All The Gin Joints

To celebrate the release of Michael Turback's latest book, All the Gin Joints: New Spins on Gin from America's Best Bars, Felicia's Atomic Lounge is holding a book release party on Wednesday, November 2, from 7pm-8:30pm. The two local cocktails featured in the book with both be featured *live* at the party: The Gin-Gin by Leah Houghtaling of Felicia's Atomic Lounge (gin, ginger-lemongrass syrup, champagne) and The Communist by Eric Trichon at Mercato Bar and Kitchen (gin, Cherry Heering, fresh-squeezed juice). Copies of the book with be available for sale during the event, and Michael Turback will be on hand to sign books and informally discuss his latest endeavor, over cocktails, of course.

And you're a lucky duck, because it's also Locavore Wednesday, which happens in the middle of every week. $1 off all seasonal locavore cocktails (like our Hot Spiked Cider made with cider from Kingtown Orchards in Trumansburg, and the Beet Bubbly made with beets grown at Stick and Stone Farm, only a few miles from the Lounge) and $1 off all New York State beers.

If you can't make it to the party, copies of All the Gin Joints are also available locally at Buffalo Street Books.

Buy local, drink local.

Flight of the Concord

This month's Mixology Monday topic, hosted by Alcohol Alchemy, is Local Color. Usually I'm anal retentive about following the Mixology Monday instructions each month, so I made sure our cocktail used local ingredients, and it sure is colorful.

Except after Leah created the drink and took an awesome photo, I realized my rebel side once again shoved my straight-and-narrow side off a speeding train. I did not start with a local craft spirit as instructed. Oops.

I haven't always been this impulsive, really. Okay, maybe I have, but I'm still firmly in denial, so I'll blame Leah.

Here's the story: We belong to a most excellent local fruit CSA this year (after swearing off vegetables when the veggie CSA forced one too many parsnips upon us). In this week's basket, we received peaches, plums, pears, apples, and concord grapes.

Grapes. Yum. But they're kind of tart, and the skins get stuck in your teeth, and they have annoying seeds. No way I was going to labor to take all the seeds out and make a pie, appealing as the end result might be.

Then in came Leah. And out came the ball jar. In went the grapes and gin. Out came the muddler.

Minutes passed: The gin turned a peaceful lavender. Hours later: A ball jar full of deep bruised purple. The next day: The Concordian took flight.

[In retrospect, obviously I'd use a local gin to follow the Mixology Monday rules. The most popular gin made in the Finger Lakes region of New York (maybe the only gin? i've yet to hear of another) is Finger Lakes Distilling's Seneca Drums Gin. I've written about their gin before, in both cocktail form and via a general review. And we've showcased their cherry liqueur, which hands down is our favorite FLD product at the Lounge. You can read more about Finger Lakes Distilling HERE.]

The Concordian

1 1/2 ounces concord grape-infused gin*

tonic

lime wedge

Fill a rocks glass with ice. Add grape-infused gin. Top with tonic. Garnish with a lime.

*Concord grape-infused gin:

1 lb Finger Lakes concord grapes

32 ounces gin

Muddle and let sit for 24 hours. Strain.

Bitter About Flowers

Welcome to Mixology Monday! Okay, you caught me. Today is actually Tuesday. I waited until the eleventh hour to write my post, and then company showed up and we drank a bottle of 2009 Cotes Du Rhone instead. As a result, my writing skills rapidly deteriorated into giggles and yawns. Hazelnut coffee in hand, I begin my belated post a day late and a bottle of wine lighter.

Hosted by Dave at The Barman Cometh, this month's Mxmo topic is floral cocktails. Rhubarb is NOT a flower, so despite the fact that I just picked fifteen pounds of it and will start shaking up Rhubarb Martinis at the Lounge tonight, rhubarb is not what I am going to write about.

I am also not going to write about violets, though I spent an hour picking them yesterday. They are destined to become violet syrup, and eventually a blueish cocktail of some sort.

And I'm not writing about the exploding purple lilacs in my yard. Stunning and tasty as they are, for now I'm simply going to snort them, and maybe float a few in a drink as garnish.

Instead, the topic of my post is lavender bitters. Leah started making her own bitters a few summers ago: orange bitters, coffee bitters, lavender bitters and soon: rhubarb bitters. Usually I don't like lavender in my beverages because I feel like I'm drinking massage oil or lotion, but the lavender scent dances gracefully with the already floral essence of gin, turning an everyday drink into a culinary delicacy.

