FRENCH CONNECTION

FRENCH CONNECTION
1 measure cognac
1/2 ounce amaretto

The FRENCH CONNECTION. It sounds worldly, sophisticated and fabulous. And the cocktail is. To make it, put on on your chicest French outfit, then simply put cognac and amaretto into a short rocks glass with plenty of ice and stir. I’d also suggest giving it a 10 minute melt.

If you like cognac and coffee, you will love the FRENCH CONNECTION cocktail. I am not a cognac lover, but I can’t live without my coffee. I found the cocktail to have a hint of yummy to it underneath the powerfully strong cognac. Hubby was the one with a craving for a cognac cocktail, and he backed up his craving by finding the recipe on his beloved iPhone and making it for me. Still, he was the one who finished it. He liked it better than straight cognac and said it would be great for the winter.

Trouble is, it was almost 90 degrees in Ohio today. Another problem is that the real FRENCH CONNECTION was not fabulous. It was a drug trafficking scheme run by the French Mafia during the late 1960s and early 1970s. Heroin made from opium grown in Turkey was smuggled from France to the U.S., providing almost all of the heroin supply in the U.S. at the time. Still, the movie was good.

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Cocktail Connie

THE DRIFTER

THE DRIFTER

2 ounces gin

½ ounce St. Germain

¾ ounce lime juice or sour mix

I have to confess that my work did not get 100% effort from me today. Maybe it was the Midol PM that I took last night, but I felt half-there today. It was as if I was just drifting through the Monday.

I decided to drift through my evening as well with a DRIFTER cocktail (Plus I had some fresh cucumbers looking for a home.) To make the DRIFTER, I put gin, St. Germain and sour mix into a cocktail shaker, added ice, shook and strained it into a martini glass. I then floated some thinly sliced cucumber on top.

The DRIFTER made me realize that sliced cucs really add a fashion statement to a cocktail. They also don’t get in the way of your sips and taste great after the liquid is gone. And this liquid will be gone quickly. The DRIFTER tasted like gin enhanced with the flavor of flowers and cucumber. It had a sourness to it, and is a must try for anyone that drifts towards sour drinks. I used an inexpensive gin, but a luxurious gin, like Tangueray or Bombay would surely make a big difference in a cocktail like this.

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Cocktail Connie

EAGLE'S DREAM- IT'S PURPLE!

EAGLE’S DREAM

1 ½ measure gin
1 measure Parfait Armour
Juice of half of a lemon
½ tsp. of sugar or simple syrup
1 egg white


I had a dream about eagles, I swear, a few nights before I made and drank an EAGLE’S DREAM cocktail. In the dream, I was on a speed boat next to David Beckham, just like he was in the opening ceremony of the Olympics. But, instead of going to light the olympic torch, we were following an American Eagle. The wind was flying through my hair, David was smiling, then… I woke up. I hate when that happens!

That eagle may have been a dream, but the fantasy-like EAGLE’S DREAM cocktail was not. What made it so out of this world is the Parfait Armour. The violet-colored, orange-flavored Parfait Armour was popular in ladies drinks in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, mainly because of its cool color. It is not easy to find in a liquor store — I had to buy it in Kentucky — so if you see the bottle in your travels, be sure to grab one.

To make the EAGLE’S DREAM cocktail, take that precious bottle of Parfait Armour, and put some of it into a blender in the measurement above, along with the gin, lemon juice, sugar or simple syrup, and one egg white. Add ice to the blender, blend and pour into a large wine goblet. Garnish with a lemon twist.

Thanks to the egg white, the EAGLE’S DREAM is foamy. It took a while for it to settle down after pouring. It is a sweet cocktail, with that expected hint of orange. It had a very unique flavor and a strange aftertaste that’s hard to put my finger on. The EAGLE’S DREAM is not a crowd pleaser, but those with a taste for gin and a sense of adventure — not to mention some additional ice and a melt — will come to love it. Either way, it’s a strong cocktail that comes with a ticket to dreamland. Wait for me David!

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Cocktail Connie

PINOT GRIS

PINOT GRIS

When is a wine a cocktail? When I say it is!


I took a limo ride today with my sister, some old friends and new ones, to a charming winery in Norton, Ohio, called the Winery at Wolf Creek. We whittled away the hours talking, eating, strolling through grapevines and lake trails, and playing Truth or Dare Jenga — a great drinking game. And of course, we drank lots and lots of wine.


Norton, Ohio, may be far, far away from California both in distance and wine quality, but I was impressed with all the wines that I tasted, and fell most in love with the PINOT GRIS. It was fruity, but dry, with a nice aroma and pleasant aftertaste. If you usually go for Chardonnay, I suggest trying a slightly fruitier Pinot when you want a change.


The Winery at Wolf Creek is perched atop a hill and provided great views. The busy crowd provided great people watching. There were many groups like ours and many who brought tablecloths, lots of food, decorations, cakes, you name it, to celebrate birthdays and other special occasions. As long as you were buying some wine, the winery didn’t care if you monopolized some tables all day. It was a great scene and a great day.

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Cocktail Connie

UPTOWN

UPTOWN

1 ½ measures Smirnoff Orange vodka

1 measure Cointreau

1 measure Fresh lime juice

1 measure Pomegranate juice

I was an uptown girl living in an uptown world tonight. Are you singing Billy Joel yet? I sure was and so was the bartender at the Red Hawk in Concord, Ohio, a charming place far from an uptown. Still the cocktails were good. I chose the UPTOWN from their impressive list of patio classic cocktails. The only problem was that I’d had most of the cocktails on the list already!

