Cinco de Mojito

This is a day where you're more than certain to hear us whistling our favorite countdown tune: uno de enero, dos de febrero, tres de marzo, quatro abril.  cinco de mayo...where we stop and cheer before June and July get their due.   

Usually, by cinco de mayo it's warm and wonderful, with all things weather hinting fiercely at the arrival of summer and all that portends: full tables on sunny café terraces, the challenge to find empty chairs at Luxembourg garden, empty Velib stations, longer days and later dinners.   By May, the worst of the winter and wetness of spring are behind.  Usually.

Not so today as the wind whipped like a wild thing and forced us to bundle in heavy (though fashionable) coats and scarves and boots.  Oh, the sun gave hope, but offered little warmth.  Summer feels as far away as ever, but for the bags of fresh mint that lay waiting to be mortared and pestled into that hot weather favorite, the mojito.   Nor could we imagine a rosé; drinking the pink today would be like wearing white before Memorial Day.   

Wearing white, of course, reserved not even for the seis de junio - but for our favorite damn day of the year: seis de julio.   Ya falta menos.

Portable Potable

A new neighborhood storefront brings temporary relief from the sprawl of trendy, overpriced clothing boutiques and puts some spice in our season. It's called Take Away Cocktails and serves up exactly what it's named, drinks you can drive away with.

It's not a bar; it's a store where you buy what you need to make your own bar. For instance, Santa Claus left me two brown bags under the tree, one with a delicate bottle of Polish vodka and a premium organic-styled glass container of bourgeois tomato juice. Also in the bag, bottles of Tabasco and Worcestershire, and small plastic take-out containers with first class celery salt and black pepper. A lime and celery. And horseradish, not just the kind in the jar - the real deal, the root. We had to grate it ourselves. It was a Bloody in a Bag. Brilliant.

Oh, and the other brown bag? Four Bloody Mary glasses. Just to be sure we drank them out of the correct receptacle. I love it when details matter.

Needless to say, the Christmas morning Bloodies were an outstanding accomplishment.

This little booze boutique opened its temporary doors early in December and sadly closes in just a few days, on New Year's eve. It's a damn shame, because the concept is clever and classy, though destined to fail, I'm afraid, since I don't know that many Frenchies who are huge consummateurs of cocktails, and France is not exactly known for its
to go culture. But it's a nice try.

I was hoping for an extension of carry-out cocktail service, but it's unlikely. We'd better dream up a good drink menu for New Year's Eve, and stock up our bar before they're out of stock - and out of town.

Does this count as an infidelity? I must admit, the novelty was nice. But nothing could keep me away from my corner bar stool for too long.

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Getting Oystered

November is a month with an r, which means it is safe to eat oysters, unless of course you are eating them anywhere near Dee Dee Sue and me, because they make us very feisty. Or perhaps it's the champagne that necessarily accompanies these mollusky meals that brings out the fresh and fickle characteristics that we harbor deeply. Or the consummate waiter, Frank, from the Le Grand Colbert whose enchanting service makes us feel more hedonistic than usual.

Dee Dee Sue usually takes her annual leave during the heart of the r-season, so our oyster fests are limited to early autumn and late spring. But this year, she's returned to Paris in a nearly-winter month, gracing us with her presence in order to take delivery of a new über-bed being installed in her refurbished apartment.

Oysters are an epicurean preference of mine, though I make it a practice not to eat them in places that are too far from the sea, and to consume these delicacies only from September to April. Do you know why oysters can make you sick? It's their libido. They get frisky as the summer approaches, and milkier and murkier, less tasty and a bit off.

So this genital-like jewel that is lauded as an aphrodisiac takes possession of its pheromones and sets out about a seduction of its own, leaving the rest of us whoozy and very much not in the mood if we don't heed the essential safe-sex oyster rule: Never without an R.

Nothing Dee Dee Sue has to worry about. November is the perfect month to reassemble her boudoir. Oysters may be useful.

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Preparing the Whites

It's my birthday today, and since there's no white knight here to celebrate it with me, I've made my own. I bought myself a birthday present his morning. It was as spontaneous as it gets. Saw 'em on the rack, tried 'em on. Sweepin' that Visa with aplomb.

Though, I must say, it wasn't much of a splurge. Dee Dee Sue (and Mother Theresa) will appreciate that in this particular case, the cheaper the better.

Because they won't be white for long, will they?

Ladies, prepare your bleach-pens. And happy birthday to me!
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Drinking their History

"I have always felt that if you are drinking an artisan distillation, you are drinking the history of a people, of a region," writes Steve McCarthy, in his recent post, The Pursuit of Pleasures in Pure Spirit from the New York Times blog, Proof.

This is exactly how I feel when I drink patxaran. When I bring the over-sized snifter of the red elixir to my lips, it's like I'm sitting out on a café-terrace in the hills of Navarra in the late afternoon sun, or happening upon a group of comrades in white, seated at a long table in narrow street who've fallen into spontaneous song after a hearty breakfast. Patxaran goes down your throat like a Jota ballad, its syrupy liquid is exaggerated, longing and soulful in your belly. It's a vigorous red dance with ice, waiting on a varnished bar at 3 am in the morning. Patxaran is the 6th of July, with a whole damn week ahead and nothing to do but live it. Patxaran is strong and sweet and stays on your lips long after it's gone, like the coveted first kiss from a perfectly sculpted stick-boy.
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Drink a Little

Gladys is really an inspiration for me and Dee Dee Sue.