Party Shoes and Cocktails

Most days my daily footwear is dictated by the weather.

My shoe of choice is my trusty Birkenstocks. I've been wearing the same style for almost 20 years, I replace them every other year (a standard B-day gift from The Best Husband In The World) because they are worn to the cork.

When the weather turns cold I add socks. Geeky right?

Early morning dog walks have me wearing these.

Unless it's raining, then I wear these.

When I am working (cooking) I wear these.

But every now and then

I wear something like these.

They are the perfect accessory to these:

Cosmopolitans: makes 2

1 cup vodka of choice (I LOVE Tito's. A small distillery out of Texas. If you can find it, try it!)

1/2 cup Cointreau

Juice of 1/2 lime or splash Rose's lime juice

1/4 cup cranberry juice

Crushed ice

Fill a shaker with crushed ice. Add the vodka, Cointreau, lime and cranberry juice. Shake vigorously for 30 shakes. It HAS to be 30 shakes. Really hard. The perfect martini has tiny slivers of ice crystals floating on top. That keeps it cold from the first sip to the last.

Put your party shoes on and strain into two chilled martini glasses.

Repeat as necessary.

A Cook's Notes: There's more to The Good Cook than just food!

Old Yeller In The Cellar and Chinese Takeout

A couple of weeks ago the best husband in the world went to Michigan. You may remember, our 10 year old nephew had a cancerous tumor removed and TBHITW went to be with his family. 

Well it seems one night TBHITW and his brother were up late talking and his brother offered him a cocktail. Only because they are manly men they didn't call it a cocktail, they called it a drink. Anyway... the cocktail / drink they were having was this concoction that his brother had made in his garage. Yes, you read that right. Seems he took two big cans of chunk pineapple and one ginormous bottle of vodka and mixed them together and let it ferment for a good two weeks in his garage. The idea being that after two good weeks, you pour out the yellow vodka over ice and you have pineapple vodka. 

Apparently this is pretty good stuff because when TBHITW got home he suggested we make it too. So off I went to the restaurant grocery store that I shop at and got two industrial size cans of chunk pineapple (in its own juice) and a big old bottle of vodka. His brother said to use cheap vodka but I am not a cheap vodka kind of girl, so I got Absolute. Then I went to the Home Goods store and bought a fancy glass urn with a golden spigot on it. When I got home, I did like the best husband in the world told me and drained off the pineapple juice (I saved that for breakfast drinking and smoothie making), dropped all those pineapple chunks into the fancy glass urn and poured the NOT cheap vodka over. 

The golden spigot on the fancy glass urn began leaking immediately. So I put all that stuff into a big rooster pitcher and went back to the store, but they were clean out of fancy glass urns with golden spigots so I bought a five gallon thermos. It is red and it the kind of thermos you take fishing, or camping, or to a soccer game or some such activity that requires copious amounts of fluid. 

I varied from the original recipe in that I did not put our yellow vodka in the garage. That would just be too nasty because our garage is full of dirty things like garden tools, power tools and a robin who built a nest on a ladder and would attack any of us if we ventured in there. I put our yellow/pineapple vodka in the cellar, the wine cellar to be exact, which is a lovely place and is a joy to visit. 

So now it has been two weeks of fermenting this yellow vodka which I have come to affectionately call Old Yeller in the Cellar . It is drinking / tasting day! 

Which leads us to why we are having Chinese Takeout for dinner. Something tells me that after a couple of glasses of Old Yeller In The Cellar, I should not be around sharp knives or open flames. 

In case you found this hard to follow, here is the recipe:

Old Yeller In The Cellar

2 large, industrial size cans of chunk pineapple in its own juice (or 1,000 regular size, just kidding, about 10 regular) drained of juice.

1 large bottle vodka (its up to you whether you want to use the cheap stuff, I am not the judge of you)

1 large thermos or fancy glass urn with a non-drip spigot

Put it all together, wait two weeks. Serve over ice and order delivery for dinner. 

Happy weekend everyone!