The Licorice Stick Martini for National Licorice Day

IT'S NATIONAL LICORICE DAY

Celebrate Licorice with the

Licorice Stick Martini Recipe

Yes, dear fellow martini lover, yet another excuse to enjoy a martini at happy hour - today is April 12th and that means it's National Licorice Day!

Grab your vodka and pull out one of your black licorice sticks and shake up my Licorice Stick Martini, National Licorice Day comes only once a year!

*Ever wondered about where all these special commemorative holidays come from?

Read: NATIONAL WHATEVER YOU WANT TO CALL IT DAY.

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WORLD HEALTH DAY - Tips for making your cocktails healthier

 
Contrary to what most of us were taught, having a cocktail or two a day is not necessarily a bad thing.  Drinking alcohol picked up a bad rep somewhere in our past history and with that reputation it picked up an association with being unhealthy as well.  While drinking in excess is obviously a bad idea for your health and your over all well being, drinking in moderation is now being linked to having health benefits!

As The Martini Diva I celebrate the art of the drink, the enjoyment of a well mixed cocktail and the shared, communal ritual of happy hour, but I never promote or encourage excessive consumption, drunkenness, binge drinking or simply drinking to get drunk because this goes against my philosophy of "happy" hour!  To me the whole point of my slogan "where martinis are a lifestyle" is to enjoy the conviviality of friends with good food and good libations, and to enrich life with some style and flair.  Slamming down drink after drink in order to get buzzed defeats the whole concept of elegance and grace that is at the core of why I enjoy martinis!

“Only actions give life strength; only moderation gives it charm.” ~ Jean Paul Richter

One or two cocktails with friends at the end of a long, stressful day is a perfectly healthy way to decompress and a great addition to a charming life - especially if you use healthy ingredients!

In order to celebrate World Health Day, I've come up with a few tips on how to make some simple changes to your cocktails to bring a little healthy into your happy hour:

1. Buy a juicer and use FRESH fruits and vegetables instead of canned or frozen juices or sugar loaded commercial cocktail mixes or pop.
2. Load up your cocktail pick with some pieces of those same fresh fruits and veggies as your garnish.
3. Replace creams and milk with non-fat yogurt or pasteurized egg whites.
4. Use honey, blue agave nectar, or molasses instead of simple syrup.
5. Use Blue Agave sweeteners or Stevia in place of processed white sugars. Even raw sugar is better than processed white sugar.
6. Use sea salts in place of table salt.
7. Use low or no salt added ingredients like Worcestershire, hot sauces or sparkling sodas.

Here's to Your Health and to a Healthy Happy Hour on

WORLD HEALTH DAY!

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Make Some Fresh Rhubarb Juice for a Rhubarb Martini

IT'S THE SEASON FOR FRESH
RHUBARB MARTINIS

Rhubarb is one of the first food plants to be ready for harvest and comes into season in mid- to late spring (April/May in the northern hemisphere). You're going to start seeing some nice fresh stalks in your market soon so grab or make some Fresh Rhubarb Juice and prepare for some great Fresh Rhubarb Martinis!

INTERESTING LITTLE RHUBARB FACT:  Here in the States we think of Rhubarb as a fruit but it is really a vegetable!  Thanks to a decision by a New York court in 1947 it was designated as a fruit in the United States for the purposes of regulations and duties, a decision that also reduced in taxes paid!

Purchase the RHUBARB MARTINI RECIPE CARD Here

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Updated 8-2016

Happy National Peanut Butter & Jelly MARTINI Day!

Get the recipe for the

PEANUT BUTTER and JELLY MARTINI HERE

Here's your excuse to take a little trip back in time and enjoy that childhood favorite, Peanut Butter and Jelly only with an adult twist! The Peanut Butter and Jelly Martini is a little bit of your childhood lunchbox in a martini glass. . . .you'll feel like a kid again as you sip this nutty cocktail.

