This stuff is clean, crisp, made by a gin drinker because, well, he wanted his martini to be just so.  Sadly, Myriad is only available in PEI at the moment, not even in the rest of Canada.  I don’t feel too bad for the folks at Myriad though, because they have just about the most awesome life set-up I can imagine:

That’s the owners house in front, looking across his vineyards and out across Rollo Bay on Eastern PEI.  The distillery is in back after some gardens and more vineyard.

If you ever get up to PEI, Myriad is well worth the trip.  Really, any excuse to drive around such a gorgeous island should be welcomed.  And at the end of each day you can settle in for fresh oysters.  No better way to enjoy your gin.

EE’s favorite oysters were from Raspberry Point, which we happened across on our way to Green Gables…

And in one of the craziest infusions I’ve ever seen, this river in Nova Scotia is red and a little foamy from all the tannic acid in the peat that it filters through upstream!  We did a bit of swimming, but it was super cold.  Better to stay in the kayak.

EE on the Napier River in the Tobeatic Wilderness of Nova Scotia

I’ve learned some things:

1) kitchen torches are overkill for lighting things on fire: Raw Milk

2) I come from a long line of sophisticated mixologists: Home Bar Tours

3) batches are good for parties: Party Ritas

4) candy is for kids, not for drinks (and drinks aren’t for kids): Why, Empire Hotel? Why?

5) I still fall back on my classics most of the time -

Most days, over the summer in particular, if I find myself in a situation where I need to order a drink I order either a Manhattan, a Gibson, or a Negroni.  I’ve shown the first two here, but now we’ll have my favorite in celebration of my the TR anniversary.

THE NEGRONI

1 Gin

1/2 Campari

1/4 Sweet Vermouth

You can vary the proportions to taste, but this is the way I prefer to make them.  Sometimes I use Dolin’s Blanc vermouth to lighten the drink further.  You can shake this drink and serve it up, or stir it and serve it on the rocks.  I vary how I order it based on locale and how I want to experience the drinks – hot and sunny, on the rocks; cool crisp evening, up.  Garnish with citrus, or be lazy and don’t bother.

The Double E (in front of a lamp EE favors, but that I do not)

The Double E’s story begins when EE learned to order her cosmos with gin quite some time ago.  She got on alright ordering in this way (“I’d like a cosmopolitan, but with gin instead of vodka”) – which always resulted in one of the following:

- a very confused waiter who didn’t know what’s in a cosmo
- an eye rolling bartender who makes all pink drinks the same way regardless of the request
- a bartender who takes the opportunity to ask the other ingredients as well because he has no clue how to make a drink.

This pattern was smashed on a rooftop in rome one fine may evening. The astoundigly competent Italian waiter acted like he’d been talked down to and says, “of course, you want a swanky cosmo”.   This proper name provided no relief to EE’s subsequent ordering at other places, but it is a better order at home.

Fast forward to this spring when we got lazy about going to the store and ran out of cranberry juice.  The simple substitution was pomegranate.   This variant had no name, it was simply the illegitimate child of our irresponsibility, but one that EE took a shine to.  Then we went to a family weekend at a beach house and the drink earned a name.

Lo and behold, another person one could accurately refer to as EE (much less cute, more gruff, and harder to please with a drink, but still very loved) really liked this drink as did everyone else.  So I named the drink for its following of Double Es and began making pitchers of them everyday at about 5, you can guess where things went from there.

The Double E:

Ingredients

1 gin (I was using Bombay Sapphire)

3/4 Cointreau

1/2 Pomegranate Juice

Juice from 1/2 a lime

Combine ingredients over ice and shake well.  Serve up.

Infusion is the key to making home mixology sparkle.  Half the fun is making drinks that I can’t get in a restaurant or bar.  My home drinks are mostly distinguished by quality: most bars use mixes and shortcuts.  But increasingly, they are also distinguished by unique ingredients.

I’ve made mention of using various infusions already, but some questions I’ve received suggest that other home mixologists are still suffering from a crisis of confidence when it comes to infusing things on their own.

How to infuse?  Simply take some liquor and put something that provides a new flavor into the liquor.  Leave it overnight.  Strain out the non-liquid item.  DONE!

