Caipirinhas are the true nectar of Brazil. When I was in grad school, I had a classmate whose wife used to own a beachside cafe in a resort town popular with the Sao Paolo crowd. Her caiparinhas were truly outstanding, and she made them by the pitcher.

She would sometimes make a variant by adding a few fresh strawberries to the pitcher near the end of the muddling process so they'd be broken up but not pulverized. These were also very nice.

BTW - I've never experienced a particularly bad hangover from cachaca. Then again, I only really feel the pain if I drink too much red wine.

I have yet to forget the unfortunate discovery that cranberry juice can cover a multitude of sins - and if nobody's drinking the punch at a New Years party, it may not be because it's non-alcoholic.

Everclear.

'nuff said.

Holy Crap!
The standard unit of measure is a gallon!!!
Yowsa!

This sounds really neat, and I'd like to play with it, but could anyone offer a viable substitute for green tea? There's a major green tea allergy in my drinking circle.

It should be pointed out that consumption of jarred peppers (Italian, Spanish, Cental American, it matters not) enhances the experience.

Spoiling nice hootch with sugar and fruits. Give me hootch now, raw, and keep nassty fruits.

OK, but how do you make margheritas?

That recipe frightens me.

I like margaritas, but not if there's so much fruit that I can't taste the Tequila. 4 cl of Tequila and one kiwi fruit per glass is about right.

This recipe is intended to hide the fact that there's alcohol in it at all. It's vodka and lucozade, a 1940's alcopop.

That didn't come out right: there has been much hoo-ha here about alcoholic drinks designed to taste non-alcoholic so that young uns who can't stand the taste of booze can still get drunk, and I didn't mean to sound like the people who say such drinks are immoral.

I just think they're a waste of booze.

Kiwi fruit? In margueritas? Say it ain't so!

(Getting a proper marguerita is hard enough these days. Most places, you get something closer to spiked lemonade.)

Canonical Margarita.

Spiked lemonade masquerading as a margarita?! I'd yelp "Say it ain't so!" but a quick search of the internet reveal all too many so-called margaritas with the lime juice replaced by lemon juice. Not that spiked lemonade is a bad thing, in hot weather...

The basic format I was taught was:

1 1/2 oz +/- tequila [preferably good tequila...]
1/2 oz +/- triple sec [any kind will do, but blue Curacao adds an interesting, otherworldy cast to the drink...]
1 1/2 oz +/- lime juice [If you like, this can be Rose's, rather than fresh--or you can squeeze a fresh wedge in with the Rose's for added aroma]
Shake over ice. Rub the rim of a glass with a lime wedge [or lemon if trapped in a lime-free-zone, and it's an emergency], and dip it in a saucer of coarse salt. You may add ice to the glass and strain the drink over it, or just strain the drink into the glass, depending perhaps on local temperature. It's a fairly easy extrapolation to a frozen margarita, requiring only a blender, but I'd rather not go there.

Lime-lovers have been known to toss the squeezed lime shells in the shaker, to get more of the oils into the drnk. YMMV.

If any of y'all still drink and have a mentor around who still drinks, I'd like to make a request.

(1) Buy a bottle of decent vodka-- Stolitchnaya will suffice.

(2) Transfer half of bottle to a separate container.

(3) Assuming we're talking about a 750 ml bottle, add to the bottle 188ml of fresh-squeezed lime juice and 188ml of triple sec. (If not, the relevant ratio we're looking for is a simple 2:1:1 by volume.)

(4) Freeze. Keep an eye on it-- it'll turn into a Slurpee if it gets too cold.

(5) Put two martini glasses and bottle into briefcase. Pack chunks of dry ice around them.

(6) Storm into mentor's office, feigning urgency and rage. When you have mentor's full attention, put briefcase on desk and open. If executed correctly, said mentor will bug eyes at the sight of a briefcase filled with smoking white rocks and radiating an unnatural chill. (This works even better if the mentor has all the technical and scientific expertise of a golabki-- and thus, for all he knows, might be looking at solid chunks of plutonium.)