Serve it up with a side of potato chips to complete your lunchbox special Happy Hour - then maybe go out and play a game of jacks or hide and seek to burn off the calories.

*Ever wondered about where all these special commemorative holidays come from?

Read: NATIONAL WHATEVER YOU WANT TO CALL IT DAY.

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APRIL FOOL'S MARTINI for All Fool's Day aka April Fool's Day!

HOW TO HAVE THE
"LAST WORD"
ON APRIL FOOLS DAY.

If you're looking for a cocktail to trick your friends at Happy Hour today you've come to the right place. My April Fool's Day version of a classic Last Word Cocktail will fool them into thinking it's an Apple Martini - until they take that first sip.

The standard recipe for a Last Word is one part green chartreuse, one part in gin, one part Maraschino liqueur and one part lime juice garnished with a lemon twist or wedge. I just switched out the lemon twist for an apple slice. Mean, huh??

Set this green martini with the apple garnish in front of your drinking buddy and have your phone ready to record their first drink. They'll be expecting a sweet, apple flavored martini but they'll be pranked with an herb infused Green Chartreuse and Gin cocktail. That first sip should cause some classic funny faces for posterity and you can load it up on social media to share with your whole group the next day. Bingo, instant April Fool's cocktail joke.

Just in case, you might want to have a few real Apple Martinis on hand, but don't be surprised if they enjoy this martini after that first surprise as it's actually quite a nice cocktail. It is, however, quite a different flavor profile from the sweet apple they were expecting so you might want to back off a few feet just in case there's a few spit takes.

THE ORIGINS OF APRIL FOOL'S DAY

The true origins of the beginnings of April Fool's Day are not really known but there are a few theories of it's history. The most prominent one, and the most believable, is centered around the switch from the Julian Calendar to the Gregorian Calendar.

Prior to the late 1500's the Julian Calendar marked New Year's as March 25th, but because this date fell during a holy week, New Year's was traditionally celebrated on April 1st. When the Gregorian Calendar (aka the Western Calendar) was introduced by Pope Gregory XIII (after whom the calendar is named) by a decree signed on 24 February 1582, New Year's moved to the first of January.

Because communication was slow in those times much of the Western world was unaware of this new calendar for several years. There were also those who knew of the change but defied the Papal Bull and continued to follow the Julian Calendar, celebrating New Year's on April 1st.

According to legend these people were believed to be "fool's" by those who had adopted the Gregorian Calendar and these "fool's" were subjected to a variety of pranks and jokes, ridiculed for their "backwards" behavior. This practice continued for years as the world slowly adopted to the new calendar dates, eventually becoming so ingrained a habit it became a tradition which eventually spread throughout Europe by the 1800s and traveled across the pond to the American Colonies with English and French immigrants.

WHAT HUGE APRIL FOOL'S HOAXES DO YOU REMEMBER?

10 of the Top April Fool's Hoaxes

One April Fool's hoax that sticks in my memory is the one involving Taco Bell and the Liberty Bell: In 1996, Taco Bell took out an ad in The New York Times announcing that they had purchased the Liberty Bell to "reduce the country's debt", renaming it the "Taco Liberty Bell". White House press secretary Mike McCurry carried this April Fool's joke one step further during a press conference on the ad stating that the Lincoln Memorial had also been sold and would henceforth be known as the Lincoln Mercury Memorial.

I also remember the Left Handed Whopper from Burger King in 1998. The funny thing about that one for me was I remember thinking it was a great marketing ploy. I knew it was tongue-in-cheek but I didn't realize it was an April Fool's joke immediately because I forgot it was April Fool's that particular day. Once I stopped being my own kind of April Fool and connected the dots, I thought the campaign was even more clever!

QUOTES FOR APRIL FOOL'S DAY

You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time ~ Abraham Lincoln

If every fool wore a crown, we should all be kings ~ Welsh Proverb

Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me ~ Chinese Proverb

HAPPY APRIL FOOL'S DAY
& BE ON YOUR TOES!

