It’s Saturday. To be more exact, it’s 10:50 a.m. on a holiday weekend. But this isn’t just any long weekend, this is Memorial Day, the unofficial start of summer. Soon our sleepy New England beach community will be buzzing with weekend warriors, retirees and kids. Its been a long winter and even longer spring, so I have no doubt this year is going to be busier than most.
From the outside, our basement work space, which we affectionately call the P-Hole, as it doubles as the central nerve for all of our Pin-Up Live Pinterest chats, looks no different than any other day. The sewing machine belts out long spurts of hmmmm…hmmmm…hmmmmmmm…as Beth eyes the fabric, gently guiding it into a travel scarf that will, hopefully, see the world too. Silence from the machine gives way to music, and conversation. I sit across from her typing, typing out stories, typing out emails, and typing out status updates. In 20 minutes or so, Chachy will awake from his first nap and come down to check on us, before retiring to his next.
But, like I said earlier, this isn’t just any long weekend, and while we may looked focused to the outsider, inside we’re brimming with excitement. Being self-employed and growing two business, we never really get weekends and holidays off anymore, and that’s okay. We love what we do, and we love the freedom that comes with it. However, we’ve found that it’s important to take time for ourselves and each other, which is why tonight we’re kicking-off our first cocktail and movie night. Beth loves gin and tonics and, well, I love pretty much every libation, so we decided to have a little fun with the liquor cabinet and see what kind of creative cocktails we could come up with.
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I’d love to tell you that I looked in at the 10 or so bottles of various liquors, mixes and spirits, and my inner-mixologist took over and I came up with these four summer cocktail recipes on the spot, but that didn’t happen. Instead, I went to my Intel tablet and used Cocktail Flow, a free app from the Windows 8 store. I wrote about the app last year, naming it one of the best free apps in Microsoft’s store at the time, and I’m happy to report it is still awesome. In fact, it’s even better than before. An update brought some new design elements to the app, helping to make it even more intuitive. After adding our ingredients to the “bar stock,” Cocktail Flow pulled up this delicious selection and we narrowed it down to the four below.
Gin Daisy
Ingredients:
2 oz. gin
.5 oz. grenadine
1 oz. lemon juice
1 oz. club soda
extras: ice cubes, smashed ice and an orange for garnish.
How to prepare:
Fill up the glass with ice and shaker with crushed ice. Pour the gin, grenadine, lemon juice and soda into the shaker, and shake well. Strain your delicious libation into an old fashion glass and garnish with an orange wheel.
El Dorado
Ingredients:
3 oz. tequila
2 oz. lemon juice
1 teaspoon honey
extra: ice cubes
How to prepare:
Fill up the glass and shaker with ice. Now pour the tequila, lemon juice and honey into the shaker, and shake well. Strain into a collins glass and garnish with lemon wedge.
French 75
I discovered the French 75 on the Cocktail Flow app while researching a story about Paris cocktails for Expedia. Along the way, I discovered some history about the drink, which I thought I’d share with you.
All of the credit for the French 75 goes to Barman Harry MacElhone. He created the cocktail in 1915 at the New York Bar (now called Harry’s New York Bar) in Paris. Named after a powerful piece of French artillery, the French 75 consists of only four ingredients—gin, Champagne, lemon juice and simple syrup—but when combined properly it packs a bubbly punch of citrus and floral gin flavours.
Ingredients:
1 oz. gin
3 oz. Champagne
.5 oz. fresh lemon juice
.5 oz. simple syrup
How to prepare:
Add the lemon juice, simple syrup and gin into a shaker filled with ice. Shake well until cooled and then strain into a flute. Top with Champagne and garnish with a lemon twist.
Daiquiri
Ingredients:
2.25 oz. white rum
.75 oz. sugar syrup
1.25 oz. lime juice
extras: crushed ice and lime for garnish
How to prepare:
Fill up the shaker with ice and pour the white rum, sugar syrup and lime juice into the shaker. Shake well and strain into the cocktail glass. Garnish with a lime slice.
We love finding out about new cocktails, so if you have any delicious summer cocktail recipes that you’d like to share, then feel free to let us know about them in the comments.
*Full Disclosure: We’re part of Intel’s tablet crew, in which we share the different ways that we use a Windows 8 tablet in our daily life and for traveling. As always, our opinions are our own. **All photos copyright of Beers and Beans, except the French 75, which is courtesy of Gary J. Wood.
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