Pumpkins, and The World's Best Lemon Drop Martini

So this past weekend, Moon and I grabbed the fam and headed out with some friends of ours to Berry Patch Farms in Woodstock, GA for a bit of pumpkiny fall fun. Berry Patch is a great, family-friendly place with a playground area, hay rides, a pumpkin patch sized perfectly for little guys, and--my son's favorite--an old tractor for kids to climb on. And did I mention its FREE? Oh, yeah.

Here's a few snaps of the fun:

So what with hayrides and tractors and pumpkins and a picnic under a huge old oak tree, we were full up on autumn cheer, and I got so reckless as to volunteer to make s'mores out on our patio one night--the fire from the grill being as close as I could manage to a bonfire in our drought-stricken suburban neighborhood without the cops crashing our party.

But I digress...

On the way home, I was full of pumpkin-flavored good cheer, humming along with the new James Blunt CD (which is better than the critics say it is--not perfect, by any means, but quite listenable) when suddenly I was craving martinis. Not just any martinis, but the perfect Lemon Drop martini I'd had at Canoe on my anniversary. At first, I thought this was quite problematic, since dinner at Canoe costs about the same as a couple month's of my son's preschool tuition--worth every penny, believe me, but still not the sort of place you drop in on every time you get a martini craving unless your last name is Trump.

But fall is my favorite season, for many reasons, so I was full of the dreams of possibilities that come to me in autumn. Maybe there was even a little hubris left over from my rash s'mores-making promises. Either way, I thought to myself I will create that martini myself. I shared my idea with Moon. He agreed, as long as I figured out how to make a decent vodka martini in the process.

"Very dry, and not a dirty martini--the olive juice is just too much," he said.

So when we got home, I hit the Internet and started researching Lemon Drops and martinis in general. The martini has a dubious past, with everyone and no one taking credit for the drink, and its origins were quite different than its current incarnation. One of the earliest drinks claiming paternity of the martini is the Martinez, created in the 1800s, and swirling together the slightly odd mixture of bitters, maraschino juice, sweet vermouth and gin, and garnished with a slice of lemon. My 1950s-vintage Joy of Cooking calls for gin, a mix of sweet and dry vermouth, bitters and olives. Moon hates gin, so I was looking for vodka. One of my favorite recipes I'd ever heard for a dry vodka martini was vodka with a whisper of vermouth--you whisper the word "vermouth" over the drink just before you serve what is, essentially a martini glass of vodka. I decided to work with that, and indulge my husband's martini-drinking, James Bond fantasy. Shaken, not stirred.

After a trip to the mega-huge liquor store near me, I came home with a bottle of Cirac vodka (Moon's choice--a French vodka made from grapes and distilled from ice chipped from an iceberg), a bottle of Three Olives Citron and a bottle of limoncello, an Italian lemon cordial that has the color and scent reminiscent of extremely happy daisies. I already had dry vermouth at home. I mixed, measured, shook and poured, and the results were spectacular. Here's the recipes:

Moon's 007 Fantasy

5 parts VERY GOOD vodka to 1 part dry vermouth. Pour over crushed ice and shake the heck out it. Pour into a martini glass and admire the teeny ice slivers floating around for a moment. Stick three olives on a cocktail toothpick (I used martini olives marinated in vermouth) and serve.

The World's Best Lemon Drop Martini

First, make some sweet and sour mix. Make it, don't buy it. The beauty of a great LD martini if the fresh taste of the lemon, so everything needs to be, well, fresh. So, mix 8 ounces of fresh-squeezed lemon juice (about 8 lemons) with 2 Tbs. superfine sugar. Stir to dissolve sugar. Juice one more lemon just for fun, and hold onto that juice in a separate cup.

Then, fill a cocktail shaker with crushed ice and pour over the ice:

1 oz. citron vodka
1 oz. limoncello
2 oz. sweet and sour mix
1 ounce lemon juice
1 tsp. superfine sugar

Shake the heck out it, and pour the resulting ambrosia into a martini glass you have rimmed with lemon juice and turbinado sugar. Grab your microplane zester and grate a bit of very fine zest over the top of the drink.

