• Location: on the patio
• Music: Something's Gotta Give - Ella Fitzgerald

Put the lime in the coconut...

As some of you may or may not know, I was a bartender for several years before I graduated from college (and also after i graduated, if truth be told). I liked bartending; I had regulars and liked mixing drinks. I don't get to pull out my knowledge like I used to, even though we have a fully stocked bar in the pantry at home. I drink wine most of the time, and there's really very little art to pulling a frozen glass from the fridge and pouring a beer for Nolan. I make the occasional gin and tonic, but today, because it's Friday, and JUNE, and OHMYGOSH HOT here, I decided it was mojito time.

Close your eyes, all you Baptists and abstaining readers.

The first thing you need for a mojito is MINT. I happen to have mint growing in the backyard (not because I nurtured it or anything, only because it survived when the rest of the '08 herb garden died in the first week.

My herb garden is a sad, sad place.
Have some daylilies.


Ignore the dead stuff on either side of them.

You don't need daylilies for a mojito. I got distracted. Am drinking the finished product, so... you know...

It happens.

Anyway.

These are your cast of characters.

1 1/2 Oz. Bacardi Superior Rum
Club Soda
12 Mint Leaves
1/2 Lime
2 Tbsp. Simple Syrup or 1 Tbsp. Sugar

If you don't have mint bushes in the garden, you can certainly go to the grocery store and get some there. They sell them. *nod* It's cheaper to cut them from a bush, though.

Okay.

They don't sell rum at the grocery store. Not in Texas, anyway. So get thee to a liquor store and buy some. Club soda is easily procurable anywhere, as are limes. Simple syrup is super easy to make.


A cup of water, a cup of sugar, stir over heat 'til the sugar is dissolved, chill.

That's it. Easy, right? Maybe that's why they call it 'simple' syrup and not 'horribly complex and convoluted' syrup. Which doesn't make me want to sip at it, at all.



You put your leaves and lime in the bottom of a glass and muddle them - that's the technical term for "mash the crap out of;' it releases the juices and the flaaaaaavor and stuff.


See? All muddled.


Then you fill the glass with ice.

Add 2 oz RUM, 2 (plus) tablespoons simple syrup, and fill the rest with soda.

And then you sit on the back porch under the fan and hope for a breeze while you sip.


Enjoy!