We'll Be Making Calendars If We're Not Careful

My first Christmas meal out with the WI was at Lola Jeans - there was only the one in Tynemouth then - and it was pretty amazing. I wrote notes about it but never published. Now, when we are celebrating the 10th birthday of our WI, I feel I should. And it would be a shame to waste the title (though it could apply to a number of our activities - did I tell you about doing burlesque - twice?).

Our then president, Danielle, had a business to do with PR or something. She was great at asking for things and getting them. We each were given a goodie bag (from Jules B) filled with stuff I now don't remember other than a Living North magazine. 

Alex, one of the managers at Lola Jeans, also a surfer from Sydney - Tynemouth is like that - was going to show us how to make cocktails. I thought he was a brave young man, holding forth in the midst of all these women aged maybe 25-65 all dressed up in 'glam'. 

His aim was to show us a 'Cosmo', a 'Mojito', an 'Expresso Martini' and an 'Apple and Elderberry martini'. I'll do my best to interpret my notes, but you might want to double check these recipes elsewhere.

Me (in reddish-black hair) with Vivien - who won the top prize of the night:
dinner for two with wine at Barn at the Biscuit, a David Kennedy restaurant.

Cosmo

First put ice in your glass while you preparing the drink.  Measure ingredients - vodka, lime juice (they peel a bunch, put them in the blender then strain the juice into a squirt bottle that looks like a ketchup dispenser with the pointy end).  Cranberry juice. 

Put all of this into a shaker - the glass half - and shake. Tip: Sometimes the glass and the metal halves of the shaker get stuck. Find the flat side where they join and strike your hand again the sides that 'smile' away from that flat side, then the shaker is magically able to be separated.

Garnish is a slices of orange peel burned with a cigarette lighter until the oil emerges and flashes (not for me, thanks), then pass the peel around the rim of the glass and drop into centre of the drink.

I can report that it was a very tangy drink and a lovely mauve-y pink. 

Mojito

Apparently this drink is part of history and literature. Ernest Hemingway fancied them at La Bodeguita del Medio in Havana as well as in Key West (his favorite drink was the daiquiri, though).

Two teaspoons white sugar.  Cover with lime juice.  Add about an inch of mint leaves.  Dark rum (Alex said it has more flavour than white), soda water - about 2 measures - to pull the mint flavour out.  Fill the rest of glass with cubed ice, then top with crushed ice.  For some reason crushed ice melts more slowly?  Tip: take a mint leaf in one palm and slap it with your other palm - to bring out the lovely minty odour.  Takes me back to my childhood, picking mint leaves from the back yard for our iced tea.  

Nice drink, mojito: minty not too sweet.

Expresso martini

I don't think I paid much attention, not being an expresso fan at all. Something to do with kalua and  a coffee bean garnish.  Not an unpleasant frothy drink with 'head' on it, but I thought a scary idea, expresso at 9pm.

Apple and elderberry martini

Apple flower garnish.  Iced glass. Vodka, apple juice, elderflower cordial.

Lovely light drink.

No, I didn't drink one of each of these. There were loads of small stirrers and straws and we each used a straw to taste the drinks being passed around.

I did have one whole cocktail - I'm guessing it was probably a plain ole G&T - and a sip of half a dozen others.  

I staggered home.