Oh, yum.

You will have enough sweet and sour mix to make about 4 drinks, which is a nice bonus for hand-squeezing a bunch of lemons. It keeps nicely in the fridge for a day or two.

There. A perfect Lemon Drop Martini, in the privacy of your own home. Enjoy responsibly. :-)

Slow Foods and the People Who Love Them...

There's an interesting grassroots foodie trend afoot called the Slow Food Movement. (You can check out the facts at Wikipedia for the quick lowdown on slow food. But then, if you're that impatient, this movement might not be for you.)


Anyway, it intrigues me, because it involves so many of the things I believe in: organic, local food, as true to its source as possible, made from scratch, preservative-free. A healthy celebration of sustainable farming practices and humane food processing. Right now, I feel like an admirer from afar, similar to a geek in love with an accomplished celebrity I cannot hope to meet because with 2 kids under 5, no nanny, no housekeeper, and no place to put a vegetable garden, let alone raise goats, I'm a little overwhelmed at the thought of starting ALL my food from scratch. I don't have time to drink 8 glasses of water a day, let alone bake my own bread. But I'm willing to follow along as best I can, and definitely think its a trend worth pursuing.


One of the best parts of the slow food movement is eating locally-produced food, and there are "Eat Local" events all across the country in September. I'd encourage you to download the "Eat Local" scorecard from the Eat Local website and see if it's possible to get your food a little more close to home. Not only is it better for the earth, but--from a strictly hedonistic standpoint, which is the best argument when dealing with gastronomes--it generally tastes far superior to generic, dumbed-down-for-masses food that has been deliberately bred to withstand long journeys from its origin at the cost of its flavor.


One great thing I've recently discovered is Sparkman's Cream Valley milk, which I get at Harry's Farmers Market in Marietta (which means pretty much any Whole Foods or Harry's Farmers Market in the greater Atlanta area will have it). It's local and tastes GREAT. I've been making special trips over to Harry's just for milk since I've discovered it. Yes, it costs more--$3.99/half-gallon where I am--but...


/start rant/

Quality costs. For lack of a better term, we have Wal-Marted ourselves into some seriously dangerous territory by demanding quantities of food at low prices--prices that, perhaps, have not realistically kept up with inflation. To get those prices, food producers have sacrificed quality for quantity, and suddenly there are tainted food scares abounding, and a desperate struggle to quash the tainted food source when it is discovered--a search made more impossible by the fact that one single food can come from so many sources it's hard to know where the food was tainted or how. While the FDA (another rant for another time, the FDA) has decided it's perfectly okay to allow growth hormones and steriods into our dairy and meat sources, it isn't okay with me. I'm always a bit leery of anyone playing God simply to make a better financial bottom line, especially when it comes to my health and my family's health. So will I pay more for food that is thoughtfully produced by people who are vested in their community and the quality of their products, for dairy and meat that is hormone-free? You betcha. And though I'm not a fan of prosletyzing, I am going out on a limb here to say you should, too. Food is so many things, but one major responsibility of food is to provide our bodies a first, natural line of defense against disease, to support the body and help it function properly. It is so important, so scrimp somewhere else, but buy good quality food.

/end rant/

So I challenge you--how local can you go?

A couple good books on the subject:

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life by Barbara Kingsolver
Plenty: One Man, One Woman, and a Raucous Year of Eating Locally by Alisa Smith & J.B. McKinnon
The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals by Michael Pollan

“Enchant, stay beautiful and graceful, but do this, eat well. Bring the same consideration to the preparation of your food as you devote to your appearance. Let your dinner be a poem, like your dress.”

~Charles Pierre Monselet

Baptist Chardonnay...

There's a great feature in the Atlanta Journal Constitution today on sweet tea. If you can, it's worth picking up a copy of the paper, because not only is there a great history of this beverage, but lots of sweet tea recipes (of course some of them have alcohol--you are in the South, y'all...) and--of particular fun for me--a wee little article on the literary history of sweet tea in the South. A yummy read all around. I would highly recommend checking out the recipe for Magnolia Grill's Sweet tea-Brined Pork Chops which looks especially yummy.