When it comes to the commercial stuff, I'm bitter about bitters: There is absolutely no reason to include the artificial and potentially harmful caramel color (Peychaud's, Fee Brothers, Angostura), Red #40 (Peychaud's, Fee Brothers), or Yellow #6 (Fee Brothers). And bitters that are chemically produced in a factory down the street from you are NOT "locavore." You drive me crazy when you buy a bottle of mass-produced bitters from the Super Walmart and proclaim them "locavore." You want locavore? I'll give you locavore upside your head. Bring it on.

As soon as we mow the lawn, plant mint, stack the wood, fix the windows, replace the ice machine, build new porch benches, install stair lighting, repair the brick steps, and clean out the gutters, we're going to start bottling our own bitters. Get ready: we're bitter and we can make it better.

In the meantime, you can dream about this lavender gin and tonic, but if you want to taste it, you'll have to come to Felicia's:

Lavender Gin and Tonic

1.5 ounces gin

2 dashes of lavender bitters

tonic

Fill a rocks glass with ice. Add gin and bitters. Top with tonic. I know, you don't have our lavender bitters - yet. Bookmark this page, drop by to stack some wood, and give us a few months.

Save the date! Rapture Party 5/21/11 from 6pm-close at Felicia's Atomic Lounge. I'll be live twittering the rapture, too. Follow me on twitter at @ameliasauter

Mixology Monday: Tomato Zinger

I am so excited that it is Spring. Please reassure me it's not going to snow again so I don't impulsively buy a plane ticket to Cancun where I can suck in tropical sun and tropical cocktails until I explode into a million droplets of warm joy.

Because Felicia's likes to use raw materials in our cocktails, Spring is a critical time of year for us and for our favorite farmers at Tree Gate Farm. This weekend, I cut back the mint and oregano, and planted a bunch of rhubarb roots to meet your unquenchable demand for Rhubarb Martinis. We transformed over 20 lbs of rhubarb from Tree Gate into martinis last May! I'm feeling piggish as I reminisce, and must confess to you that I found a pound of last summer's rhubarb in the freezer yesterday and cooked it with some sugar, then proceeded to eat it all right out of the pot. Forgive me. I'm sorry I didn't share. (Okay, I'm not sorry. If I found another pound right now, I still wouldn't share it. Seriously, Rhubarb and I are monogamous.)

As we dive face-first into Spring, Mixology Monday this month is hosted by Spirited Remix. Chris asked everyone to post about their all-time most amazing cocktail creation, and later this week he will put all of those cocktails on his website so head over there to check it out.

I'll be honest with you, I'm not a great cocktail maker. When it comes to our fresh philosophy, Leah is the one who you'll find in the kitchen making something unusual with coriander syrup or cucumbers or whole vanilla beans or fresh horseradish or wild ramps or lovage from a neighbor's garden. I'm more tame in the cocktail creativity category, and content to be her taste-tester.

But a couple of summers ago, I actually created one drink that I fell truly, madly, and drunkenly in love with: the Tomato Zinger. Since it requires fresh-picked cherry tomatoes, I tend to forget about it in the winter. Last week, however, Leah and I taught a cocktail class at Tompkins Cortland Community College and played a version of Chopped that we called Shaken. We asked the students to create cocktails using three required ingredients: cherry tomatoes, rosemary, and limes. All the resulting drinks were delicious, but I was left pining for summer and for another hot affair with the Tomato Zinger.

Don't tell Rhubarb I'm cheating on her.

Felicia's Tomato Zinger

5 small Sweet 100 cherry tomatoes
pinch of sea salt
1/2 ounce lemon juice
1/2 ounce honey syrup (equal parts honey and water)
1 3/4 ounces gin

Muddle four cherry tomatoes, sea salt, honey syrup and lemon juice. Add gin and shake with ice. Strain into a chilled martini glass and garnish with the remaining cherry tomato.

Mixology Monday: Gin Sangaree

This month's Mixology Monday was a little tricky: write about a Forgotten Cocktail. Hey, wait a darn minute, Rock & Rye wiseguy. If I've forgotten a cocktail, how can I write about it? And frankly, since my brain turned 40 (which actually happened when the rest of my body turned 35), I can't even remember how to make a Sex on the Beach. Which is probably good, because those kinda suck.