There are methods of hot infusion that some bars use for consistency.  I don’t have the inclination to bother.  I kind of like each infusion to be different.  It changes my drink-making inspiration.  That said, some infusions are simple and reliable:

1) Lavender and gin – Buy lavender at the store in the herb section.  Pick it fresh; don’t use the dried kind

2) Jalapeno and tequila – need I elaborate?  But watch out, because this can get VERY HOT.  It’s ok if it does… I just put in a little and use uninfused tequila for most of the drink

3) Dill and vodka – this is fantastic for bloody mary’s, or even a simple vodka-tonic.

And taking it to the next level, keep in mind the potential of infusions for:

• Ice.  Not even an infusion really, but you don’t risk a bottle of liquor being wasted.  Last year we hosted a Kentucky Derby event, and EE had the excellent idea of making mint-infused tea and turning it into ice cubes.  Just pour boiling water over whatever you want the ice to taste like, then freeze the water in ice cube trays.  This was great for the party, because it easily enabled guests to make themselves truly minty mint juleps.
• Gifts.  A shout-out to some of my Texan kin, who gave pineapple-infused vodka to various family members (including me, of course) for Christmas.  It was a very charming and obviously useful present.  Tessa loves a practical gift.  I shared mine with the crowd in the form of brunch blood  mary’s, and later, a refreshing evening cocktail involving tonic, lemon, and an ancient Galliano-like liqueur I found in my grandparents’ bar.

If you really want to go to the next level, you can start making you own liqueurs, but that’s a topic for another time.

(EE-craftiness: part of a heart garland.)

I love Valentine’s Day.  I view it as an ideal holiday, and strenuously disagree with those who consider it to be over-commercialized, depressing, and all the rest.  Valentine’s is a bright spot in in the otherwise desolate month of February (at least in the Northeast).  Even before the days of EE, I was always happy to invite a pretty lady to be my valentine (and in my limited experience, ladies always enjoy being a valentine).  What could be better than fine dining, and perhaps the exchange of an extravagant gift or two, with someone whose company I enjoy?  Share the love, that’s what I say.

(Only on Valentine’s Day will your friends give you this card.  Hopefully.)

This year, EE and I somewhat reinterpreted our traditional Valentine’s celebration: we threw a cocktail party!

We hosted about 30 guests, a mix of singles and couples, for the express purposes of Valentining and having cocktails.  The goal was not to provide dinner - it was to provide an extra oomph of glizt and glam (and maybe even gossip and drama) to whatever evening people may or may not have planned for themselves.

In preparation for this momentous event, I went to work creating some drinks that fit the occasion.  The challenges/criteria were:

• 3 colors – EE often thinks in colors, so we determined the need for a red drink, a pink drink, and a white drink.
• Glassware – we only have so many of each type of glass, and wanted to avoid plastic.  The drinks had to spread across tumblers, stemmed wine, and stemmed cocktail glasses.
• Flavors – needed more than one type of flavor profile for a range of drinkers.

The results were (bearing their Valentine names):

Passion

Color: Red

Glass: Tumbler

Flavor area: Bitter

Ingredients

1 Tequila

3/4 Campari

3/4 Blood Orange Italian Soda (I bought this at Whole Foods)

1/3 Sweet Vermouth

drop Orange bitters

A muddled cherry (buy the frozen ones)

Muddle the cherry, stir vigorously with ice and all ingredients except the soda.  Strain into serving pitcher, add soda and stir gently.  At the party, I mixed batches of these in a pitcher, which we put out with an ice bucket and the correct glassware.

Blush

Color: Pink

Glass: Cocktail

Flavor area: Lightly fruity, easily accessible gin

Ingredients

1 Bombay Sapphire

1/4 Domaine de Canton ginger liqueur

1/4 Kumquat liqueur (you have to make it yourself – a post for another time – substitute Cointreau)

half a Lime’s juice

drop of Cranberry juice

Combine all ingredients with ice in a shaker and shake vigorously.  At the party I shook up batches and funneled them into a good-looking clear liquor bottle that I had de-labeled and cleaned.  The bottle was then left in an ice bucket next to the correct glassware.

Lovely

Color: White (ok, it’s yellowy, like white wine is white.  But true white is a pain)

Glass: Wine

Flavor area: Light, aromatic, refreshing, and sweeter

Ingredients

2 Seltzer Water

1 White Wine (something dry and simple – I used an Austrian wine made by Berger)

3/4 St. Germain Elderflower Liqueur

1/4 Dry Vermouth

1/4 Dolin Blanc Vermouth

Combine all ingredients and stir.  Or, if using a siphon for the seltzer (a superior way to go), just add the seltzer last and allow the blast of seltzer to do the mixing.  For the party, I had some old french lemonade bottles with flip-tops that I put batches into and then topped with seltzer.  We left the bottles in a bowl with ice next to the correct glassware.

