A Dirty Martini

This site was not started to be only me opining about issues of the day. I want to make sure I balance it a little with other topics about which I am passionate.

So, today, I will talk about martinis (my wife, my kids, cigars and scotch and other passions will come in later posts).

The Dirty Martini is the namesake drink of my blog site. It is my favorite martini.

Martinis were an American invention. There are several theories about the origin of the martini. The most accepted account is that the Martinez (the original name for the drink) was most likely invented in Martinez, California, where a plaque commemorating the birth of the martini can be found on the north-east corner of the intersection of Alhambra Avenue and Masonic Street.

The current day martini is a descendant of the Martinez, an older, sweeter cocktail consisting of two ounces of sweet vermouth, one ounce Old Tom gin (a sweetened variant), two dashes maraschino cherry liquid, and one dash bitters, shaken with ice, strained, and served with a twist of lemon. The earliest known reference to the Martinez is found in The Bon Vivant's Companion: Or How to Mix Drinks (1887 edition), authored by "Professor" Jerry Thomas, the head bartender at many famous watering holes, including the Occidental Hotel in San Francisco.

Thomas had a client who took a ferry from the Occidental Hotel on Montgomery Street to Martinez, then the state capital of California, every morning. Thomas mixed him the Martinez to keep the morning chill off, and named it after his client's destination. Distilled spirits in the 1800s were not regulated as they are today, and were sold at cask strength—upwards of 135 proof. Over time, the strength of the spirits decreased and smaller quantities of mixers were needed to make them palatable. Now it is more common to see a martini made with little or no vermouth.

Today we also see that Vodka has replaced Gin as the predominant ingredient in a martini. Purists, however, still believe that a true martini is made with Gin and not Vodka. Personally, I like them both but I lean toward Vodka as my main ingredient.

Here is the thing about martinis: as with any other drink you make the key to a great cocktail is the use of QUALITY ingredients. Life is too short to drink cheap booze, unless your budget can only afford the call brand varieties.

Using the lesser quality ingredients can be somewhat rectified by the next most important ingredient in making a martini – make it COLD! When I shake my martinis I do so until I can no longer hold the shaker in my hand. I mean that literally.

Next, I like to chill my cocktail (martini) glasses in the freezer. You may also chill one by adding ice and water to a glass but I find the freezer just makes it taste better. There is something about the martini glass fogging up after I remove it from the freezer that makes the anticipation of the martini more heightened.

I have a spread sheet with almost 700 recipes that I have been accumulating since 2000. When I see and interesting recipe I add it to my list. There is no way I will be able to drink all of them (without a liver transplant) but they’re fun to collect.

The last element of a martini is the garnish. In that list of recipes I have garnishes that include lemon twists, orange twists, olives (with a variety of stuffing’s), chocolate syrup, candy canes, various rimming sugars and the list goes on. I also purchased some stainless steel martini olive skewers in the shape of swords. They are cool!

Another thing I have found is a lady named Tracy Lolita Yancey that designs themed, hand painted martini art glasses. On the bottom of the glasses is a recipe to try. These are way cool and make great gifts for the martini lovers in your life.

So, here is the namesake recipe for my blog site:

The Dirty Martini
3 parts Vodka or Gin (make them the best quality you can afford)
½ part dry vermouth (personally, I either use a vermouth spritzer, or swirl the vermouth in glass and drain it, or use no vermouth at all)

Olive brine

Olives (either pimento stuffed or bleu cheese stuffed – and stuff the bleu cheese in yourself. Don’t buy the bleu cheese stuffed olives that are stored in oil)

Add the vodka or gin and your vermouth preference to a shaker filled with ice. Shake it until you cannot hold the shaker in your hand anymore. Strain into your very chilled martini glass. Add 2-3 tsp of olive brine (more or less to taste) and garnish with your olives.

Find a place to sit, relax and enjoy! You earned it.

A-6Dude

Beer Drinking is Destroying the Planet?

