Happy Hour: Vodka Tonic & Cucumber

Helga Glaesel de BlandingJanuary 20, 2016

This post is also available in / Esta entrada también está disponible en ESPAÑOL (SPANISH)

We are all back from our Holiday vacation, and all I can say is… thank God. You know I love the holidays, and I usually start organizing my holiday activities well before hand so I have time to bake, shop, craft and enjoy the season with my daughter and my family.

2015’s holiday season was anything but organized, even though I tried. I still can’t believe I didn’t have time to bake a single cookie. A lot of things happened at once, I wasn’t able to close the office when I wanted to because I still had business to take care of which kept me busy, occupied and preoccupied for the first half of December, and also my mom got sick. She’s ok now, but because of an infection we had to take her to the hospital on the second week of December, and then after Christmas again where she stayed for 6 days to get her medicine, which meant having her spend December 31^st in a hospital room. Happy New Year.

Still, I didn’t want to let myself get too sad and frustrated and tried to think about making New Year’s special for my husband, daughter, and our closest friends. I also invited my in-laws over for a special turkey dinner. I visited my mom at the hospital during the day, and headed back home to get the turkey I had prepared into the oven, trying to have as much of a positive attitude as I could. I really wanted to enjoy the night, and wanted everyone to have a good time.

I called one of our favorite pastry shops that morning, to ask their closing time because my husband wanted a lemon pie for dessert that night, I asked if they had it and they said yes. My husband went to pick up the pie, 25 minutes before closing time, only to find out that we had to formally order the pie beforehand so they could prepare the meringue topping. I wasn’t told this over the telephone, and my husband was not amused. They made him wait for 20 minutes so they could prepare it, and finally gave him the lemon pie in a closed carton box. I thought 20 minutes was very little time to whip up meringue, but I had other things to prepare for dinner so I didn’t bother with it. One hour before our guests arrived, I took the box out of the refrigerator because I wanted to take a look at the meringue. I cursed out loud when I saw that they hadn’t bothered to put anything on top, they made my husband wait for 20 minutes and had only given us the crust with the lemon filling, and of course… charged full price. They could’ve at least told him we would be getting a meringueless pie.

My kitchen was already clean, but I wasn’t about to let a stupid pie ruin my already fragile mood. I made my own Italian meringue, decorated the pie, and took out my little blow torch to decorate the meringue. That was taken care of.

It was time to take the turkey out of the oven, it looked great. It had a nice golden crust and it smelled amazing. When my husband carved the turkey… surprise!! It was undercooked. Really? 20 years of cooking the holiday turkey, and tonight of all nights, I didn’t get it right? The breast was fully cooked, so we carved that and returned the other pieces to the oven. There was enough for everyone, and the rest of the pieces got properly cooked. The turkey was saved! that was taken care of. Now, let’s have a drink.

Nope. The dog got out and proceeded to literally shit all over my new year’s night. I love my dog, but she gets nervous around people and becomes annoying, and the apartment was packed that night. She left a little doodle on the floor and one of our guests stepped on it, leaving poop prints all over the apartment. We noticed that we kept on cleaning and cleaning and it wouldn’t go away, we realized that a few of us had stepped on it, so there were 4 of us leaving poop prints all over the floor. I wanted to scream into a pillow at this point, but I didn’t. My husband did most of the cleaning while I tried to tend to our guests who wanted coffee. After the ordeal was over, I was able to sit down with my friends to have a few drinks. Even though by my standards the night was a disaster, I am thankful that even though my mom was at the hospital she was there getting cured… which is what matters, and I was able to spend the night with the people I love the most, we ate our grapes, we had our delicious turkey dinner, we saw the fireworks, we hugged eachother at midnight and when it was all over, I thought…This will be a New Year’s to remember.

I can’t think of a better story to inaugurate a new section on The Foodies’ Kitchen. TFK’s Happy Hour! We will feature cocktail and boozy recipes for you to enjoy with your friends and significant other.

For our first recipe, we will share our personal favorite. Vodka Tonic & Cucumber

Cheer’s to the New Year!

Helga

Vodka Tonic & Cucumber

Yields: 1 drink

Ingredients:
2 oz. of Vodka
4 oz. of Tonic Water
4 thin slices of fresh cucumber
a squeeze of fresh lime juice
5 whole black peppercorns (optional)

Procedure: