him Michael's website where the bottom tier was just over $1000 he flipped. After explaining the situation to him, he understood that he had made assumptions without actually having any info, and now realizes that things cost more then he thought they would, however, he's still definitely wants to find the least expensive ways to do things, as do I. He's just a bit more optimistic about finding things for cheap, then I am.

With that background knowledge, here is our hiccup. We finally got in contact with the location we wanted, the Long Tom Grange. It's pretty, and woodsy, more or less just what we want. We were anticipating a very inexpensive price, about $200. And we were right, it's $200/day. However, for weddings (and I KNOW I shouldn't have said that it as a wedding) they make you rent it for three days. One day for the rehearsal, one for the ceremony, and then clean up the next day. To me, this is reasonable, and they even give you a $50 break, and charge $550 for the three days. I think this sounds great. FH, wants to see if we can find somewhere cheaper.
The Long Tom Grange

The other issue is alcohol. I know a girl who got married at this location and they had a kegger. So I figured it would be no problem, but when I asked about alcohol, the woman said no alcohol, except for a champagne etc. toast. So obviously my friend was a bit dishonest about what they did at their wedding... Now we aren't having a bar at all, open or cash, but we are planning on supplying two or three bottles of wine per table, enough for people to drink it with dinner. I told her this was out plan, and she seemed to think that that might be ok, but we're looking into different insurance options (insurance is the reason they don't allow alcohol). So with the potential added expense of extra insurance, FH really thinks we should keep looking. Whereas, though I am willing to keep looking (and by we keep looking, that really means I keep looking) I am also pretty satisfied with the options laid out.

One thing I was thinking about last night was that if we had our ceremony at like 2pm, and then served a wide variety of hors d'ourves (sp?) with a small amount of wine, and then, at 9pm had a party back at our house (we have a huge back yard and a July wedding) for our friends, where people could party more, and drink more heavily if they wanted. I really like the idea, although I also recognize the issues with it, like paying for a location that we aren't using to its fullest extent, travel/driving time from the first location(for the ceremony and reception) to our home (about thirty minutes away), as well as the logistics of throwing a party in two different locations, the second of which we would be supplying minimal amounts of food and drink.

So what do you guys think? Anyone find a venue that wasn't a private residence for less then $550? (There are a variety of reasons we can't use a private residence which I'm happy to outline if someone wants me to) How about running into issues with alcohol? Any experience with event insurance that covers alcohol consumption? How about after parties? Especially of the BYOB&F variety. Thanks for any advice, and kudos for making it through my whole narrative!