(7) Get thoroughly bombed with mentor.

(8) (Optional.) Explain that this is the Leonard Michaels Memorial Kamikaze Run, using a recipe and procedure developed in 1989 by someone or another at UC Berkeley.

(So, Teresa, are you going to explain to these fine folks why you happened to be looking at a ten year old humor digest in the first place?)

I love blue Curacao. It looks like Romulan Ale.

My wife and I have developed a lovely recipe for Sangria that also makes a great party favor.

It should go over great at the pot-luck lunch my company has every year. That should make for an interesting afternoon.

When I make Caipirinhas I use Key Limes (2 instead of 1 regular lime). My husband uses vodka instead of Cachaca.

The recipe (in size) reminds me of a recent acquisition: a baker's guide to baking (exact title can be supplied once I'm at home). It's an exhaustive guide to the basic techniques, and some advanced, of anything that could even loosely be called baking (petit fours! how to make non-edible decorative bread objects! marzipan!), with a focus on the chemistry and physics of baking.

The only thing that makes it daunting is the yield sizes: generally in the multi-pound range, described as "Six large loaves", "five dozen dinner rolls" and the like.

Ooh, drink recipes.

The Best Fresh Margaritas
Makes about 1 quart, serving 4 to 6

The longer the zest and juice mixture is allowed to steep, the more developed the citrus flavors in teh finished margaritas. We recommend steeping for the full 24 hours, although the margaritas will still be great if the mixture is steeped only for the minimum 4 hours.

4 tsp grated zest plus 1/2 cup juice from 2 to 3 medium limes
4 tsp grated zest plus 1/2 cup juice from 2 to 3 medium lemons
1/4 cup superfine sugar (berry sugar)
pinch salt
2 cups crushed ice
1 cup 100 per cent agave tequila, pref. resposado
1 cup Triple Sec

1. Combine lime zest and juice, lemon zest and juice, sugar, and salt in large liquid measuring cup; cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate until flavours meld, 4 to 24 hours.
2. Divide 1 cup crushed ice between 4 or 6 margarita or double old-fashioned glasses. Strain juice mixture into 1 quart pitcher or cocktail shaker. Add tequila, Triple Sec, and remaining crushed ice; stir or shake until thoroughly combined and chilled, 20 to 60 seconds. Strain into ice-filled glasses; serve immediately.

These are so good, but more than two will knock you on your ass.

A favorite with my group:

Satan's Whiskers (straight):

1/2 oz each-

gin
dry vermouth
sweet vermouth
fresh oj

1/4 oz-

Grand Marnier

1 dash orange bitters

shake w/ice, strain into a chiled glass.

If you want the Whiskers curled, use Curacao for the G.M.

Back when I could take the sugar and the alcohol didn't conflict with my meds I got invited to parties on the condition that I make margaritas. My discovery (based on some rigorous research in the dorm at UC Davis -- we experimented until rigor set in) was that what made the difference was the lime juice. I used to be able to find bottled lime juice in Mexican groceries that seems to have been made from milder Mexican limes (like key limes) that made spectacular drinks, and allowed you to mix a little heavier on the tequila for an interesting edge. But you can just use the classic recipie above for an excellent 'rita. Using a reposado in a mixed drink like this should be a crime, but Cointreau does make a better drink than a cheaper Triple Sec. Rita on the rocks is OK, but I still like the blender version better. Call me a traditionalist.

El Paso Chile makes a bottled margarita mix based on key limes and Meyer lemons that is worth checking out.

Teresa, do you have something good in an eggnog, perhaps with a low sugar version?

Ooh, I *recognize* D's margarita recipe -- it's from Cook's Illustrated! Hmm, is that giving away too much about myself, that I recognize a margarita recipe?

Anyway, those really are amazingly good. I don't spring for the reposado, but they're still delicious -- and astonishingly strong.

Having had a blood orange margarita in a bar once, I decided to try it at home, subbing about 2/3 of the lime/lemon juices with blood orange juice I'd squeezed. I highly recommend this experiment to you. The nifty bonus is the improbable color of the drink.