One of my personal pet peeves when it comes to iced tea is that nasty unsweetened iced tea plopped down in front of you with a little holder of sugar packets, Splenda and Sweet-n-Low. Any idiot knows that it is IMPOSSIBLE to properly dissolve sugar granules in a cold glass of tea--they all just swirl to the bottom and clump there in a sullen little heap. The result? A completely unsweetened glass of tea until you get to the last swallow, which is just a few drops of tea and a mouthful of grainy sugar. Oh, yum. Of course, on the other side of the spectrum is that proper sweet tea is served in most places in the South, but it is so sweet you can feel it candying the enamel on your teeth. There is very little difference between it and pancake syrup. Now for many Southerners, this is not a problem, but a bonus. Me, I prefer a little nuance with my sweet tea; a melding of sweet flavor and tea flavor. A balance.

One great solution I read about in the AJC article is found at Watershed in Decatur, GA--the restaurant at the very top of my "I Must Eat Here Before I Die" list. The restaurant serves their tea unsweetened, BUT they serve it alongside a chilled mini-carafe of mint-infused sugar syrup--how ingenious is that? I love that idea. I may steal it for my home parties.

Meanwhile, here's my recipe for sweet tea. It's evolved over the years from my original version of sweet tea, which I learned from my East Coast mother. That version involved a gallon of water, 4 regular-sized tea bags and 1/4 cup of sugar. The result was somewhat reminiscent of barely sweet dishwater. My Georgia-born-and-bred husband was NOT amused. To save our then-brand-new marriage, I quickly learned a proper version of sweet tea that please most palates--at least Southern palates, anyway:

Fill a pot with 3-4 cups of water and bring to a boil. Add 5 family-sized Luzianne brand tea bags (you can use other brands, but Luzianne really is the best.) At the same time, dump in 1 cup of granulated sugar, and stir it around a little bit to get the brewing started and dissolve the sugar. Let it sit for a good long while--about the amount of time it takes to feed, clean up, change and corral 2 children under three into their beds for a nap--maybe a little less if your children are true hellions. Pour the resulting strong, sweet tea syrup into a 3-4 quart pitcher and fill it up the rest of the way with cold water (add a bit of ice if you need to speed the chilling process to have it ready by dinner). Chill until there is a filmy layer of condensation glistening on your pitcher. Serve over ice--straight for many Southerners, but I prefer a good splash of fresh-squeezed lemon juice in mine.

And there you have it. Drink up, y'all.

Friday Night Dinner a la Kids

So it's Friday, and dinner is now done. Kids are in bed (sorta--at least they're in their rooms, which is something), and the kitchen is once again clean. Tonight it was a whim dinner, one of those nights when I run over to the Kroger supermarket that is practically in my backyard--not especially super, really, in fact it's pretty generic...but it is a market, and it is in my backyard. So after scanning the aisles, I felt a craving come upon me for fish...no, shellfish. No, crab cakes. Yeah, crab cakes. So--no just-off-the-boat fresh crabmeat to be had at generic Kroger, I settled for one of those tiny tin buckets-o-crab, the one labeled "special", one down from the eye-crossingly expensive "jumbo".

Then a yen for barbecued shrimp, so I added a pound of wild-caught shrimp--also eye-crossingly expensive, but I was in an expansive mood, and it was the day after Moon got paid. Throw in some bread and a little fresh yellow corn on sale (which looked, surprisingly, pretty good. Most produce at my local Kroger looks like it's one step away from wilting away from ennui. Not nasty, exactly, just a bit depressed) and there was dinner. Not the healthiest thing in the world, but occasionally it is necessary to eat a meal based on butter and oil.

So home again. Put the water on for the corn and found a great crab cake recipe in one of my favorite cookbooks--Cooking for Comfort by Marian Burros. Starting making it before I realized that I had no mayo in the house. Endured a small fit of pique since I had JUST BEEN AT KROGER...but I got over it. I am woman, I am resourceful. I am not pregnant or immune-compromised, so I can eat raw eggs if necessary. I pull out the good ol' The Joy of Cooking and whip up some Blender Mayonnaise. A quick taste test reminds me why homemade mayo is so much better than the jarred stuff. Mmmmmmmmmmm...what was I saying?

