Here begins my very first post from our new home in Northern California, and here begins the latest chapter of our adventures! We have been exploring, visiting redwoods, delighting in the gorgeous bounty of fresh, local produce so amazingly readily available at a plethora of farm stands and farmers markets, and perhaps most of all being absurdly excited over what grows in our very own backyard!
We have prickly pear cactus galore, with tons of gorgeous prickly pear fruit on the verge of being ready to harvest soon... I've never even tasted a prickly pear fruit before - how exciting is it to have a brand new fruit growing in one's very own yard?!? It's as though I have landed on a new planet!
Wonders of wonders, we even have a tangerine tree and grape vines in our back yard. This must be paradise.
And the things that grow here! As an avid locavore, I am simply not used to the luxury of having locally grown strawberries, cherries, and okra abounding at little farm stands along nearly every rural road! It almost feels scandalous, it's so wonderful.
Equally awe-inspiring are the redwood trees... So much wisdom and grace in their ancient limbs...
I must say the weather here is totally puzzling. We live just east of the San Francisco Bay area, so we are quite decidedly in the desert, complete with temperatures in the upper 90s every afternoon and down in the low 60s every morning and evening. I always seem to be shedding layers on and off, especially because all we have to do is jaunt a few miles west and we are in the temperate breezes of San Francisco, where it's comparatively quite cold! Cold by my standards is really mid 60s and low 70s - perfect weather for strolling along the bay...
So, how about a posh little cocktail to toast our new home? The understated yet esoteric sazerac is definitely the favorite cocktail in our household. Because we are snobby about our drinks, I have spent quite a bit of time researching different philosophies on the sazerac, and after much contemplation I tend to side with Bon Appetit's recipe as our favored method. Traditionally a sazerac is not served on the rocks, but it made for a pretty, if somewhat rebellious photo here...
Here's something else scandalous we do with our sazerac cocktails - we leave out the sugar. Yes, muddling a sugar cube with bitters is a time honored part of the sazerac-making tradition, but both Zach and I are in agreement that there are some things that should not be sweet - coffee, beer, and cocktails. No sugar messing up my rye whiskey, thank you. So feel free to add the sugar cube, or be brave and break tradition as we do... ;-)
The Sazerac
Adapted from http://www.bonappetit.com/recipe/the-sazerac
1 sugar cube (optional)
1/4 tsp angostura bitters
2 oz rye whiskey
2 tsp absinthe
Twist of lemon peel
Chill an old fashioned glass (either by filling it with ice cubes and then discarding them, or by keeping a few old fashioned glasses in the freezer alongside a few pint glasses, as we do...).
If you like to use the sugar cube, place it in a separate glass, splash the bitters over the sugar cube, then muddle with the back of a spoon until dissolved. Otherwise, just pour the bitters into the glass.
Add the rye whiskey to the glass with your bitters and optional sugar, fill the glass with ice, and stir.
Add the absinthe to your empty chilled glass, swirl to coat the inside of the glass, then discard the excess absinthe.
Strain the whiskey mixture into the absinthe-coated glass.
Run a lemon peel along the lip of the glass, then discard.
Cheers!
you sound very happy with the move - sounds exciting and full of good fresh produce (though I think I once foolishly touched a prickly pear at the market and was painfully reminded of it for days to come). Love your posh cocktail - sounds quite strong to me (I hardly even drink wine or beer so spirits always seem that much stronger) but looks very sophisticated and rightly celebratory :-)
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