My first cocktail for Access Carolina, I make a Halloween-inspired cocktail, Jason’s Revenge. This features Scapegrace Gin from New Zealand and Apologue Spirits
https://www.foxcarolina.com/video/2022/10/21/spooky-cocktail-jason-revenge/
In the third installment of Books Over Drinks, M. Judson had bestselling author Mary Kay Andrews in town to promote her new book, The Homewreckers (St. Martin’s Press, 2022). From the author’s site:
Hattie Cavanaugh went to work helping clean up restored homes for Cavanaugh & Son Restorations at eighteen; married the boss’s son at twenty; and was only twenty-five when her husband, Hank, was killed in a motorcycle accident.
Broken hearted, but determined to continue the business of their dreams, she takes the life insurance money, buys a small house in a gentrifying neighborhood, flips it, then puts the money into her next project. But that house is a disaster and a money-loser, which rocks her confidence for years to come. Then, Hattie gets a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity: star in a beach house renovation reality show called “The Homewreckers,” cast against a male lead who may be a love interest, or may be the ultimate antagonist. It’s a question of who will flip, and who will flop, and will Hattie ever get her happily-ever-after.
Filled with Mary Kay Andrews’s trademark wit, warmth, junking trips, and house porn, The Homewreckers is a summer beach delight.
With that in mind, I wanted something that would match the beach read-i-ness of the book (and all of Andrews’s books, from what I’ve gathered over time). Thus the Savannah Sunrise. It’s simple and light, and can be made lighter by cutting with club soda (or turned into a blended frozen drink on especially hot days).
Note: I’d also garnish with a mint leaf for color, but we were batching 80 cocktails and speed/efficiency was the name of the game.
Method: Add all ingredients to shaker with ice except grenadine. Shake well and pour into a Collins glass with ice. Drizzle grenadine on top. Garnish with a mint leaf.
One of the things I realized, quickly after starting working with the fine, fine folks at M. Judson for Books Over Drinks was that I enjoyed the challenge of working with books by authors that I didn’t know. It’d be one thing to create a cocktail for a book by an author I’ve read everything from (in case you want a drink, TC Boyle, you just say the word), but getting to experience new books by different voices is surprisingly fun. For this round, I was tasked with coming up with a drink for Kimberly Brock’s The Lost Book of Eleanor Dare. From the author’s website:
The fate of the world is often driven by the curiosity of a girl.
What happened to the Lost Colony of Roanoke remains a mystery, but the women who descended from Eleanor Dare have long known the truth lies in what she left behind: a message carved onto a large stone and the contents of her treasured Commonplace Book. Brought from England on Eleanor’s fateful voyage to the New World, her book was passed down through the fifteen generations of daughters who followed as they came of age. Thirteen-year-old Alice had been next in line to receive it, but her mother’s tragic death fractured the unbroken legacy and the Dare Stone and the shadowy history recorded in the book faded into memory. Or so Alice hoped.
In the waning days of World War Two, Alice is a young widow and a mother herself when she is unexpectedly presented with her birthright: the deed to Evertell, her abandoned family home and the history she thought forgotten. Determined to sell the property and step into a future free of the past, Alice returns to Savannah with her own thirteen-year-old daughter, Penn, in tow. But when Penn’s curiosity over the lineage she never knew begins to unveil secrets from beneath every stone and bone and shell of the old house and Eleanor’s book is finally found, Alice is forced to reckon with the sacrifices made for love and the realities of their true inheritance as daughters of Eleanor Dare.
In this sweeping tale from award-winning author Kimberly Brock, the answers to a real-life mystery may be found in the pages of a story that was always waiting to be written.
The inspiration for this drink came from the beautiful cover, specifically the peacock feathers. To capture their essence, I used butterfly pea flower tea, which changes color when it interacts with acid. (You can read the science behind it at Bon Appétit.) From there, I added some rum and a few other ingredients, and voila!
Method: Add rum, tea, and simple syrup to a shaker with ice and shake well. Strain into a glass with ice. Top with lemon and lime juice and stir to see the color change.
A few weeks ago, I was attending an event at my local indie bookstore, M. Judson Booksellers, to celebrate the launch of my friend Taylor Brown’s incredible new book Wingwalkers — y’all need to read it, by the way — when I had an idea. The event, Books Over Drinks, gives you a chance to meet the author, hear them read, get a copy of a book and a cocktail (or beer/wine if you prefer). That night, because of the book, we were having Paper Planes. It was a perfect pairing. After the event, I went up to the owner of the shop and offered up a proposition — I’d be happy to come up with the custom cocktails and serve them if she gives me a copy of the book to work with and allows me to be at the event. She agreed. Easiest win-win ever, in my opinion. Thankfully, M. Judson had a couple in the immediate future, so I got to work.
The first event I participated in was with Katherine Reay and her new book The London House (Harper Muse 2021). From the author’s site:
An uncovered family secret sets one woman on the journey of a lifetime through the history of Britain’s WWII spy network and glamorous 1930s Paris in an effort to understand her past, save her family, and claim her future.
One call could bring ruin to her family name.
Caroline Payne thinks it is just another day at work when she receives a call from Mat Hammond, a doctoral candidate, who has uncovered a dark and scandalous family secret: her British great-aunt defected to the Nazis to marry her German lover.
The letters tell a different story.
In search of answers, Caroline flies to London to search her grandmother’s diaries and her aunt’s letters. In them she discovers the “Waite girls” and a time of peace and luxury in the interwar years that is beyond anything she ever imagined. But the buoyant tone quickly changes as the sisters grow older, fall in love with the same man, and one leaves home to join the glamorous art scene of 1930s Paris—all amid the rumblings of war.
But history won’t let its secrets go so easily.
The more Caroline learns, the more questions she has. Together Caroline and Mat work to dig out answers, uncovering stories of spies and love, of family rifts, and of one fateful evening in 1941. Will the truth they uncover heal the decades-old family wounds, or will they tear the family even further apart?
From this, I knew I had to use gin, and I wanted to use other ingredients that evoked London. So, tea (naturally).
Note: This one is great hot, too.
Method: Add all ingredients to a shaker with ice and shake well. Strain into a glass with ice and garnish with a lemon wedge.
