The easiest (and most delicious) pitcher drinks you will ever make.

I secretly long to be Martha Stewart. I dream of having perfect, mosquito-free garden parties where everyone drinks perfect summery drinks from mason jars and everything is recorded for posterity in dreamy, short depth of field-y photos.

This was right before the tree caught fire.

But I am not Martha Stewart, I am a normal person. I do not have hundreds of hours or thousands of dollars or a team of photographers. To make my parties awesome, I must rely on my own wit and daring, plus a few tricks I've picked up over the years. One of which is: pitcher drinks. You can mix them up the night before, pop them in the fridge, and when it's party time, impress your guests with your cocktail making skillz without having to spend the entire time in the kitchen. These are my absolute favorite - I make them for almost every party I have, and they are always a huge hit. Plus they're almost stupidly easy to make. And did I mention delicious?

Strawberry Basil Margaritas
(Okay, so of course this was inspired by the drink they serve at the Volcano, but the pitcher recipe is my own.)
12 strawberries, hulled and sliced
8 basil leaves (harvested from the back porch!)
one can frozen limeade concentrate
tequila! (I prefer the gold for this recipe.)

First, mix up the limeade. The package will say to add 4 1/3 cans of water; I usually add 3 cans of water and 1 1/3 cans of tequila. (If your friends are squeamish about drinking, or you like your margaritas less strong - well, add a bit less.) Lightly muddle the basil, or smoosh it gently with the back of a spoon - this will help the basil essence to diffuse into the drink. Add the strawberries and basil to the pitcher and stick the whole thing (covered) into the fridge overnight, or for at least four hours.

When you retrieve the pitcher everything will have turned a nice pale pink. Serve over ice, and wait for the compliments to pour in.

The ShamWow

Part of the fun of making up your own drinks is coming up with clever names for them, right? To my great shame, I am embarassingly bad at this. Hence the name for the champagne concotion I created for Bekah's bachelorette party - champagne + chambord = wow!

Wow.

Terrible, I know. But don't be fooled - this one is delicious. A bit more work than the Kir Royale, but totally worth it.

you will need:
champagne (look for the kind marked "Brut" - it's a bit sweeter than the Extra Dry varieties)
1 oz blackberrry-raspberry puree
.5 oz chambord*

*Full name: Chambord Liqueuer Royale de France. I don't really speak french, but I enjoy saying the name of this liqueur as if I do. (Try it.) Chambord is raspberry-flavored, relatively easy to find, and relatively expensive. In a pinch you could substitute a generic raspberry liquer (creme de framboise), but I really reccomend the Chambord. Think of it as an investment in your cocktailing future. And the bottle will look so pretty on your countertop.

Fill a champange flute nearly full with champagne. Leave some space, about a couple inches, at the top for the other ingredients. Add a teeny tiny bit of the puree at first - the champagne will start to fizz like mad. (It's the sugar in the puree. Sugar makes champagne go totally crazy.)

After the fireworks have died down, add the rest of the puree and then the Chambord. Stir with a cocktail whisk (the cutest damn thing you will ever buy for your bar), a swizzle stick, or a straw, and you're ready to go.

The verdict: We have a winner. Bright, lovely burst of raspberry, followed by rich blackberry and just enough champagne to make you happy. How good is this cocktail? After drinking a few at Rebekah's bachelorette party, I thought about it the next day at work. I craved it. I phantom-tasted its rasbperry-sweet goodness. I briefly toyed with the idea of going home at lunch and making myself a drink.

Seriously. It's that good.

Sarah's that good. She took the photos for this installment, too. Go check out her flickr page.

Blackberry-raspberry puree

I fear blenders. Okay, fear is the wrong word. I distrust blenders. Mostly because I always buy the second-cheapest blender at Target or Wal-Mart or wherever (because the cheapest one is assuredly a total piece of crap, right?), and the only thing I ever try to do with a blender is crush ice to make frozen drinks, which is inevitably a disaster. What always happens is that you end up with the finest of snows at the bottom of the blender while the cubes on the top are barely touched, or you add waaay too much liquid and get some kind of weird, icy slush. And all the while your kitchen is filled with the burning smell of overworked blender. Classic bartenders never had blenders anyway, so hardcore cocktailians frown on them, and drinks on the rocks are, er, more potent anyway. So my policy was: avoid blenders.

Until I schemed up a certain cocktail (next up) that would require a berry puree. A book I have suggested I could make my own, or order already-prepared fruit purees from France. Um...no. So I went, reluctlantly, to the blender.

Blackberry-raspberry puree:
1/2 pint blackberries (from the farmers' market!)

