Hot Summer Drankin'

It's been a hot Labor Day Weekend on the Peninsula and there's no A/C in my old school townhouse apartment. The only way to cool myself down last night was to dump glasses of Roca Patron over ice and drink them down until I no longer knew how hot it actually was.

It's been lazy around here. My wife hurt her knee last week, so she can't walk; meaning we've been home-bodies in our stuffy living room, sinking into the couch as the hours continue to tick by. Yesterday evening we watched seven straight episodes of The Twilight Zone on Amazon Prime streaming while the stifling heat slowly turned the fresh berries from the farmer's market into a pool of mushy goo. There's an episode in season three with Charles Bronson and a pre-Bewitched Elizabeth Montgomery as the last two people on a post-Apocalyptic planet. Amazing!

But what to do with all this melted fruit today? Easy! It's time to drink it all up!

If you've got a well-stocked bar you'll never find yourself without an easy solution for dealing with leftovers. I broke out the bottles of rum and mezcal and started whipping up some Labor Day morning cocktails.

First I took all those mushy strawberries off the plate, threw them into the stainless steel mixer with some gum syrup and fresh-squeezed lime juice, and muddled them down into a thick liquid. Two ounces of rum, some ice, and a few shakes: BOOM! A finely-strained strawberry Daiquiri for the Mrs! 

And for me? I took some of those spicy peppers, muddled them into a glass of V8 juice, added some black pepper and Mexican Tajin spice (the secret for this recipe), the leftover lime from my wife's Daiquiri, and two ounces of mezcal from my buddy Jake's Don Amado expression. Voila! A Bloody Maria to start the day with my cold pizza still sitting on the coffee table.

Yes, folks: we really live this way each day. We don't just work at a liquor store; we live the liquor store lifestyle.

-David Driscoll