There’s nothing more refreshing, especially when it’s suddenly hot again. Yes, that brilliant pink color is just from a few raspberries!

For two glasses of lemonade:

• 3 lemons (save slices for garnish)
• simple syrup
• 6 ripe red raspberries
• sparkling water

Juice the lemons and add simple syrup to taste (I don’t put much in; you will probably want more). Combine with the raspberries and ice in a shaker. Shake well and strain into two tall glasses with ice. Fill with sparkling water, stir, and garnish with lemon slices. Add vodka if you must for an adult beverage, but this is a treat all by itself.

Here’s an easy cocktail this week (and it doesn’t even involve gin!)

1 sugar cube
bitters (try Peychaud’s)
Champagne

Soak the sugar cube in bitters and place in bottom of flute. Fill with champagne. Sit back and watch it sparkle!

Did you ever have one of those days? Maybe one of those weeks? Here’s something that will pick you up and set you right again. And when you’re done, there’s a delicious cherry waiting for you in the bottom of the glass.

(The name comes from the old days of serious drinking, when one of these would have been the morning hangover cure. Yes, morning! We can’t recommend it until happy hour, though.)

The Corpse Reviver (no. 2)

Ingredients:
1 ounce gin
1 ounce Lillet Blanc
1 ounce fresh lemon juice
1 ounce Cointreau
1 drop absinthe or pastis

Procedure:
Add all ingredients to a cocktail shaker; fill with ice and shake well. Strain into a chilled cocktail glass. Garnish with a cherry.

We’re starting to see tons of beautiful, delicious strawberries at the farmer’s markets. While you can just add sliced berries to sparkling wine, here’s another way to enjoy their juicy sweetness.

Strawberry Smash

3 strawberries, hulled and washed
6 mint leaves (or try basil!)
muddle these in a shaker, then add:

1 oz. gin
1/2 oz. lemon juice
1/2 oz. simple syrup

Shake and strain into a flute, then fill with sparkling wine and garnish with another strawberry.

Strawberry Booties

If you are looking for the ultimate in Spring accessories for baby, it doesn’t get any more adorable than these strawberry booties. The booties are worked in fingering weight yarn on US#1 needles. The pattern is by Kathy Popadin and is a paid download. Try these in O-Wool 2-ply for an all organic and sustainable option!

Photo by Shake Your Booties

Your cocktail for the day!

2 oz. Cognac
1 oz. Cointreau or Grand Marnier
3/4 oz. fresh lemon juice

Shake with ice and strain into a chilled cocktail glass.

The Sidecar is a true classic cocktail, the earliest printed recipe for which dates to 1922. While there are many stories about the origin of this drink, all of them refer to a regular bar patron who frequently arrived at his local watering hole in a motorcycle sidecar. Don’t skimp on quality and you’ll have a truly delicious, delicately scented, citrusy cocktail that is the perfect way to cap off a long evening of knitting.

This week’s featured cocktail is Silver Bells, which is a wonderful little thing available from our neighbors at Vermillion Restaurant. The drink was created by Vermillion’s former bar manager Aisling Fitzpatrick.  It has been an annual holiday time treat for 3 years and recently won “Best Martini in Alexandria” at the Chamber of Commerce Martini’s and Mistletoe event.  The Silver Bells combines vanilla vodka, lime, ginger syrup & sparkling wine and is delicious! It is definitely a favorite among the yarnistas here.

To try out this drink, join us at a Vermillion Happy Hour: Monday thru Friday, 4pm til 7pm- in the bar and lounge area. Their happy hour features house cocktails, wine, draft beer and appetizers for great prices – apps are $4 each, drinks range from $3 to $5!

We had a punch at Tea and Tweed last night and folks were asking for the recipe. It is amazingly simple but oh so delicious:

Two bottles of lemon soda (Whole Foods brand is what I used last night)

Two pints hibiscus sorbet (again, Whole Foods brand)

Put it all in a punch bowl and break up the sorbet and there you have it! Add vodka if needed…

The Star Cocktail is a classic apple brandy cocktail which made an appearance in print in George J. Kappeler’s 1895 bartending guide, Modern American Drinks. It’s a pleasant, well-rounded drink and a close relative of the Manhattan. Get Laird’s Bonded apple brandy if you can, as the “blended” version of the stuff contains a significant portion of neutral grain spirit.

1 oz apple brandy
1 oz sweet (red) vermouth
3 dashes Peychaud’s bitters
lemon twist for garnish

Stir with ice and strain into a chilled cocktail glass.

This week, we’re giving one last hurrah to summer with a superb cocktail from Portland mixologist Jeffrey Morganthaler: the Richmond Gimlet. It has the brilliant freshness of lime combined with the subtly infused flavors of Tanqueray 10, topped off with a hint of mint.

2 oz Tanqueray No. 10 gin
1 oz fresh lime juice
1 oz simple syrup
large sprig mint

Shake ingredients well over ice and strain into a chilled cocktail glass.

This week’s featured cocktail is the Garnet. It’s refreshingly sweet and tart, with a gorgeous color, too. Just the sort of thing you want in your hand to perk you up at the end of the week.

1.5 oz Tanqueray 10
.75 oz Cointreau
1 oz  POM Wonderful pomegranate juice
1 oz fresh grapefruit juice

Shake on ice and strain into chilled cocktail glass. Garnish with a flamed orange peel.

This week’s cocktail of the week is inspired by the Dog Days of Summer event this weekend, which will host the Italian Greyhound Rescue.

Photo courtesy of drinkswap.com

The Italian Greyhound

1 1/2 oz gin

5 oz grapefruit juice

Campari

Stir gin and juice with ice and serve in a tall glass over ice. Float the Campari over a barspoon onto the top, and serve.  Garnish with a lime wedge.

My favorite cocktail of all time is the Pisco Sour. I drank many many of these little guys when I lived in Peru in 2002. They are creamy and yet sour, refreshing and packed with punch. So in honor of our recent yarn tasting event with the Mirasol Yarns, I present to you the Pisco Sour. If this is entirely too much work, my recommendation for the best pisco sour in the area is the Magestic Cafe or Restaurant Eve, who have the same recipe for pisco sour and whose bartenders are committed enough to shake this thing until it is frothy and wonderful.

Ingredients:

• 1 egg white
• 2 1/2 ounces Pisco (now available at the ABC store!)
• 1/2 ounce simple syrup
• 3/4 ounce fresh lemon juice

Put all the ingredients in a shaker with ice  and shake for a long long time…LONG TIME! Then pour into a martini glass and dribble a bit of Angostura Bitters on top.