Updated 4-1-2017

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Happy National Black Forest Cake MARTINI Day!

Did a little housekeeping!

Click here for the recipe. 

BLACK FOREST CAKE MARTINI

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WHAT'S THE BEST VODKA?

VODKA, VODKA, VODKA, VODKA*

I get asked all the time, "What's the best vodka to buy?" and I kind of consider that a loaded question.  When it comes to what "tastes good"  the first thing to be considered is the subjectivity of flavor.  Like food and art, a person's favorite flavors are determined by their own personal preferences, each person's unique palate will determine what "tastes good" to them.

Vodka is considered an excellent alcohol for mixing cocktails by many because it's said to be flavorless** however,  that is not completely the case. Traditionally made from fermented substances like grains, primarily wheat and rye, and/or potatoes, vodka is composed primarily of ethanol and water, but each vodka brand has a flavor, nose and backtaste of it's own stemming from the recipe and distillation processes used.

Though these differences are a subtle distinction, most "experts" would tell you that a good vodka has a smooth "finish" while a cheaper vodka will burn as it goes down your throat.  As for most of us - the non-experts - the video below is pretty revealing:

In the Happy Hour world of today there are literally hundreds of vodka brands on the market worldwide with new companies jumping on the bandwagon on a weekly basis.  The fight for domination of the vodka market continues and everyone wants to enter the fray and become the champion of the most popular liquor of this generation.  In order to do this they are pulling out all the stops with new flavor infused vodkas, sexy bottles, expensive packaging and branding campaigns that want to convince you that if your don't drink their vodka you are not Cool, Sexy, Young, Vibrant, Powerful, Intelligent, Rich or whatever other desire they can feed into to sell you their vodka.

So, can I tell you what is and isn't a "good" vodka? Not really.  I'm not a "vodka expert" by any means, and judging by the video above, not too many people are.  I don't drink vodka straight as a cocktail, for me vodka is my favorite liquor for mixing my martinis and that's because of it's subtle taste. What I can tell you is that a good vodka will not burn as it goes down your throat and the better made vodkas are, in my experience, less likely to leave you with a hangover because they have been filtered more and have removed more of the cogeners (toxins) that cause your body strife.  As for taste, I suggest you belly up to the bar at your local bistro and do some taste testing of various vodka brands to see which vodka goes down the smoothest and leaves you with an aftertaste you consider pleasant.

I will also tell you that price does not always reflect quality. Price reflects only two things; how much money was spent on the packaging and branding and what the market will bear.  It's a common belief that "expensive is better" and marketing people are well aware of this, it's simply a matter of how they decide to position their brand to their desire target demographic or market.

That being said I have to tell you I'm a sucker for a really cool, sexy or arty bottle - I can't help it, I'm an artist by trade and pretty things appeal to me.  So, instead of telling you what a good vodka is I would rather show you some of the coolest looking vodkas out there:

ED HARDY VODKA
Really cool "ink" tattoo art inspired branding with a beautifully designed crystal bottle.

Dan Ackroyd's CRYSTAL HEAD VODKA
An incredible skull head glass bottle inspired by the famous 13 crystal skulls found (to date) around the world.  The vodka itself?  Filtered through 500-million year-old crystals known as Herkimer diamonds.

MEDEA VODKA

A Technogeek boozers dream, Medea's bottle comes with it's own programmable LED Label! You can program up to six messages of 255 characters each and they will scroll across your bottle sending out whatever message you want to input! You not only get vodka, you get mood lighting and a cool way to light up your thoughts!

So, tell me, What's your vodka of choice and why?

*The word vodka comes from the Slavic word voda which translates as water and, according to the Gin and Vodka Association (GVA), it was first distilled in Russia in the late 9th Century. Other sources, such as the  Encyclopædia Britannica trace the birth of vodka back only to the 14th Century. 

**The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, the agency which governs spirits sold in the United States, vodka is defined as a neutral spirit "without distinctive character, aroma, taste or color."

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