Note:  Sadly, we had such a good time at the party that we didn’t take any drink/party pictures.  Sorry, that was lame of us.  Here’s a final photo:

(My present to EE this year – they are antique sterling stirrer-straws. I was a little wary of giving her something cocktail-related, given it’s kind of my own hobby at all, but she does seem to like them very much.)

]]> http://www.tessinrinpoche.com/2010/02/15/a-valentines-threesome/feed/ 1 http://www.tessinrinpoche.com/2010/01/11/drinking-provence-or-an-insight-into-making-things-up/ http://www.tessinrinpoche.com/2010/01/11/drinking-provence-or-an-insight-into-making-things-up/#comments Tue, 12 Jan 2010 05:08:58 +0000 Bertessa http://www.tessinrinpoche.com/?p=744 When I make drinks for people, I am frequently asked how or why I created the drink.  To me the answer seemed obvious: grab some bottles, pour, mix, taste.  Upon reflection, however, I realized that I do always have some sort of target.  The inspiration for that target can take many forms. 

A drink target could involve an objective property of the drink being designed: flavor (spice, citrus, basil), glass-type (cocktail, highball, solo cup), color (red, clear, orange), garnish-use (onion, brussel sprouts, licorice)… really anything that describes some aspect of the drink.

Another drink target could be a concept, feeling, or vibe that the drink should impart.  This type of criteria is trickier because it is inherently more subjective, but it is often my most effective method when mixing for those I know and love the most.  Since I’m a home mixologists, most of my guests are in this category.

As an example of designing a drink by feeling, I have two recipes for the same feeling.  The two recipes are nice because they illustrate differences of interpreting the same mandate, and because one is simple, the other complex.

EE said to me one Thursday, when making omelettes – something she’s very, very good at –  ”I’d like a drink that tastes like herbs, like in Provence.”  Nevermind that neither of us have been to France outside Paris.  I thought I got the idea: fields of lavender, soft skies, not too sweet, not too anything. 

In my head, at least, I saw something like this:

Fields of Provence, with lavender flowertops and soft light, is a good example of a concept or feeling a drink can seek to capture.

The result was the light and relatively simple:  

Flowertops:

Ingredients

1 lavender-infused gin

1/2 Dolin blanc vermouth

1/3 St. Germain’s elderflower liqueur

5 drops lemon bitters

couple leaves of mint

Shake vigorously.  Serve up.  Garnish with a flower, piece of fresh lavender, or any herb you have around (you know, make it pretty).

Unfortunately (but not that unfortunately, as come on, we’re talking about mixology here), this isn’t what EE had in mind.  She refined her request by saying, “No, no, it needs to be red and yellow too!  Like a tablecloth.”  She was thinking of vibrant, Provence-style linens, and of something much more earthy.  Ah!  Got it.  The concept of rich, aromatic soil is a much more challenging flavor, because it is quite complex. 

The Provence-style linens EE was thinking of, to complement her omelettes.

Still Provence, but more earth, and red soil - the Terroir.

The result was a drink that got high marks for meeting the desired target, and for just being a great drink:

Terroir de Provence (Cheesy name, yes, but there are enough ingredients to merit the grandiosity.  As I say, I’ve never been there, so there’s a lot of tongue-in-cheek involved in this whole project):

Ingredients:

1 lavender-infused gin

1/2 sweet vermouth

1/2 St. Germain’s elderflower liqueur

1/3 basil-infused bourbon

1/3 Bols genever

splash of brandy

whisper of dill-infused vodka

a little freshly grated ginger

Stir.  Serve up with an herbal garnish (EE voted for a rosemary sprig).

Two great drinks (Flowertops for me, Terroir for EE) to accompany a simple meal at home. 

Bon apetit.

Cranberry-infused Gin with Tonic (plus some squirrel candles)

EE and I are uber-excited to be hosting Thanksgiving dinner this year!  Because we live far from our families, and because I’m working on Friday, we are staying in Manhattan.  This will be our first chance to see the parade, and our first major holiday together without the presence of relatives.  (Relatives that may be reading this: we are very sad not to see you.)  To make the best of the situ, we have teamed up with pals to build a guest list that is an ideal mix of friends, friendly colleagues, relatives of guests, and people we haven’t met.  I’m particularly fond of the last guest category as having people who I’ve never met at the table seems very in keeping with the sharing and giving themes of the holiday.

