Making sense of a 103 degree day.

Today was hot.  The first really hot one of the summer—103 to be specific.  Just to keep things interesting, the power also went out for a couple of hours.  Well, not surprisingly B wanted something refreshing to combat the ill effects of such a concatentation of circumstances.  I got to browsing through Dale Degroff’s (of Rainbow Room fame) The Essential Cocktail and decided on the Tom Collins, which he describes as “…producing a wonderful summer drink that’s much more interesting that a gin and tonic”.  Just the ticket…

Tom Collins

• 1 1/2 oz. London Dry Gin
• 1 oz. Simple Syrup
• 3/4 oz. Fresh squeezed lemon juice
• Seltzer
• Maraschino Cherry and an Orange Slice

Combine the gin, syrup and lemon juice.  Shake and strain into a tall collins  glass with ice.  Top up with seltzer and garnish with a cherry and an orange slice.

So, a couple of notes… The book recomends club soda. Personally, I never touch the stuff; it’s like drinking baking soda, so the soda siphon is the way to go. Also, oranges aren’t in season right now, so in spite of the fact that we live in the land of oranges, they look like crap and cost more than a forclosed house, so no on the orange slice right now.  Finally, we both though that the drink was a bit sweet, so I think in future we would put in 3/4 oz. syrup and 1 oz. lemon juice.

What’s the conclusion?  It really is a refreshing bit of summer, and we agree… It is better than a gin and tonic.  Now if you’ll excuse me, I am going to go concentrate on sweating.