Oh, yes--crab cakes. Throw together the rest of the ingredients--adding a generous shake or three of Old Bay seasoning because crab cakes aren't crab cakes without Old Bay--and toss in the fridge while I work on the shrimp.

While I work, I think of the over-the-top, eyes-rolling-into-the-back-of-my-head good meal I had at Canoe last week. Then I think of the Lemon Drop Martini I had at the bar there. It was goood. I want one. Now. I have no vodka in the house, but a quick search through my pathetically stocked bar reveals some orange rum. On a whim, I thow a couple shots of that together with some lemon syrup and lemonade I have on hand, and shake it all up over ice. Pour it into martini glasses. It isn't half bad. Not a masterpiece, but drinkable.

I pour one for myself and my husband (who is kindly tending to the children so I can cook) and return to the shrimp.

I always look for a recipe when I'm starting out to make barbecued shrimp, but I never end up using one. The reason for that is once I start looking at recipes for barbecued shrimp, I realize it's more of a whatever thing. Once you commit to using that much butter in anything, the rest of the ingredients don't really matter. It's all about drowning the shrimp in butter and adding enough spice to keep things interesting. So I dumped the shrimp in a dish, melted a stick and a half of butter in a pan, and--because I cannot fathom using more of a butter-to-food ratio than that, I glug in some olive oil. Let the spirit move me as I poured on some Worcestershire, lemon juice, coarse salt, a few shakes of pepper and a little Cajun seasoning (I have 2 kids under 4--I do not have time to grind my own spices and blend my own spice blends. Get over it.) Oh, and hot sauce. Can't forget the hot sauce. Poured it all over the shrimp and baked it at 400 degrees for 15 minutes. Checked to make sure the corn was done, fried up the crab cakes, and served the whole mess with some hot, crusty bread to sop up some of that shrimpy, spicy butter sauce. Promised my Inner Nutritionist I'd eat healthier tomorrow to make up for the butter. Sighed with happiness.

The only thing I would have liked more would have been some roasted red peppers on hand to puree up as an accompaniment for the crab cakes. A dinner based on this much oil and fat needed a little astringency, a little vegetative sternness to rein things in a bit. But I didn't have any (another thing to add to my grocery list, darn it!), so there you have it. Friday night dinner.

My 3-year-old, the Pickiest Child on Earth, even tried some of the crab cake and said he liked it--a small miracle for the kid who so far seems to only like fruit, peanut butter, mac-n-cheese, pizza, sweet tea and crackers. And he ate corn, which was a large miracle. This also confirms my deepening suspicion that children would like more adventurous food if it was cooked fresh from scratch, rather than the dumbed-down, lowest-common-denominator versions we so often buy as "convenience foods".

But that's another essay.

Why, you ask, am I telling you all this?

To give you a taste (bad pun, I know) of what's to come. I am not a gourmet cook by any means--too busy. But I love fresh food, especially fresh organic food. I love the smell of open-air markets and really good grocery stores. I cook with recipes, but use them more like suggestions than orders--I'm bad with following orders. It's the punk rock in me. The cook I idolize most is the late, great Edna Lewis, who you should know about if you don't. The food writer I love the most is the late, great Laurie Colwin. And a really happy day for me is a day when I get to buy and make good food, and even better if I get to talk about it a bit.

So today was a good day.

Maybe tomorrow I'll tell you about our recent trip to Canoe and Colonel Poole's BBQ.

'Night, all. Don't forget to eat your veggies.



Link to Edna Lewis' info and recipes:
http://www.epicurious.com/features/chefs/lewis

Link to Laurie Colwin info and articles:
http://www.scils.rutgers.edu/~esmith/colwin.html

Recipe for a Lemon Drop Wannabe:

1-1/2 shot of Bacardi O
1/2 shot of Monin Lemon Drop syrup
6 ounces of lemonade

Throw into a cocktail shaker over a mess of crushed ice. Shake and strain into martini glasses.