What a Tart

is the name of a cocktail in the book Winter Cocktails by Maria Del Mar Sacasa and Tara Striano. The Eldest gave me the book for Christmas and I have been mulling and toddying ever since. The current cold snap has certainly provided the need for warm comforting drinks. I mainly use the recipes as a baseline and go from there.

So "What a Tart" contains is apple cider, AppleJack (I use Lairds, it's made in NJ), lemon juice, lemon zest, grated ginger, cinnamon and mace. Very tasty, the book's comment about the drink is "a pie in a glass". This one is not hot but the next ones are.

Basic Hot Toddy = hot water, alcohol, honey, lemon. They also included an AppleJack Toddy variant which is cinnamon tea, AppleJack and maple syrup which is very good indeed.

My Hot Toddy variant is Yorkshire Tea, Crown Royal Maple finished Whisky and maple syrup. Reminds me of my childhood... it smells like Maypo. I had Maypo awhile back, but it was not as good as I remember it being. I'm not advocating The Royal Canadian Hot Toddy for breakfast, but it does taste good. I did a post on the Crown Royal Maple Whisky here.

Hot Buttered Rum = hot water, dark rum, 1 tablespoon butter (unsalted if possible), brown sugar, dash of vanilla, pinch cinnamon and mace(if you have it). I have always heard of the Hot Buttered Rum, but never felt compelled to try one until now. They are actually good.

Current Blooms:
We have Snow drops open under the snow and the the Lemon tree is now in bloom, it is very pretty and smells sweet. Can't wait for our one lemon to arrive.

Meet The Estate Staff:
Gunther Befestigen, Handyman. Originally from Bavaria.
This weekend he replaced the stove's center stainless steel blanking plate with a pair of hand forged, cast iron, porcelain coated filler grates. Each grate is held up and leveled by 4 screws. The process of leveling the grates seemed trivial to me, but it took him quite some time and a lot of tools and measuring devices. I don't know any German, but I think I may have heard some swearing, of course since German is a guttural language he may have been singing a Lullaby.  Besides Blacksmithing, Gunther appears to have an interest in building tank models in bottles and is a member of a German Actuarial Society, DAR. I think, I don't read his mail, but I do look at the envelopes. He also makes working a Gingerbread Coo-coo clock each Advent season and ships it to his sister Helga who has a Bed & Breakfast in Avebury, England. He does not do car windows either. We are still searching.

Beers in the Fridge:
The cupboards are bare. Nothing to see here.

Though I did open a bottle of Port received at Christmas from The Eldest's beau.

Coincidence was that The Young One also gave me a bottle Port by the same firm.