Mr. Boston Deluxe Official Bartender's Guide, 1974 edition to the rescue. Because I have an aversion to books that smell like wet basements, I don't have any old cocktail books in the house except this one, which belonged to my parents and is complete with their hand-written recipe notes on the inside front and back covers.

To find a "forgotten cocktail," the re-publication of which might change the world of modern spirits forever and provide me with fame and excessive wealth, I paged through the guide. It appears that there are only eight unique recipes in the entire book of 1000+ drinks, all of which contain one or more of the following ingredients in slightly differing ratios: Mr. Boston's brandy, apricot brandy, triple sec, vermouth, scotch, gin, grenadine and lime. And many of which deserve to remain forgotten.

I found one cocktail that I had not previously heard of that included an interesting non-Mr. Boston ingredient: The Gin Sangaree.

You know my distaste for history, so I'm sure you'll appreciate the huge 45-second effort I spent researching sangaree on the internet. Sangaree comes from the latin word for blood and refers to the inclusion of port wine in the cocktail.

With the holidays approaching, this cocktail choice serves up a hint of festive, with a shy dash of nutmeg weaving together the flavors of the port and gin. Because the Gin Sangaree is light, you can savor it before dinner as the port and nutmeg stimulate your appetite. Because it's slightly sweet, it is also effective as a post-dinner sipper.

But is it memorable? Well, I remember liking it last night. Ask me again in six months and we'll see.

Gin Sangaree

2 ounces Gin
1 tablespoon port wine
1/2 teaspoon powdered sugar
1 teaspoon water
club soda
nutmeg

Dissolve sugar in water by stirring, and add gin. Pour into highball glass filled with ice. Top with club soda, and float port wine on the top.

Authors note: F*ck floating the port. I can never make sh*t float. Which is probably my fault, but I'll tell you what, that port looked to me like it weighed as much as a f*cking rock compared to the soda-gin-sugar which was half-comprised of carbonated weightless air bubbles. And if you can float the port, I hate you. I'll bet you can light lemon zest on fire, too. Showoff.

For a roundup of the "Forgotten Cocktails" posted on renowned cocktail blogs all over the world today in celebration of Mixology Monday, visit Rock & Rye.

Battle of the Tonics

As bartenders, we often get the question, "Does the brand of tonic water matter?" That depends. Are you a fussy bitch?

I would never go into a person’s house or a bar and snub my nose at generic tonic water. I grew up with Schweppes and Canada Dry, and they taste just fine to me. I’m not implying that I was drinking gin and tonics as a child; I’m saying that when I was 21 years old, I wasn’t spending $6.69 plus a 30-cent bottle deposit on a four-pack of 12 ounce Q Tonic when a liter of Polar tonic water costs only $.89.

You get what you pay for. When you buy fancier tonics, you can revel in the fact that you are drinking hand-picked quinine, whatever that means, and no high fructose corn syrup.

That said, Leah and I did a tonic taste-test for all of you fussy bitches out there, making gin-and-tonics with the best gin we had in the house: Hendrick’s. Here’s our report:

Schweppes: So sweet and smooth, you could almost drink it without gin. Almost.

Polar: Sweet, but metallic and thinner compared to Schweppes.

Q: A hint of lemon, kind of like 7UP, with a bitter finish. Sweetened with agave syrup.

Stirrings: Lighter and cleaner. A hint of lemon rind, and also a bitter finish. Contains cane sugar.

Fever-Tree: Less lemon, not too sweet, allowing the gin’s unique personality to shine through. Cane sugar.

Our conclusion? If you are going to drink cheap booze, stick with cheap tonic. For high shelf booze, try Q or Stirrings to bring out the best in your liquor, or our favorite because it was less lemon-y, Fever-Tree. Try your own taste-test and see what you think. For the record, we found Fever-Tree at Wegmans, the Vatican of grocery stores.

New Amsterdam Gin

About a year ago, the booze marketers found us, which meant we found lots of booze on our doorstep. When the FTC law passed last fall commanding that bloggers disclose freebies, the liquid gifts stopped.

Bring it on, booze handlers. I was already telling everyone that you sent me free booze anyway because I thought I'd seem cooler to potential new friends. Besides, drunk though I may be, I'm always polite. No negative reviews on this blog; I only review products that we like. If your product is monstrously crappy, mum's the word.

That said, when New Amsterdam gin magically showed up on our porch after a dry spring and summer, we were pleased.

