Category Archives: drinks

‘305 Day!’

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Still lots of things going on this season. I missed the Lake Worth Chalk Festival last weekend and a few other art events, but managed to get to this past weekend’s Gifford Lane Art Stroll, which is a block party in our village. It’s a yearly thing – 25th year, this year and it brings out the whole village. It’s like a tv show where the full cast shows up for an event and they are all in one scene.

It was also “305 Day,” on Sunday, which is the area code for Miami and on March 5 (3/05).

The hit of the block party is cucumber punch which is delicious on a hot day, which always seems to be the case for this event each year – it’s been a cool winter, but Sunday was totally hot.

The first year I went, 20 years back, I didn’t know the cucumber punch had gin in it, and I really had my fill, I was feeling no pain. Now that I know the ingredients, I take it easy.

They used to serve the gin at a friend’s house where everyone lined up outside his green door and he and his wife and friends would serve it up to thousands. I guess after 23 years they felt enough was enough with the non-stop traffic through their house, so they have it out in someone else’s driveway now. So last year, I went to the driveway for the first time and got some punch and people started talking to me. But the homeowner was not having it, she started yelling, “Tom, you have your punch, now get out of here!” I couldn’t argue with her, because she is 97 years old! She’s a spry 97, but still.

This year while it was outside her house, she wasn’t around. She’s an avid bike rider at her age, so maybe she was out bike riding!

Anyway, it was a great day, I think I saw everyone I know there which is always nice. There’s a lot of food, live music and kibitzing. A perfect day for a small village.

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Accidental wine

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I’m not much of a wine drinker, I’ve never liked it. But at Thanksgiving I was sitting at the end of the table and away from the kitchen and drinks and all that was in front of me was a bottle of red wine. I was at my cousins’ house.

Me too lazy to get up and get a drink, I didn’t want to ask anyone else to get it, I drank the wine. And you know what? I loved it.

It’s Hess Select from Napa Valley.

When I got home, I started buying bottles, for myself and to bring to holiday parties.

I still don’t drink a lot of wine, so I’ll pour a glass and drink maybe half. Rather than throw the rest out I’ll leave it on the kitchen counter, sometimes for a day or two and then I’ll get around to drinking it. You know what? Leaving it out to breathe, which has always been the thing with red wine, makes it so much smoother. I did this by accident, but now I make sure to let it breathe all the time now.

I’ll open a new bottle and let it breathe rather than leave the glass out as I had done. But now I am loving wine – the first time in my life!

In the photo above you see Yaupon tea. It’s a native American tea, used by Native Americans for over 2000 years. I heard about it recently. I started drinking it due to it’s health properties.

There are different versions – green, fire roasted, lavender-coconut and so on. I’ve been drinking a cup two or three times a day. It’s very mild, too. It’s rich in antioxidants, supports memory and brain function, good to manage blood sugar, cholesterol, blood pressure and more.

I’ve replaced most of my coffee drinking with the Yaupon tea.


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Cinnamon or Nutmeg; Ina or Martha?

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This recent cartoon started out by the witch on the left telling the witch on the right how to do the laundry. I was originally laundry, not a witches brew inside the cauldron. But I couldn’t get the wording right.

As it sat for a few days, I saw Ina Garten on the Today Show and thought I would like to do a cartoon Ina-related. And this one came to mind. I changed the laundry to eggnog. As for Martha being part of the scene, I don’t know how I came up with that, but it became a debate on what to put in eggnog – cinnamon or nutmeg.

And I added the text before I actually looked up Ina and Martha’s recipes. And lo and behold, I was correct in my first assumption. Ina prefers cinnamon and Martha prefers nutmeg.

Me? I love eggnog but I’m not going to take sides. I’m not telling if I prefer cinnamon or nutmeg. 🙂

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Free water and the rich guy

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A couple of us were walking around Madison Square Park on Sunday and we stopped to get something to drink from a food truck. There was a girl on the corner handing out Hint flavored water, but she said it was warm, so we passed that up and bought cold drinks from a store nearby.

We sat on a bench and drank and talked.

We were sitting across from Chelsea Clinton’s condo building. It’s a ritzy area, Jeff Bezos lives catty corner to Chelsea on the cross street.

And out came a guy from Chelsea’s building, I guess one of her neighbors. He saw the Hint water truck parked sort of out front and he said something to the doorman, who walked over to the truck. That’s it above.

We assumed he was going to complain about them being there and ask them to move along. But no, the doorman came back with two cases of free water. Not bottles – cases. The free samples.

The rich are different. Cheap, the rich are cheap.,

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Check it!

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Professional bartender serving a cocktail in the glass with one big ice cube on the bar counter in the blurred background

I heard someone say, “check it” the other day, and it all came flooding back.

One night in the late 1980s, I went to a club in NYC with two of my cousins. I had purchased a brand new jacket, a thick, expensive winter coat.

In the club, I layed my jacket over some sort of room divider or half wall or something and this girl comes by and puts her drink on it. The drink looked like this image, same glass, but with lots of ice and lots of dripping on my jacket.

I started yelling at her, “Look what you did! That’s my jacket!” She yelled back, “Why don’t you check it!” Now being from Miami most of my life, I am not familiar with coat checks, so I thought, “Why don’t you check it!” was some sort of insult. So I yelled back, “You check it!”

And life went on. I remember that same night on our way home we stopped in front of the NY Public Library on 5th Avenue and got out of the car and danced to Pump Up the Jam, which was new at the time. Anyway, that’s my remembrance of the night.

20 years later, in 2009, I’m watching a movie on tv, literally 20 years later – and one guy says to the other, “Why are you carrying your coat around, why don’t you check it?” And that sentence came flooding back to me all those years later and it dawned on me, right then and there, that the girl was telling me to check my coat with the coat check.

The funny thing is I never wore that jacket again. Not sure why. I think it seems too puffy. I still have it in the closet somewhere.

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