I was finally ahead of the curve. As you can tell from the title of my blog, martinis are my drink of choice (and scotch, too). And we here at Dirty Martini ARE green (okay, so it’s just me and green is the color of a lot of my titles and banners).

Based on the article I read today, I am relieved to know that since I quit drinking beer as my predominant adult beverage of choice, I have reduced my contribution to global warming.

And, I am a firm believer in climate change. I see the weather change on a daily basis. I also know from my own research that the earth warms and cools about every 1500 years.

When I saw the headline I thought that the beer story was going to be about the end by-product of carbohydrate fermentation in our intestines (methane). We all have heard how cows and other ruminants are destroying our planet by farting. And when we drink beer – most of us fart too.

But this Canadian government sponsored study didn’t find that it was the consumption and expulsion of the beer that we evil humans do to make our planet warmer. It was worse than that. It appears that some of us actually like to keep our beer cold. Yes, some of us actually have ….. a beer fridge. Not just the one in our kitchens, but some people have a second refrigerator to store beer.

They actually paid someone to survey refrigerator usage!!

But wait! You gotta hear this…. "People need to understand the impact of their lifestyles," British environmental consultant Joanna Yarrow tells New Scientist magazine. "Clearly the environmental implications of having a frivolous luxury like a beer fridge are not hitting home. This research helps inform people — let's hope it has an effect."

Of course, even if beer was my beverage of choice, I would have to fight for space in my “second” reefer with all of the juice boxes that I store for my kids and the neighborhood kids to consume. I can now tell them that they are causing global warming by wanting cold juice boxes in the summer.

Is having a second frig a “frivolous luxury”? I might concede that it is a luxury…but it’s not frivolous. I work hard and if I have some extra money after my bills are paid then who’s to say what is frivolous or not. It's my money!!!

"Sorry kids, there’ll be no more juice boxes. And there’ll be no more fun till morale improves, either."

Of course, I think all of this is garbage. But it would take way too many blog postings to address the farce that I think the man-made global warming issue is.

To hear these people, it seems that the world would be better off without mankind. We are the nature’s biggest enemy. But the last time I looked, we WERE part of nature. But when you hear the wacko environmentalists talk it’s like we are some alien life form that is not of this world and our sole mission to destroy it. Hell, aren't we destroying the planet by exhaling? Isn't that CO2? Aren't we a carbon-based life form?

I definitely am for taking care of our planet. Having been around the world, literally, I can tell you that this is a beautiful place. And there are a lot of sensible things we humans can do. Being good stewards of our planet is the right thing to do. And, as our technolology advances it will allow us to do things more efficiently. But it seems these wackos want to take us back to the days before electricity. Our technological advances are ruining everything. But heck, we could become hunter-gatherers again and we could eat the moose that are dumping 2,100 kilos of CO2 into the environment each year.

But the folks that did the study had a different answer….

“University of Alberta researcher Denise Young, who led the study, suggests that provincial authorities hold beer-fridge buy-backs or round-ups to eliminate the threat — methods that Americans use to get guns off the streets.”

I can see it happening now….government officials storming people’s garages and seizing those ‘frivolous’, beer-can chilling refrigerators. Those old fridges will be chained and carted off to some undisclosed location to go through re-education training and, if they rehabilitate successfully, they may find their way back into society in a ‘one refrigerator’ home...the way their God intended.

And this is what they want for their Religion of Environmentalism….more governmental control of our lives. That way they can get rid of evil capitalism and everything evil that it spawns.

So I’m not likely to get rid of my ‘frivolous luxury’ anytime soon. Nor am I inclined to tell my kids that beer is the only beverage allowed in my ‘frivolous luxury’. As I said, beer isn’t my number one drink of choice. But....

Perhaps I will buy more olives for my dirty martinis and keep them out there.


A-6Dude


Here is another good martini recipe for the Christmas season:

Frostini: this is like drinking dessert!
-equal parts vanilla vodka / Godiva Dark Chocolate liqueur / Bailey's
-splash of cream
-shake ingredients over ice
-pour into a COLD martini glass
-garnish with a Hershey's kiss or rim the glass with chocolate