My mom and I started at The Christmas Tree Shop which is the equivalent of-- well I'm not sure, but it has things wicked cheap and so we thought that this would be the best place to buy a couple glasses and maybe a cocktail shaker for little more than pennies. Well, we found the glasses. Did you know there were so many? And even if they were only made out of glass and no fancy crystal I still wanted ALL of them. So we settled for two of the following (one for me and one for the buddy I decided to share with) cocktail, margarita, highball and lowball. No cocktail shaker, but that's okay.
On our way home we stopped at our local grocery store looking at the list of ingredients for tonights mocktail and began scratching our heads. I believe our interaction went something like this.
"Mom, we need orange juice," and I headed towards the refrigerated section well aware that this is the only ingredient I really knew where it was, but she continued in the other direction. I followed her into the isle with the little packages of fruit that I remember packing in my lunches as an elementary school-er. You know the ones because you did it too and tried to trade them away for something more tasty and less healthy like Dorritos. I also always found this isle so weird because it not only has these little things but other random things like peanut butter and sparkling white grape juice. Mom kneeled towards the bottom shelf and revealed little cans of pineapple juice, a main ingredient in many mocktails and so if you are considering on filling up your own mocktail bar akin to the Gilmores' fancy homes then have plenty of these little babies on hand.
"Kay now the grenadine," my mom continued down the isle.
"What is grenadine?" I said. I've never even had a Shirley Temple.
"I don't really know."
"Well, what's it taste like?"
"Bitter?"
Concluding neither of us had any inkling of an idea what this stuff was I was almost resigned to give up. Would Pineapple Juice really taste that bad alone? But magically my mom had done it. Somewhere between the popcorn and the ice cream there was this little tiny section devoted to cocktails and on the top shelf there was the sticker for the grenadine and an empty space. My mom is two inches taller than me and standing on her tip-toes saw that there was one bottle left and this was probably only because there was practically no humanly possible way to get this bottle. Well, impossible if you aren't related to an engineer. My mom grabbed the alcohol-free wine (grape juice??) that was sitting next to it and knocked the bottle over. I'm assuming (since I'm not tall enough to have seen it) that she used the bottle to shimmy it close enough to her to grab it and put it in our cart. So we successfully left the grocery store with orange juice, pineapple juice, grenadine and something called bitters which I'm sure I'll be using later and is found next to the grenadine (no worries I won't leave you lost in the store).
Tonight's mocktail was a Blarney Stone and I've got to be honest, the title makes me think of Ireland which immediately makes me wonder why this is called the Blarney Stone because this irish girl is having difficulty finding the irish stuff in it. This is a combination of pineapple juice and grenadine with a maraschino cherry garnish served in a lowball glass. I mixed it up and threw in my cherry and stupidly thought it would float. Looking back, logically, that makes little to know sense and so it disappeared in the red colored drink. It was mostly sweet with that grenadine taste which even after tasting it is still hard to describe. I love the idea of garnishes because they are just a little bit of something more after you've already finished something yummy.
"Kiss the Blarney Stone and you'll be endowed with the gift of gab.
But the Blarney Castle resides all the way over in Ireland. So in case you can't make it, we've prepared our best legendary surrogate: the Blarney Stone Cocktail." (http://www.themed-party-ideas.com/irish-drink-recipes.html#blarney-stone-cocktail)
The original cocktail contained Irish Whiskey (there's the Irish!), curacao and maraschino and was apparently meant to do what the Blarney Stone could not do for you. It can be garnished with an orange peel and a green olive and represent the Irish flag.
Bottoms up!
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