I'm going to have to stop reading this thread. Why, it's enough to make a man take to drink!

(It's been about 8 years or so.)

I don't suppose any kind soul has calculated a smaller version of this recipe and would care to share? If not, I suppose I'll do it myself one of these days (and put it in my "things to try when I'm not pregnant" file).

Also, I should probably know this, but are we talking about fresh whole cherries, fresh pitted cherries, canned cherries, maraschino cherries, or what?

Jim Macdonald should post his sangria recipe.

Meanwhile:

Why I was looking at a ten-year-old humor digest:

It was one of those "ships that pass in the night" things: Stephan Zielinski and I both had our writing in that same Yucks Digest, back before either of us knew who the other was. (I assume we each knew who we were by then. It wasn't that far back.)

Stephan's bit was one of his turns as the Usenet Oracle:

Date: Thu, 29 Sep 1994 14:55:12 -0400
From: bostic
Subject: Windows is filling your sinuses with lucite and letting it set.
To: /dev/null@python.bostic.com

Forwarded-by: stripes@uunet.uu.net (Josh Osborne)

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

The Usenet Oracle has pondered your question deeply.
Your question was:

> Dear Oracle, master of all knowledge, what does UNIX stand for?

And in response, thus spake the Oracle:

} Ken Thompson claims that UNIX is "a weak pun on Multics," but this is
} a lie. UNIX is a weak pun on eunuch. Look around you. Are any of
} your male peers ever going to reproduce? And if their significant
} others DO become pregnant-- will you not doubt the identity of the
} father?
}
} UNIX is not all that impressive an operating system. Why, then, is it
} so popular? *UNIX is addictive!* And, just like heroin, the UNIX
} drive quickly displaces the sex drive. (Oh, sure, computer geeks talk
} a lot about wanting to get laid... but do they ever *do* anything
} about it?)
}
} Yet terrible as UNIX addiction is, there are worse fates. If UNIX is
} the heroin of operating systems, then VMS is barbiturate addiction,
} the Mac is MDMA, and MS-DOS is sniffing glue. (Windows is filling
} your sinuses with lucite and letting it set.)
}
} You owe the Oracle a twelve step program.

Date: Sun, 23 Oct 1994 04:20:02 -0600
From: qotd-request@ensu.ucalgary.ca (Quote of the day)
Subject: Quote of the day
To: qotd@ensu.ucalgary.ca

English can most charitably be described as a generous, expansive, and flexible language; a less charitable description would characterize it as drunk and disorderly.

-- Teresa Nielsen Hayden

That didn't come out right either. Of course kiwis do not belong in margaritas, I was trying to nail the maximum fruit to hootch ratio I like when fruit and hootch are to be mixed.

Kiwi and tequila is good, but it isn't a classic anything. I call it a Kiwi Pip. Good with dry Gin too.

If you used Rum, you could call it a Daiquiri, I suppose.

"UNIX is the operating system where all the programmers sing in high C."

An older saying, obviously, but I'm still geekily fond of it.

Teresa -- I know you know much more about food than I do, but would the citrus juice in the premix really spoil? If Catawba wine is the wine-standard ~12% alcohol, the 9 gallons (before champagne) has ~2 gallons of alcohol (based on the rum, brandy, rye, & gin all being 40-43% alcohol) -- not necessarily disinfectant strength but I'd be surprised if anything could grow in it. (IIRC, 22% alcohol is well above the highest concentration achieved by pure fermentation, which is somewhere in the upper teens for Sam Adams trippelbock.)

Skylab

2 parts cranberry juice
2 parts pineapple juice
1 part vodka
1/2 part Amaretto
1/2 part SoComfort
1/2 part Jack

So named because you'll fall to the earth, useless, when consumed.

From Uncle Hornhead, via the Eschaton Recipe Exchange.

Good grief. Now I want a drink. Preferably - hey, you know what? I've got a bottle of Lagavulin and after today I deserve one. See ya later.