1/2 pint raspberries

2.5 oz sugar syrup

I added the berries and syrup to the blender. With trepidation, I pushed the "puree" button. Moments later...perfectly smooth berry goodness. Even blenders deserve second chances, apparently. It was a sweet little story of redemption.*

*Although that's not quite where it ends. I still needed to strain out the seeds. This is the method I settled on: place a strainer over a bowl, like so.

Pour a little puree into the strainer at a time, and press the liquid through the strainer with a rubber spatula. (Every once in a while it helps to scrape the underside of the strainer with a clean spatula, since liquid will accumulate there.) This part was way more time-consuming than I thought it would be - pretty much the opposite of the smooth sailing with the blender. But after a while my diligence was rewarded in the form of some very lovely, seed-free puree. That I didn't have to order from France.

When finished, I transferred the puree to a mason jar in the fridge to await its cocktail fate - you can keep yours in the refrigerator for up to three days, or in the freezer for two months.

Champagne Cocktails!

Champagne cocktails are some of my favorites - they're super easy to make (they mix themselves!) and what is more, they are nearly impossible to screw up. Take the classic champagne cocktail, the mimosa. Not enough orange juice? No problem! It just tastes like champagne! And people love champagne. Add too much orange juice? No problem! Orange juice is delicious! Pretty much, the formula is fruit + champagne. One good thing + another good thing = a third good thing. Foolproof.

Allow me to present to you...the Kir Royale. Despite the unpronounceable name (I am never quite sure how to say "Kir"), it is super approachable - only two ingredients. It will impress your non-cocktailing friends, because it is not a mimosa. And it is so pretty. All champagne cocktails are beautiful (it's the glassware*), but this one especially so.

So here goes:
champagne
creme de cassis**

*Investing in some champagne glasses will make you feel so grown-up and sophisticated and like the consumate entertainer. And, as it turns out, it's not really that much of an investment - I got mine at crate and barrel for four dollars each. They are 9 oz, so keep that in mind if your champagne flutes are a different size.
**Creme de cassis is a blackcurrant-flaovred liqueuer. A blackcurrant, it would appear, is a kind of berry that only grows in France. You can find very expensive and very cheap varieties of creme de cassis, but the cheap ones will work equally well here.

Put about an ounce and a half of creme de cassis in a flute, and fill with champagne. Really, that's all. It's that easy.

An especially nice touch (okay, I got this idea from Real Simple Magazine) is to freeze some blackberries and use them as a garnish in your champange glasses. These will keep the drink cold, for your friends who like to savor, plus they look amazing.

So, so pretty.

Photos for this installment were taken by Sarah, my very talented photographer friend. Check out her website here.

Backyard Bartender in the Big City

I have long had a fascination with New York, based mostly on repeated viewings of Sex and the City. That and the fact that one of my co-workers told me he had a totally normal, sane friend who moved to New York City and, a few months later, broke down crying on the sidewalk. There is something fascinating about a place so intense it eats people alive. I knew I had to experience it for myself.

Also at work, I stumbled across this video one day when I googled "bacon cocktail". I thought to myself - surely no one has tried something so insane as putting bacon in a cocktail. Ohh, I was wrong. Pretty much as soon as I saw the video of the bacon cocktail...I knew I had to experience it for myself.

Remember this for later.

I showed the video to Luke, who at the time was living in New York, and he was like, hey, this place is right around the corner from my apartment in the East Village. Sex and the City...bourbon-infused bacon...it was like a magnet, drawing me in.

So the bacon cocktail bar is called PDT, and it was pretty much at the top of my list of places to visit when I went to New York (for the very first time!) this past May. Getting in, it turns out, is no easy feat. New Yorkers are apparently obsessed with faux-speakeasy type bars, and PDT (stands for Please Don't Tell) has made an art form out of it. Their phone lines open at 3 PM every day, at which point you have to call the secret number and make a reservation. (The number is actually not so secret, since a quick google search will turn it up, but I'll make you do a little work.) Once your reservation is made - and here's where it gets really trippy - you have to go to a hot dog joint called Crif Dogs in the East Village. Once inside the hot dog joint you'll see a phone booth - go in, pick up the phone, tell the hostess your name and when your reservation is, and the back wall of the phone booth will open. Suddenly you're in this low-ceilinged, wood-paneled cocktail den with animal heads on the wall and a bar with the best liquor selection of anywhere, ever. You've fallen down a rabbit hole of awesome.

Look at all those bottles. I died of jealousy.