The most surprising aspect of planning for this Thanksgiving has been the manner in which people seriously consider the invitation to come over.  We kept hearing, “Sounds great, but I’ll only come if I can make and bring X, Y, and Z.”  This response has been a huge relief, because I’m not pressured to provide people with the special dish they associate with giving thanks.  For my part, I love the traditional Thanksgiving spread: turkey (ours is a bronze heritage bird raised on pasture upstate by Wendy), stuffing (I’m making oyster stuffing with my Grandmother’s recipe), pie (I can’t bake to my own standards - luckily others are providing this), etc.

The one aspect of the feast that isn’t embedded in any childhood traditions: a concept of perfect Thanksgiving cocktails.  This is an amazing opening for the home mixologist, and I’ve been working on ways to fill the void.

A few general principles I’ll be mixing by:

1. Have fun
2. Don’t judge; serve people what they want
3. Honor the season, somehow
4. If not the season, a well-worn concept of the Thanksgiving holiday

There are some challenges to consider:

1. Large groups
2. Diversity – just because you may be related, doesn’t mean you like the same drinks
3. Long time-periods (waiting for the turkey to cook)
4. Crowded kitchens

Some tactics I’ll be trying:

1. Infusion – easily (I promise, see below) handles principles 3 or 4.  An infusion allows a novel drink without too many ingredients to mix.
2. Long drinks – they’ll help people keep pace, be refreshed, and stay out of the kitchen.

Cranberry-infused Gin & Tonic

Infuse the gin

Buy some raw cranberries.  Take a jar, fill 1/8 with cranberries, just cover the cranberries with gin and muddle (basically just pop most of the cranberries).  Fill jar with gin.  Leave overnight to 24 hours.  Strain out the cranberries.

Use the infusion to make a Gin and Tonic as described here, but garnish with frozen cranberries instead of lime.

Refresher course on making a Tessin Gin & Tonic

Turkey Carver

Ingredients

1 Bourbon

1/4 Maraschino liqueur

1/8 Fernet Branca

1/8 Kahlua

Squeeze lemon juice

Stir the ingredients in a tall glass filled with ice and top with tonic.

Kitchen Commander

Ingredients

1 Rum (whatever you’ve got)

1/2 Stone’s Ginger

1/4 Cointreau

a few cranberries (frozen or otherwise)

Shake (have to break down the cranberries a bit).  Pour in a tall glass filled with ice.  Top with sparkling water.  Garnish with frozen cranberries.

160 Degrees (or Is The Turkey Ready?)

Ingredients

1 Bourbon

3/4 Stone’s Ginger

1/3 Pimms

dash Anisette

2 drops Peychaud bitters

Stir, strain into a cocktail glass.  Garnish with a lemon twist.

160 Degrees

Of course, wine will be served with the meal, but I’ll leave wine blogging to others.  Hopefully some of these drinks may inspire a cocktail or two at your festivities this week!

Some fun pics of the squirrels (they are way too fun; I can’t wait to light them):

Pomplamoose (the band) is awesome, as I’ve said previously.  Pomplamoose (the word) is awesome. Say it with me, slowly to appreciate it, Pah-mm-p-la-mmoooooo-ssse.  So fun.  I’m even going to say it again to myself.  Really, thank you France for creating such a cool word for a pretty lame fruit.

I’m OK with grapefruit. I went through a period in college when I ate them every day (I even own grapefruit spoons as a result), but I have never been that enthralled with the flavor – certainly not with the name.  Grapefruits neither taste nor look like grapes.  The world wide web tells me they are so named because they grow in clusters on a tree.  This seems like a poor naming convention, as grapes are also fruits and had claimed the cluster format first.  “Pomplamoose” on the other hand – that is a name that suggests the pithy food that is this strange pummelo-orange hybrid.

Luckily someone else already graphed grapefruit’s place in the world (though I’m not 100% in agreement on all counts):

A Pomplamoose is much cooler than a grapefruit, regardless of taste.