For the price, New Amsterdam gin is awesome. To our palates, it is smoother than Beefeater, Tanqueray and Bombay. And it's only $17 for a one-liter bottle. Heck, we can buy that with the nickels and dimes we saved up in our great horned owl bank. (It's a decoy AND a bank. Who knew? Not even the people who sold it to us).

If you've got the money for a bottle of Hendricks gin and you're trying to get laid, for god's sake buy the Hendricks. Otherwise, I'd suggest you give New Amsterdam a try.

Verjuice in a Cocktail

What the hell is verjuice and what is it doing in my fridge? Well, cocktail snobs, you should know the answer already so run away with your tail between your legs. Everyone else, here's an explanation on this increasingly popular liquid used in gastronomical arts.

If you put verjuice (or verjus) in a glass and took a swig, you'd spit it out all over your nice clean white shirt and the kitchen floor. (You should know better than to wear white in the kitchen.) Verjuice is a non-alcoholic juice pressed from unripe grapes. It is best described as sour or acidic, and most commonly is used in place of vinegar or cooking wine.

We recently got our hands on a bottle of local verjuice, called Verjooz, made by Sawmill Creek Vineyards and Red Newt Winery. The flavor and mouthfeel remind me of a seriously tart picked-way-too-early apple.

On the web, there's a few cocktail recipes containing verjuice, including a video of this slick guy who accentuates the French pronunciation (ver-JOO) and shakes his cocktail shaker one-handed. Ooooo, I'm so impressed. In general, verjuice seems to be used in drinks when you want a touch of sour.

Leah and I brought some Verjooz to the Lounge and asked Lil' Claire if she could pair it with Finger Lakes Distilling's Seneca Drums gin. She came up with a cocktail that we're calling the Tropical Locavore Gin and Tonic (until someone comes up with a better name - suggestions?). Lychee juice combined with the apple-ish flavor of Verjooz complements the subtle earthy notes of Seneca Drums gin.

Now if we could just grow lychees in the Finger Lakes...

Tropical Locavore Gin and Tonic

1 and 1/2 ounces of Seneca Drums gin
3/4 ounce lychee juice (OR sub 1/2 ounce St. Germaine elderflower liqueur)
1/4 ounce of Verjooz
tonic water

Fill a rocks glass with ice and add gin, lychee and Verjooz. Top with tonic water.

Editor's note 3/9/10: We've been taste-testing at the Lounge, and we're definitely favoring the St. Germaine over the lychee juice.

Click here to find out where you can buy Verjooz and to find recipes for cooking with verjuice.

The Vesper

I love the name Vesper. It sounds like a superhero. The Vesper. Or even better, the Green Vesper, though superior in name only, since the green one is made with absinthe which tastes like black licorice jellybeans. Bleh.

Last weekend, Leah and I met my parents for dinner at the Hotel Clarence in Seneca Falls, NY. We checked out my parents' room, and ooo-wee, tres chic design. A hotel room even a gay man would love.

Dinner was lovely, too, but I'm going to focus on the cocktails, or I should say, cocktail. Both Leah and I ordered a Vesper, I'm embarrassed to admit, for the first time ever.

After our rave reviews, one of our own superheroes behind the bar, Super Guy, concocted a Vesper using a ratio pleasing to Felicia's palate.

I'm going to name my first born, "Vesper."

The Vesper

1 and 1/4 ounce Stolichnaya vodka
1 and 1/4 ounce Bombay Dry gin
3/4 ounce Lillet Blanc

Stir, don't shake, all ingredients with ice. Garnish with a lemon twist.

Mixology Monday: Anti-Vermouth

This month's Mixology Monday, hosted by Cocktailians, challenges us to post a tasty vermouth cocktail recipe. Vidiot says we can use any aromatic, fortified wine. So being the rebel she is, Leah created a cocktail, um, without vermouth.

Since Leah is in the midst of a three-week root canal with complications, she gets to be a beast and not follow the rules. You've got a "Get Out of Jail Free" card, I tell her. I don't argue with a woman who has a wild look in her eye, who is pacing the hallway like a panther, and who says it feels like someone is splitting her jaw open with a hacksaw. Vicoden is child's play, she tells me, downing a shot of whiskey and popping open a bottle of Brute. That's right, Brute with an "e."

We became acquainted with Ithaca Beer's Brute last week at a lovely beer-tasting dinner at Cornell hosted by Hotel School students and Ithaca Beer's brilliant master distiller, Jeff O'Neil. The Brute proved to be the life of the party: a citrusy sour ale the color of champagne, served in a flute, and paired with some biting cheese.

