cold weather DRINKING — Arielle Giusto

If there is one thing I sure get a hell of a lot of enjoyment from, it is a hot toddy. So when my family decided to start a yearly caroling party on their property, my mind immediately went to a land filled with cloves, lemon and whiskey. The first year we put a crock pot of hot toddies out, they went so quickly that we doubled it for the next year, only to find that we ought to have tripled the recipe. Picture a very cold, clear night, you walk up a fluorescent green grass covered hill to a gathering of people around a bonfire. Someone offers you a hot toddy. You have no idea what it is but everyone looks so contented and warm that of course you say yes.

As with any drink there are a million variations. We like to keep it simple with a classic recipe of hot water, lemon juice, whiskey and honey just barely scented with cloves and cinnamon. It is truly like a tonic for the soul, one sip warms you up from the inside out, and chases out any lingering illness that may be hanging around. It is equally as good caroling on a chilly night as it is filled in a thermos and smuggled into a movie theater, which has served us well through the last two Star Wars.

Back on the hillside, once the hot toddies ran out there was hot chocolate and Bailey's to be had, but those ran a distant second to the almighty toddy. Next year we're going big.

Hot Toddy recipe for a Crowd

Makes 30 Drinks

Whiskey - 1.5 liter bottle - Maker's Mark is great here, as is Jack Daniels
Honey - 2 cups
Lemon Juice - 450 ml (about 2 cups)
Water - 2 liters
Cinnamon Sticks - 4 EA
Lemons - 2 EA, sliced in rounds
Whole Cloves - 20 EA

In a large pot, heat the water to almost a simmer. Add the whiskey, honey, lemon juice and cinnamon sticks. Heat over low heat. Taste and adjust, adding more honey or water if necessary.

Stick four cloves through the inside of each lemon round. Float on top the pot, stick a ladle in it and serve! We left it on an induction burner over low heat to keep it warm throughout the evening. A crock pot will do but won't fit a batch of this size. Enjoy!

May 11, 2020

Mating Dance

April 1st and it is the 23rd anniversary of my mother’s death. Usually I go walk the beach, to the place where we scattered her ashes and where she spent her last years, but it’s 2020 and the beaches are closed so instead I go for a walk around the block. In my seventh month of pregnancy now and my feet have started to ache from the extra weight, so the walk starts out slowly, gingerly. I conjure her here, in step beside me - Suzanne Segal, born on Friday the 13th and died on April Fool’s Day. Was that her ridiculous way of encouraging us to see some of the humor, the lightness of life? Those deep dimples and that shrieking laugh are with me as much today as they were decades ago.

February 20, 2020

santa fe, NM 1995

My mom and I got off the plane in Albuquerque and headed for the white Isuzu Trooper we kept parked at the airport. After our first few visits to New Mexico, when my mom had properly fallen in love with the landscape and started buying property – all sagebrush and pink dirt – she decided we needed our own car there. This one was properly beat up enough to fit in, as I learned after my eyes had adjusted from the bombastic wealth of the Bay Area to this perennially poor state. But the colors! Even on the license plates! The flamboyant yellow, red and turquoise delighted me, set as they were against the glow of the high desert. I suppose we both were in love with this new frontier.

December 15, 2019

Peeking through the Back Door

I have always felt most at home in restaurant kitchens. No matter how glossy the paint or how shiny the brass door handle on the imposing front door to the dining room, there is always a dinged up, unmarked back door that leads to the real heart of the beast. It took a few weeks into my first cooking job at The Olema Inn to get used to the complete lack of glamour of it all. Only now do I see how the paucity of it helped to form our psyches, ordained us cooks with the chips on our shoulders and the swagger in our steps. We’re here to do the real work. We don’t need no fancy door.