Me being who I am (someone with a mixology hobby, let alone a mixology blog), I decided that I needed to create a drink honoring Pomplamoose (the band) and Pomplamoose (the word), while improving upon Pomplamoose (the fruit).  There are grapefruit bitters commercially available, but I wanted to really taste the fruit in my beverage.  I was also feeling too lazy for the trek to the east side to buy them.  The main problem with really tasting the fruit is that grapefruit juice is pretty unbearable.  I overcame this problem, but it wasn’t cheap or easy.

The Tessin Rinpoche Pomplamoose is heaven:

A Pomplamoose, in one of our set of new (to us) vintage glasses

Ingredients

1 grapefruit juice

1 Bols Genever (other Dutch genever probably works, but British gin won’t)

1/3 Dolin Blanc vermouth (again, sorry, run-of-the-mill vermouth won’t work)

1/4 Agave nectar

1/4 Cointreau

drop absinthe (I mean a smidgeon, barely a drop)

Combine over ice and stir madly.  Do not shake this one – the genever doesn’t like it, the Dolin doesn’t like it, the absinthe doesn’t like it, and the cloudiness just isn’t desirable.  Strain into a cocktail glass.  Garnish with a twist (lemon – the twist is actually more than looks here).

This is a SPECTACULAR aperitif.  It is highly drinkable, yet palate cleansing.  I generally post drinks that most anyone could make easily, but sadly this one is a little less accessible.  There isn’t any strange technique involved, but some of the ingredients are a bit hard to find and they’re expensive when you do.  I’m sorry for that.  That said, these liquids are well worth the time and money.

Besides, you get to say to guests, “would you like a Pah-mm-p-la-mmoooooo-ssse?”

Then you can listen to the band:

I’d settle for aeroplanes having cocktail shakers, but I wouldn’t mind an aeroplane shaker…

I’m not exactly a frequent flier, and I don’t usually drink when I fly, but an overnight trip to Chicago gave me the opportunity to see what I could do with American’s coach beverage selection.  Since American also has wi-fi onboard, I can also write this blog (very awesome except that the people next to me get a sneak peak).

Making drinks in coach is no easy feat.  An evaluation of the circs:

Ingredients

• surprising range of basic liquors
• multitude of  high fructose corn syrup-based mixers
• citrus in tiny chunks (though I’ve never seen such tiny pieces of lime elsewhere)

Obstacles (freshness and quality complaints about the mixers aside) – lack of…

• Vermouths
• Liqueurs
• Bitters
• Hardware (mixers, muddlers, strainers)
• Garnishes (beyond those little citrus chunks).

On the big plus side, the flight attendants are way more accommodating than I feel they should be.  Their primary responsibility is passenger safety, they have a lot of people to serve, and yet they will humor some dude asking for random drink ingredients.

I understand that they don’t have room for everything on that cart, but really, just a little vermouth would open up a whole range of possibilities.  I’m sort of shocked that they haven’t started selling little martini sets in plastic shakers.  For $10 you could get a little souvenir shaker that comes with  gin and a tiny packet of vermouth.  They could provide the ice and a twist from the cart.  Some airlines are venturing into this realm, but my trip is for business, and hence getting where I need to go, on time, was my main consideration.

While the TSA’s 3-1-1 rule would easily allow for a baggie with ample liquor and vermouth to make drinks, we’re having fun here, not being weirdos.  Aside: EE preemptively forbade me from carrying around my own bitters, as some do with Tabasco, pepper mills, and artificial sweetener - actually not something I had thought of, and not a bad suggestion.

Drinks On A Plane – What I Came Up With

• Scotch & Ginger Ale.   I made this on the way out, last night, using Dewar’s white label, Canada Dry, and lime.
  1. Pour 1/3 the scotch over ice
  2. Top with Ginger ale
  3. Squeeze some lime
  4. Stir
  5. Repeat until the scotch runs out
  6. Resist the urge to drink the remaining ginger ale – it isn’t a good chaser

• Gin & Cranberry.   A classic.  I made it on my flight coming home tonight, using gin, cranberry, and lime.
  1. Fill 1/3 the glass with gin
  2. Top with cranberry juice
  3. Squeeze lime
  4. Stir
  5. Maintain the 1/3 gin, 2/3 juice ratio

Of course many other classics are possible on a plane:

• Gin & Tonic – always possible, but typically lacking enough gin to tonic.  An ideal situation, when traveling with 2 people, is to get 3 little gins and 1 tonic to make a drink for each of you.   For whatever reason, this feels more right to me on a train.  A discrete trip to the snack car and a return with 2 little G&Ts is a very sweet gesture, or so I’ve been told.
• Rum & Coke – debatable as to its classic cocktail merits, but it is definitely a good way to go if you just caught a flight for warmer climes.