Okay, it's not even close to fortified wine, but Brute IS brewed with champagne yeast. And with a bouquet reminiscent of a barnyard, Brute certainly could be deemed "aromatic." One taste, and Leah decided Brute would make a great vermouth substitute.

The result? You can call it an Ithaca Negroni. I call it a Brutoni. Leah calls it a Bitchtooth: equal parts gin (we used Plymouth), Campari and Brute. The sour and bitter and gin blend together perfectly, and the cocktail has a tad of sparkle to it, not unlike a Sparkling Negroni that I saw on Rachel Ray's website a few minutes ago. It was an accident. I really don't hang out on Rachel Ray's site. Unless I need to find a good thirty minute meal. Leah says stop talking about Rachel Ray.

Not in Ithaca? You lose. Brute is a beer that goes beyond beer and into the realm of the extraordinary. Get yourself to the Ithaca Beer brewery to try some, or have a friend send you some. Either is a worthwhile endeavor.

Ithaca Negroni

1 ounce Plymouth gin
1 ounce Campari
1 ounce Ithaca Beer's Brute

Stir with ice. Strain into a chilled cocktail glass.

Review: Finger Lakes Distilling

First - get it on you calendar - Felicia's is hosting a tasting of Finger Lakes Distilling's products at the Lounge this Thursday, September 10, 2009 from 7pm-8:30pm. Prez Brian McKenzie will be there to pour the goods, and you get to meet the Master Distiller, Thomas McKenzie, who is an entertaining, story-filled deep south Alabaman with the accent to prove it.

Now let's talk booze.

Here's what we're carrying at Felicia's and some of our thoughts about tasting and mixing with Finger Lakes Distilling liquors:Vintner's Vodka - The cool thing about this vodka is that it's made from local grapes. What you'll notice when you taste it is that it is fruity and floral, almost but not quite sweet, making it great for a martini with a twist of lemon or if you're a wussy, you might like it with cranberry juice. Olive juice with this vodka is a no-no.Seneca Drums Gin - The gin has been a big seller at the Lounge. Also made from grapes, it has a bunch of subtle herbal notes that shine through any mixer. We like it with tonic, lavender lemonade, in a mojito (in place of the rum, silly, not in addition to it) or as a stand-alone sipper.Glen Thunder Corn Whiskey - Drink it as a shot. Try it in an old fashioned. Or be like Felicia and substitute it for cachaca in a caipirinha. Earthy and potent, this hooch tastes like Hector would taste if a backwoods town could turn into a liquor.Vintner's Wild Berry Vodka - Tastes like exactly what it is: vodka mashed up with local blueberries, strawberries and raspberries. Also rocks out with lavender lemonade, plus we like it in a cosmopolitan.
Felicia's is also carrying Finger Lakes Distilling's liqueurs: blueberry, raspberry, cassis and maplejack. My personal favorite, berry whore that I am, is the raspberry. I could drink it straight.Hector has long been known as the land of making hooch, and this time it's legal. Finger Lakes Distilling has gotten some great press, not only because it's unique to have liquor on the wine trail, but because they got some good hooch going on over there. Hope to see you Thursday, and if you can't make it, you'll just have to visit the distillery yourself.

Fourth of July Cocktails

This blog post is almost stupidly late, since it's Fourth of July already, and who sits inside at the computer and reads blogs on July 4th? Oh, that would be me.

My pal Ellen at Deussen Global Communications contacted me a few weeks ago and said, "Oh, Felicia, you are my hero. If you post some of my cocktail recipes on your blog, I will love you forever, ship you free samples of every booze imaginable and send you naked pictures of me wearing nothing but a Felicia knit cap."

OK, the conversation wasn't exactly like that, but the recipes look pretty darn good so here are a few:

The American Collins

1 ½ oz. Bombay Sapphire
¾ oz. Simple Syrup
½ oz. Fresh Lemon Juice
4 Bing Cherries, pitted
8 Blueberries

In a Collins glass, muddle the blueberries and cherries in the lemon juice and simple syrup.
Add Sapphire and ice and stir briefly. Top with club soda. Garnish with a bing cherry and a lemon wheel.