But not the UPTOWN. To make it the bartender put the ingredients listed above into a cocktail shaker, added ice, shook and strained it into a martini glass. When he asked if I wanted a lime garnish, I said “of course!” (Never turn down a garnish.)

The bartender’s cocktail — and singing — were a hit with me. Hubby took a sip and declared it a “feminine drink,” before going back to his “manly” sidebar cocktail, and our friend Richard said it tasted like JD and lemonade. I thought the combination of pomegranate and orange were fantastic. As expected, it was strong, but the cold martini glass seemed to meld with my hand and all was good.

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Cocktail Connie

BANANA DAIQUIRI

BANANA DAIQUIRI

1 ½ ounce rum

1 ounce lime juice

1 ounce créme de banana

Tablespoon triple sec

Teaspoon sugar or simple syrup

Small banana

Ice

Happy Birthday to the original second banana Vivian Vance! She’s most famous for playing Ethel Mertz on the classic I Love Lucy show in the 1950s. Surprisingly, I know a lot about Viv. I’m working on a non-fiction book tentatively titled, Difficult Child, Successful Adult. It’s about people who were very difficult and got into a lot of trouble during their childhood years, but grew up to be wildly successful. It’s a comfort book for parents whose children are driving them crazy.

Vivian Vance fit the criteria for my book and it wasn’t easy to find girls to include. Her stubbornness and rebelliousness drove her religious parents mad, but it was that same determination that resulted in a career that spanned 10 Broadway plays, 20 television shows and five movies. Viv also had a big heart and was one of the first celebrities to speak out about mental illness. More on her later. First — the cocktail.

I chose a BANANA DAIQUIRI because, even though Viv was use to being the star, she played second banana off Lucille Ball to perfection. Plus I love bananas. To make the BANANA DAIQUIRI, I put everything in the list above into a blender. I used coconut rum instead of regular rum, which I think improved the cocktail, and about two handfuls of ice to make one large drink. And boy was the result good, especially for a banana loving girl like me! I’ve always thought strawberry was my favorite flavor of daiquiri, but that has now been officially changed to banana. The one I made was like a slice of heaven. The banana flavor was “subtle” tropical, not “in your face” tropical like pineapple. The BANANA DAIQUIRI was smooth, creamy and delicious. I could have had several and I’m sure Viv would have loved it.

Just for kicks, following is an excerpt from my unfinished, unpublished book about Vivian Vance’s high school years in the 1920s:

Boys were another high school pastime of Viv’s that drove her mother to the brink of insanity.  She was very popular with the boys in her school and even dated boys from other towns — scandalous behavior in those days.  Old friends say she was boy crazy and went out with any boy who asked her, much to the shame of her parents and family.  Viv’s parents didn’t permit her to have dates for high school dances so, not one to passively accept constraints; she had lots of other dates.  Once when Mae (her mother) tried to stop her from going out on a date, she got a friend to put a ladder under her bedroom window so she could escape.  Her fascination with the opposite sex even lead her to vandalize school property:  Years after she became a television star, her name, along with that of her boyfriend at the time, was found carved into a desk at her high school. 

Vivian Vance (right) with Lucille Ball

Going out with any boy who asked her nearly got Viv paralyzed one crazy evening when she had traveled out of town to compete in a recital.  The recital was sponsored by the Women’s Christian Temperance Union and Viv’s mother was thrilled for a change.  Little did she know what Viv was up to the night before the competition.  That night, Viv was at the hotel when she took a drive with a college boy she had just met.  He parked the car somewhere out in the country, and took out a flask and a bottle of near-beer.  He poured some of the beer out, topped it off with the stuff in the flask, then turned the can upside down for a minute to make a “shot-beer.”  After drinking several shots, Viv couldn’t feel her lips.  Then she couldn’t see!  She somehow made it back to her hotel room and her friends nursed her through the night.  She was hard-headed enough to still give her recital at the competition the next day, though she was wobbly.  She even won — making her mother very proud.  Viv later learned that she had drank embalming fluid and barely missed being paralyzed for life!

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Cocktail Connie

GRAND HOTEL

The bee liked it!

GRAND HOTEL
1 ½ measure Grand Marnier
1 ½ measure gin
½ measure dry vermouth
Dash lemon juice

Just as every type of cookie has a martini, every classy hotel has a signature cocktail. There are many Grand Hotels in the U.S. There are Grand Hotels in Mackinac Island, Michigan, Ocean City, Maryland, and Sunnyvale, California, just to name a few. But the GRAND HOTEL cocktail is named after the Savoy Hotel in London, England. It was often referred to as the Grand Hotel in the 1920s when this unique cocktail was invented.

To make the GRAND HOTEL cocktail, put the ingredients above into a cocktail shaker, add ice, shake and strain into a short cocktail glass. Ice is optional, but garnish with a lemon slice if you have one, squeezing in a bit of the juice first.

My first sip of the GRAND HOTEL made my lips pucker and my head shake. It was very strong. I would describe the taste as lemon and orange and woo woo! Thank goodness for the lovely flavor of the Grand Marnier or I don’t think I would have given this cocktail the time it needed to get better. Though the recipe doesn’t call for ice, the GRAND HOTEL definitely got an upgrade with the addition of lots of ice and a melt. The watered-down version of this cocktail was more lemony with a pleasant aftertaste. A nearby bee sure liked it and kept following Hubby’s glass every time he moved it. He’ll be buzzing all night.

Drink Up^
Cocktail Connie