Thursday Happy Hour: Cocktail Recipes, Drinks, Music, and Good Times

Porkbelly Flop

Everything Is Better with Bacon ... Right?
On the day after Thanksgiving -- Black Friday -- it's a long-standing tradition at our place to crank up the feel-good music, boil up the leftover turkey bones, soak the beans, and make a large batch of White Bean Turkey Chili. Add fresh-baked black-skillet cornbread with honey butter, and comfort food is at an all-year high. To further delight our guests, this year we added a martini with a surprise bacon finish. It's like an appetizer in a glass.

Granted, the Porkbelly Flop takes a sophisticated palate to appreciate -- this new cocktail is definitely not the next Appletini.

Bloody Mary

This Thanksgiving Cook's Tradition
Cooking starts on Thanksgiving right after breakfast, with jazz on the stereo and a second cup of French roast nearby. By mid-day, the smell of sautéed onions and pumpkin pie gets our salivary glands running. We crack almonds and hazelnuts and mix a batch of Bloody Marys with celery stalk stir sticks to help curb appetites. Shelly’s a sport and sips her salty spicy drink without grimacing much, but I notice it doesn’t go anywhere. The veggie juice tides us over till our early turkey dinner with family. Here's my recipe:

Seedless Split

Beverage Country
Fading vineyards, tart farm air, the rumble of trains, and warm coffee talk with family – that’s Lodi in November. Add an afternoon of jumping straight up to pluck ripe pecans from the trees and the precarious splatter of pomegranate seeds across the white kitchen tile and it’s downright nostalgic.

Seeded, squished, and sieved, two pomegranates make about  eight ounces of juice. The color was absolutely iridescent, and Ol’ Dad quickly named the drink a Seedless Split.  On the iPod: Henri Mancini. Definitely a new holiday tradition. Here's the recipe ...

Thanksgiving Wine

White Meat, Red Wine
Before Thanksgiving, we usually go to the local Cost Plus and pick up a fresh bottle of beaujolais nouveau -- a young red wine perfect for white meat -- but this year, we thought we'd branch out. After the morning fog lifted, we visited three wineries in Lodi: Omega, Ripkin, and Harmony.

All of them are family owned and treated us like their favorite guests. At Omega, we were spoiled with not only a wine tasting, but also a personal tour of their grand cellar from Jim. At Ripkin, the daughter poured us a bright and eclectic flight of hand-made wines, and cheerily showed us the process in their small cellar. At Harmony, Linda flipped on the organ music and poured our favorite varieties in the high-ceilinged, wood-paneled tasting room.

We flew home with a suitcase of wine, although nothing turkey-friendly. But a trip to Trader Joes fixed that.

Sidecar

Ready to Fly!
With two computers glowing, laundry running, suitcases open with outfits spilled all over the living-room, we still took a moment to pause for Sidecars and tunes at happy hour. This time an extra-special toast!  We clinked glasses and pushed the button to invite our Facebook friends to Thursday Happy Hour (you can join our group, too.) Then held our breath that nothing broke.

A sidecar is like a margarita but with limes instead of lemons and brandy instead of tequila (I think I read that in GQ some time – it’s a good description.) It’s sweet and smoky and dense and perfectly memorable. Especially with this iMix G made.

Just for Thanksgiving week, we're posting a new festive beverage every day! Cheers!

The Vesper

Here's to More of James Bond!
My friend tells me you don't get to see as "much" of Daniel Craig in the latest James Bond movie, and I can't help but be disappointed. This Thursday we celebrated the approaching holidays with a batch of Vespers and Casino Royale on DVD. Ever since TNT played "7 nights of 007" (or whatever it was called) over the holidays, and we indulged and watched them all until the commercials drove us up the wall (no DVR back then), Bond -- and the Vesper martini -- gets us in the mood for turkey and pie.

Crisper than a traditional martini, with just a hint of lemon-essence rounding the edges, it's surprisingly unexpected. Like I was hoping Quantum of Solace would be. Sigh. We'll see. I can always turn to Fleming's Quantum of Solace short stories ...

Here's the drink, the music the movie inspired us to listen to (Vespers in the Lounge), and the drink ....

Margarita

En Fuego

It's not the time of year for a margarita ... wait a minute. It's always the right time for a margarita. This Thursday, I met three friends (and smart business people) for happy hour on the patio at En Fuego in Del Mar, California. It sounded good, considering we're still under the deep heat of a false summer down here and it's impossible to think about baking, scarves, or hot beverages. A round of tangy margaritas -- on the rocks, with salt -- later and we momentarily forgot about the workday and talked fast about the future. Good times ahead for sure.

It's fairly easy to find delicious margaritas and foot-tapping latin music in U.S. border states, but not so much in the rest of the country. That's why we keep this playlist -- Limes, Salt, Sand & Spice (from Mexico to Brazil) -- on the iPod and this margarita recipe in a back pocket at all times.

Gimlet Up

The First Time
Each time Gary makes a gimlet for me, I think of the first one. It was at his apartment after dinner with friends. The crack of ice and gin in the metal shaker was impressive, especially considering we hadn't planned on staying. At the time, gin and tonic was my go-to drink, but when G poured my cocktail glass alarmingly full, and I brought the limey sugar rim to my lips, I was instantly mesmerized. This Thursday was no exception.

Here's his surprisingly literary inspiration, the tunes we played, and his adapted recipe of the gimlet  ...