MKK--who just doesn't like the taste of tequila

Make sure you use brown sugar in the caipirinhas. Not white. Very important. I prefer crushed ice, too. I learned how to make this quintessential Brazilian drink in Germany (natch), using vodka rather than cachaça--a practice considered barbaric by the drink's inventors. Done properly, caipirinhas will knock you over like a wolfhound puppy at walkies time, and I should know.

Mary K, the sun being well down where I am, I am toasting your Lagavulin in Seaview 15yo. You, ma'am, are clearly a lady of taste and refinement.

Tequila? Isn't that made out of cactus? Good lord.

For cold winter evenings, consider glögg.

On the somewhat stronger front, I'm fond of punsch, once called the national drink of Sweden:

To make 2 liters of punsch:

Ingredients:
1 liter vodka
1 bottle of arrak (37 cl)
1 liter white sugar
6 dl water
1 tablespoon pressed lemon
3 tablespoons of madeira
0.5 ml tinctura aurantii
1 tablespoon of cognac
3 tablespoons of rum
approx 2 tbsp strong tea (non-flavored)

Proceed thusly:
Boil water and sugar to a syrup. Let cool. Mix the syrup with vodka, pressed (and preferably strained) lemon and tinctura aurantii.

Add madeira, cognac and rum under eager tasting until the punsch has achieved a character you like. Add tea until the punsch has a lovely golden color. Taste again to assure yourself you've succeeded.

Pour into well-cleaned bottles and leat stand for at least 14 days but preferably half a year to a year.

Serve either well chilled or hot.

cd - must have a little toasted, buttered Julekage with that glogg...

Since the subject has turned to potent potables, This link was being passed around about a month ago -- it discusses an attempt to turn foul vodka into vodka that didn't taste quite as bad.

As the folks who conducted the experiment say,

"Realize however, that science is not cheap, and neither are our medical bills that may in the future be incurred in order to recover from science."

This recipe is very similar to (and may, in fact, be nearly identical to -- I'm on the road and can't check to be certain) my Uncle Arthur Gordon's Chatham Artillery Punch recipe in the Christ Episcopal Church cookbook.

It should be put in sturdy crocks, covered with several layers of cheesecloth to keep bugs out of it, and put in a nice dark room AT ROOM TEMPERATURE, NOT REFRIGERATED (which in Chatham County could range into the nineties, depending on the season) to let its ingredients get properly acquainted for AT LEAST SIX WEEKS. [HINT: The purpose of all that fruit and brown sugar is not to sweeten this brew but to add fuel for it's kick to grow! Refrigerating it would slow that process to the point of ineffectiveness -- not a good thing.] Of course, it may be tasted from time to time along the way (connoisseurs were reputed to have built revolving rooms for this purpose) but, fair warning, no amount of tasting will make one immune from its effects!

One may substitute strong black tea for the green tea.

Maraschino cherries, please, drained or not, your choice. I put in twice the number of drained ones this recipe calls for, then put in fresh ones and fresh canned unsweetened pineapple on the day of serving.

A pint of Benedictine in this recipe's proportions, added with the brandy is excellent.

I reduce the gin and the brandy to 2-3 quarts apiece.

The wine should be a fine madeira, not catawba. Catawba was a poor man's substitute for the imported madeira that improved from its European origins by traveling by sailing ship over the Atlantic and by further aging in Savannah area wine cellars. The catawba wine was homemade from local grapes and does not compare with the fine madeiras of old. However, it was popularized during the Civil War era when the Artillery became a unit of the Confederate Army and shipments of wine from Europe were halted by the Union blockade.

The amount of champagne to use is definitely a matter of personal taste. I think this recipe has it about right. Some local restauranteurs and families double the amount, while some families add only about half of what this calls for. Too little and you rob the potion of its accelerant. Too much and you dilute its kick and the taste becomes overly dry.