Firecracker

3 ounces Flor de Caña 7 Year Grand Reserve Rum (we don't have this at the lounge. in fact, i've never even tried it. but if i got an email about it, it must be good, right?... right?)
1 ounce Triple Sec
1 ounce fresh lime juice
1 ounce simple syrup (boil and cool equal parts water and sugar)
4 watermelon chunks
½ teaspoon cayenne pepper

Whirl all ingredients together and pour into a glass. Garnish with a lime wheel. Oops! The blender is broken. I swear it's true.

Stars and Stripes

1/4oz Lucid Absinthe
1 oz Blueberry Vodka
1/4oz Simple Syrup
Splash of Lemon Juice
Drizzle of Raspberry Liqueur
Gingerbeer
Fresh Blueberries

Muddle fresh blueberries and add syrup, Lucid juice and vodka.
Add ice and shake and pour into highball glass. Drizzle Liqueur and top with Ginger Beer. Garnish with one sugar cube.

Disclaimer: I have actually not had time to try any of these yet since I have been too busy making our latest snack at the lounge, BLT Paninis. If you want one of these drinks, print out the recipe and bring it with you in case you get to the lounge tonight before I do. And bring your own berries cause I'm sure as hell not going berry picking any time soon.

God Bless America, and God Bless Bacon.

xo
Felicia

Watermelon Radish Martini

Make up a drink, any drink. Just have it be something you wouldn’t usually make. These were the instructions from A Mixed Dram, the host of this month’s Mixology Monday, Do you know how hard it is to think up something that you wouldn’t normally think up? For inspiration, we turned, as we often do, to our refrigerator.

Belonging to a winter CSA means we end up with a fridge full of winter produce and no idea what to do with it. Maybe we’re a little lazy. Ok, we are lazy. I can only eat so many raw carrots and mashed turnips. Staring out of the fridge today was this turnip:

That picture reminds me of something. Can’t quite put my finger on it, but it is giving me goosebumps nonetheless.

Behind the voluptuous hairy turnip, I found a watermelon radish. We decided it would make both a delicious and gorgeous garnish. These are great big greenish-skinned radishes with fusicia rings on the inside. The flavor is like a sweet, mild radish, minus the hot burning sensation.

Somehow, Leah managed to get capers into our drink recipe, the flower buds of a Mediterranean plant. I think it was because we did not have any vermouth in the home-house during the cocktail photo shoot (though of course we have it in the bar-house). The final product: A crisp gin martini with the floral hint of capers, garnished with one of the most beautiful and colorful vegetables on the earth.

Um, oh yeah, how this fits in with Mixology Monday's "new horizons" theme: Well, garnishes are often an afterthought for us. We are so focused on the drink itself that our garnishes tend toward fairly simple. I can also say with conviction that this is the first time we have made a cocktail with either watermelon radishes or capers. Even if you don't try the drink, seek out a watermelon radish to munch on. Why these snappy veggies are not available at the corner grocery store is a mystery to me.

Rad Martini

2 1/2 ounces of Bombay Dry or Plymouth gin
1/8 ounce juice from a jar of capers
watermelon radish slice

Stir gin and caper juice in a shaker with ice. Strain into chilled martini glass. Garnish with radish.

The Baracktail

The Baracktail

1 1/2 ounces of Bombay Dry gin
1/4 ounce sweetened lime juice
two dashes of Angostura Bitters
tonic
pineapple juice
lime wheel

Fill a double rocks glass with ice. Add gin, sweet lime and bitters. Top with half tonic, half pineapple juice. Garnish with lime wheel. Celebrate. Yes you can.

Yes We Can

Felicia would like to personally congratulate our next president, Senator Barack Obama! Come celebrate with us on Wednesday, November 5th and drink the newest Felicia creation, the Baracktail. Yes we can!

Felicia's Tomato Zinger

At this point in the harvest season, you may have grown tired of eating cherry tomatoes. But have you tried them in a cocktail yet? Felicia’s Tomato Zinger is a version of the Sungold Zinger, initially designed by Carlos Yturria at a San Francisco bar called Range. Felicia used Sweet 100 cherry tomatoes from her dad’s garden and Oregon Growers and Shippers Wildflower Honey purchased at Ithaca Coffee Company. The result was a pale orange, half tangy-half sweet martini. One sip and Felicia was smitten, just like her San Francisco blogging pals at Married With Dinner. It is hard to pick out the individual flavors of the tomatoes, honey, lemon juice or gin. Rather the drink takes on a unique - and incredible - flavor that is all its own. If you make only one of Felicia’s cocktail concoctions at home, the Tomato Zinger should be the one that you try. At least for this week.