Sarah and I got there at 7 pm, just when things were starting to pick up, so we had the distinct pleasure of sitting at the bar and chatting with the bartender as he made our drinks. Sarah ordered a Paddington, made with, among other things - muddled...bell pepper? I wasn't so sure how I felt about bell pepper in a cocktail, but Sarah gulped it down.

I got the much-anticipated bacon cocktail (called a Benton's old fashioned), and it did not disappoint. In a traditional old-fashioned, you taste orange, and then bourbon. In this one, I tasted citrus, and then bourbon, and then...bacon. Some reviewers said the bacon infusion just brought out the smoky flavors in the bourbon, but they were dead wrong. It tasted like real, honest-to-goodness, fresh off the griddle, bacon. As a flavor pairing, this was really not so terrible as you would think - it was actually pretty intriguing in a "holy cow I never would've thought of this but it kinda works" sort of way. Would I order it again? Probably not, especially considering all the other enticing offerings on the menu, but I feel like it was worth the 14 bucks just to have had the experience.

The rules of the house posted on the bathroom wall. Basically: this is not a pick-up bar.

Speaking of experiences...did I mention you can order food from the hot dog place next door? It's delivered through a little door in the back of the bar. So you can nosh on tater tots while you drink your fancy drinks. Only in New York.

Bourbon + tater tots = happy Nancy.

Texas Summer Sangria

I am obsessed with this book. Seriously. Since buying it I have become such a sangria fiend that I now think of sangria as a season. In much the same way that some people welcome the coming of fall because it means the beginning of football season, I welcome spring because it means that I can make sangria again.

Hello, lover.

I've made almost every sangria recipe in the book, so it was sort of inevitable that eventually I would create my own. I wanted to do a flavor combo that I hadn't tried before, and I wanted to use fruits that are in season in Houston right now - a little taste of Texas summer in every sip. Here's what I came up with:

1 750 mL bottle red wine*
1.5 cups blackberries**
3 peaches, pitted and sliced**
1/2 cup simple syrup
1/4 cup cognac***

*I used a Messina Hof shiraz, in keeping with the whole Texas thing, but really any red wine will do as long as it's not too sweet. Good bets are shiraz/syrah, cabernet, or merlot. One of the great things about sangria is that you don't need to use expensive wine - I've made sangria with four-dollar wine and loved it.
**See the last post for info about where to get farm-fresh fruit in Houston.
***It's okay to use cheap cognac, too.

Put the berries and simple syrup in a saucepan and cook over medium heat, stirring constantly, for about five minutes. The goal here is to release some of the berry flavor, so you'll know it's ready when the berries start to lighten in color just slightly and the syrup starts to thicken. Take off the heat and set aside. Pour the bottle of wine into a pitcher (I always end up tasting a little at this point because hey, wine is delcious), and add the cognac, peaches, and syrup/berry mixtures. Cover and refrigerate overnight (or for at least 8 hours) - this will let the flavors marry. (And don't flavors deserve happiness just like anyone else?)

The Verdict:
I took my first sip of my first pitcher of my first sangria, fully prepared to have to add some OJ or peach liqueur or something to get that perfect balance. I was blown away. It was like heaven in a glass. (I know I say all my drinks are good - because I wouldn't post them if they weren't - but seriously, this will blow your mind.) Sweet burst of peach, hearty red wine, nice berry finish. I took it to a party and it was a huge hit and disappeared almost immediately. I was very flattered, but also a little disappointed - because I sort of wanted to drink the whole thing myself.

Easy to make. Hard to share.

Where to get farm-fresh produce in Houston.

The first time I ever went to a farmers market* was a few months ago. Now, thanks to this little project, I am quickly becoming an expert on tracking down local produce. Here are some of my favorite sources:

Urban Harvest Farmers Market
Every Saturday, rain or shine, 8 AM-noon. Located just east of Greenway Plaza and conveniently right next door to my office (although I try not to go to work on the weekend when I can help it). You can also buy fruit trees here - check out their website.

Farmers Market at Rice University
For those who are loathe to wake up before noon on Saturday (me). Tuesdays, 3:30 to 7 PM.

Midtown Farmers Market
Saturday, 8 AM-noon. In the parking lot of T'afia, one of my favorite local restaurants. Haven't tried this one yet, but fresh fruit, hot breakfast and mimosas? Now there's a reason to wake up before noon.

If you can't make it to the farmers market, Whole Foods is also a good source for locally-grown produce - just look for the signs that say "local" or "go Texan". And you can gawk at all the hippies. No, just kidding.

*Does the lack of an apostrophe in this phrase bother anyone besides me? It's the market belonging to the farmers, right? Not a market where one buys farmers. Maybe I should change the name of this blog to "The Backyard Grammar Nazi".