Maybe I’ll be more prepared with ideas when I start my holiday travels.  Maybe there’s a reason I tend to abstain on planes.

Bloody Marys are the undisputed heavyweight in the daytime/brunch drink arena (sure, mimosas and champagne are typically present, but they aren’t as thick and strong tasting).  The problem with Bloody Marys is that many of them are very bad.  In fact, I can’t figure out why they haven’t faced a general ban resulting from the all-too frequent rail vodka poured into pre-made mix by a hungover waiter who is filling in as a bartender.  I get sort of worked up about how bad many Bloody Marys can be, because when they are well-made, they are really, shockingly, amazingly uplifting.

There are a few ground rules to making uplifting Bloody Marys:

1.  The critical ingredient in Bloody Mary preparation is coffee.  Do not attempt to make any brunch drinks without a cup of coffee helping you out.  In addition to increased alertness around the Cuisinart blades (crucial to not cutting your fingers off), many people will drink coffee around the same time that they drink the Bloody Mary you are making.  It is important that you season the drink to play well with coffee.

2.  The most important ingredient to the drink itself is fresh tomatoes.  Do not use canned juice.  Do not use something from a jug.  The only tomato in the thing should be the kind you buy whole.  Any tomato will work, but I believe campari tomatoes are best.  If campari are unavailable, go for grape or cherry.  The idea is to use a sweet tomato.

3.  Never, ever use vodka, unless something interesting and complementary is infused into it.  I learned this the first time I had a Bloody Mary that I really loved.  The bartender at Fortnum & Mason offered to make my drink with gin.  Liking gin, I agreed.  I have never looked back.  Always order your Bloody Marys with gin; you will have a more enjoyable drink even if you don’t usually drink gin.

Making the Drink

coffee, horseradish, Tabasco, lime, spicy pickles, celery salt, tomatoes, garlic salt, salt, Worcestershire Sauce, black pepper, more tomatoes

Unlike most things I post, this one has a lot of ingredients.  There is also substantial flexibility as to which ingredients one does or does not include.  You can vary it to suit your taste, or simply because you don’t happen to have something – totally fine.  Whatever substitutions you make, remember a few things:

1. Salt (lots) is a must! Raw tomato juice is horrible without salt.  If you remove a salty ingredient, replace the salt.
2. Spice is a must!  It doesn’t need to be killer, but it needs a little bite.
3. Citrus is good.  Tangy-ness really helps cut the mouthfeel of the drink and actually reduces the salt needed.

All that said, the recipe below will make about 1.5 liters of Virgin Mary (i.e., Bloody Mary mix).  If you combine that with about 0.5 liters of liquor, you’ll have at least 10-12 servings.

Today, our friends hosted and cooked; I brought the Bloody Mary’s in my trusty Tupperware pitcher.  They travel well.

Ingredients

4 pints tomatoes (seeded)

1/4 cup Worcestershire sauce

3 tablespoons spicy pickle juice (whatever you can find, but McClure’s pickles, available at the Brooklyn Larder, rock!)

2.5 teaspoons horseradish

1 teaspoon Tabasco

1 teaspoon chopped garlic

lots of salt (keep tasting and adding)

lots of coarse ground black pepper (keep tasting and grinding)

garlic salt

celery salt

First, seed the tomatoes.  This isn’t an absolute necessity, but the seeds are bitter and make the drink less pleasant to consume.  Not every seed has to be out, mind you.  My method is to cut all the tomatoes in half (width-wise) and then just squeeze the seeds out.  Basically, you just squish each tomato half and they pop out.

cut the tomatoes width-wise, as shown

Put all the tomatoes and other ingredients in a food processor or mixer (food processor will work best if you have one).  I throw in ingredients as I get tomatoes seeded.  This method allows me to taste as I go.

Fill a glass (tumbler or tall) with ice, add the liquor of your choosing – again, gin is the best go-to, but I used dill-infused vodka today (thanks to Sherry for this fabulous idea).  Pour in the mix you just created and garnish with olives, celery, and/or anything pickled.

Enjoy - the day is still young.