If you order one of these at the lounge this week, Felicia happens to be using Sungold tomatoes. Everyone who has tasted the cocktail so far has exclaimed with pleasant surprise, "Oh my god! This is great. " People are now ordering this drink by its new nickname, "I'd like another 'OMG', please."

Felicia's Tomato Zinger

5 small Sweet 100 cherry tomatoes
pinch of sea salt
1/2 ounce lemon juice
1/2 ounce honey syrup (equal parts honey and water)
1 3/4 ounces gin

Muddle four cherry tomatoes, sea salt, honey syrup and lemon juice. Add gin and shake with ice. Strain into a chilled martini glass and garnish with the remaining cherry tomato. Note: if you use Sungold tomatoes instead of Sweet 100s, Felicia recommends 3/4 ounce of honey syrup.

Martini Frigidaira

What is Felicia’s favorite way to enjoy a martini, you ask? Felicia likes top shelf vodka or gin with a splash of olive juice and a couple of big, fat stuffed olive frigidairas. Olive frigidairas is Felicia’s term for olives stuffed with whatever cheese, nuts, meat, etc. that you happen to find in your fridge. Today Felicia is garnishing her martini with an olive stuffed with bleu cheese and sliced turkey.

The Party Dress

First, it must be explained that as the sun goes down and night falls, when Felicia lays her head on the pillow and drifts off to dreamland, she has some very, very strange dreams. Last night, Felicia dreamt she was hosting a lively cocktail party where she concocted an incredible drink made with gin, cucumbers and orange juice. The cucumber-orange elixir then turned into a tangerine-colored frilly party dress adorned with pale green ribbons. The guests loved the cocktail, and Felicia’s new fancy dress was the envy of everyone at the party.

Upon waking, Felicia described the bewitched drink to friends who scoffed, telling her the dream was weird and the ingredients in the drink even weirder. Still enchanted by her lingering dream-state, Felicia began to obsessively experiment to recreate the magical cocktail and prove to her friends that dreams really do come true. And she succeeded: this cocktail, strange though it may sound, tastes exquisite, and, well, dreamy…

The Party Dress

1 ½ ounce gin
1 ½ ounce orange juice
½ ounce soda water
½ ounce cucumber puree (peel before pureeing)
cucumber slice

Fill shaker with ice. Add gin, orange juice and cucumber puree. Swirl mixture in shaker until outside of shaker gets frosty. Strain into martini glass. Top with soda water. Garnish with cucumber slice. Allow magical things to happen.

Gimlet

Felicia recently found herself sitting at her kitchen table surrounded by Christmas cookies, egg nog, figgy pudding, fruit cakes and other such rich, calorie-laden temptations. However, her own craving was for something tart and tangy, so she pulled the gin out of the freezer to fix herself a gimlet. In the late 1800’s, the gimlet was created by some smart chap in the British Royal Navy, around the time that sailors were mandated to drink lime juice daily to prevent scurvy. Some say that a navy surgeon, Sir Thomas Desmond Gimlette, persuaded the sailors too drink their lime juice by mixing it with gin. Others think the drink is named for the corkscrew-like device called a gimlet which was used to bore holes in the lime juice barrels. Whatever the exact origin, the gimlet is a simple, crisp and potent drink with a touch of sweetness that will leave your taste buds and your spirits tingling.

Gimlet

2 ounces Plymouth gin
¼ ounce Roses lime juice

Pour gin and lime juice into a shaker with ice. Stir, don’t shake, the concoction. Strain into a chilled martini glass and sip blissfully, daydreaming of riding the waves in the high seas on a sunny day, scurvy-free.

Felicia's Favorite Gin and Soda

Say, what is that drink in JackiO’s hand in the photo below? It makes her look so cool, so sexy, like a girl who knows what she wants and how to get it. Oh, Felicia loves that JackiO. And Felicia loves her gin, just like JackiO. Two peas in a pod. Two lushes in a lounge. To maintain her girlish figure, Felicia likes her gin with club soda instead of tonic. And she goes straight for the top shelf, pulling down her bottle of Hendrick’s gin, which is made with a delicate infusion of cucumber and rose petals. Blissful sigh.

Felicia’s Favorite Gin and Soda

1 ½ ounces Hendricks gin
1 ½ ounces club soda
two lime wedges

Pour gin and soda into a rocks glass filled with ice. Squeeze in two lime wedges. Indulge.