Ice is best a block or ring in the punchbowl with the chilled punch served sans ice by the punch cupful. (More than two punch cups is considered treading dangerously into the land of no return.) However, if you're into bottling up your finished punch (without the champagne) and serving it over time, it's fine to add the champagne at each serving and put it over ice.

It's natural for it to look muddy. It turns a truly horrid color if you try to dye it green for St. Patrick's Day -- but it still tastes great! I suggest dying some pineapple green and adding green maraschino cherries instead of red ones instead of coloring the punch itself.

Want to buy Rose's unsweetened lime juice. None available where we live. Can it be purchased online? If yes, where?

Don't think it's spam.

In answer to the question:

I was under the impression that Rose's was sweetened. Where abouts do you live?

And here's where to buy Rose's lime juice online.

Best to call even the marginal cases, Serge.

Thanks, Teresa. Still, I was a bit jumpy, in spite of all the outbreaks.

Thanks also to you and everybody else for Making Light in my life. Time to go to bed now - we're leaving early tomorrow and it's a long drive from New Mexico. California and family, here we come.

Merry Christmas, Happy New Year, and Happy Celebrations to all of you. Good night and 'see' you in a few days.

Stay safe, be careful, and keep an ear on the weather reports.

However, it's nice that Serge jumped the gun, because this thread was long before I started reading Making Light, and what do I see but a familiar name?

Teresa, I'm quite sure this punch recipe was via the same Scott Dorsey who created that habanero ice cream recipe I posted ages back. (It's still a small Internet, and was smaller yet in '94.)

I recall this recipe being given in slightly different form - the same general overall mixture, some differences in detail - and by this name, in, of all things, a post-WW2 Australian Army Returned Serviceman's book called "As You Were", as being a recipe recited by prisoners of war for what they would order in the first pub they came to after they got out of Changi. My father had the complete set of the books - twenty or so of them. I will go and try to find the reference.

This was a good thread. To my mind the standouts are Dulcie's recipe (Cook's Illustrated?) for margaritas, Stephan's instructions for getting your mentor bombed, and Mrs. Marla Randolph Stevens' exposition of the correct way to make Artillery Punch.

As long as Rose's is under discussion, does anyone know if there's a source for proper lime cordial, one without high-fructose corn syrup as ingredient #1?

Recommendations for non-HFCS-based grenadine would be most welcome, too.

There's a fairly easy-sounding recipe for lime cordial here, and a somewhat larger-scale one here.

Also, a recipe for grenadine syrup here whose ingredients are pomegranates and sugar, but I imagine it could be adapted to start from commercially available pomegranate juice instead.

Julie L @ 48

I've made a pomegranate syrup like that (a cup of sugar to a cup of seeds, let sit overnight, heat, etc). It's a heavy enough syrup that it won't freeze solid, so you can keep it in the freezer. Makes nice pomegranate-ade, although the cup-to-a-cup ratio calls for added lemon juice because of the built-in sweetness (and adding the lemon juice kills the color).

I got the recipe for Chatham Artillery Punch from a restaurant in Savannah, GA, about 15 years ago; even if catawba is the wrong wine, that's what I use. I have amended the recipe over the years to (1) make it less bitter (less tea), and (2) make it metric (or at least in whole bottle sizes currently available). It IS noticably alcoholic:

6 Liters (L) Catawba wine
4 L black tea
2 750 ml rum
2 750 ml rye
1 L gin
1 750 brandy
1 375 B&B
2 L (from 1 lb) maraschino cherry juice
2 lb light brown sugar
2 L/qt OJ (NO pulp)
2 L/qt lemon juice

Please, no fruit. Dissolve the sugar in the hot tea before adding it. Let it sit around for a few days. Makes about 6 gallons, about 47 proof.
ie 1 glass punch = 4 beers; 2 glasses punch = 1 glass vodka. I like to fill a 16 oz glass half way with well crushed ice, add punch to cover, then fill the rest of the way with diet orange dry (Polar). Others float champagne; some just drink it straight.

For those looking for more adventures of Chatham County Artillery Punch, observe this ML thread: Archie’s Fourth of July