Does This Cocktail Make Me Look Old?

After crying in my Cosmopolitan upon learning that, according to More magazine, it makes me look old, I sucked it up (actually quite tasty with the added salt) and shopped More for a suitably youthful cocktail to serve my (hip) friends before dinner last night. Dinner was to be a Julia favorite, which called for a gin-based cocktail, so the choice was fairly easy -- I chose the prettiest one in the magazine. It was called the Cougar Baitini, aka The Northern Bramble. My friends first asked "why would a drink be named after a cat?", and after I forgave them their hip slip I explained what a More cougar was, and then confessed that when I read the name I heard it pronounced as buy-tini before my aha! moment -- cougar bait-ini -- get it? Sigh. We all needed a more youthful drink, and fast.


The drink is darned tasty -- decent gin (Boodles), fresh lemon juice and a little maple syrup shaken with ice and poured over crushed ice, then drizzled with enough cassis to make it look like a sunset -- garnished with blackberries and served with a fondue fork that can double as a swizzle stick and a blackberry fork. We made the first round, and immediately mixed a second, agreeing that no one should have any down time -- shudder.

Dinner, roast chicken on a bed of mixed greens, green beens with bacon, onions, and feta cheese, fresh baked bread, served with a red wine named "Low Hanging Fruit", was stellar. There's almost nothing like enjoying a meal with people you love, who love food, who aren't shy about breaking off a chunk of bread and scooping up watercress drenched in sauce.

The verdict on the cocktail, which we agreed should be forever known as the Northern Bramble? A veritable fountain of youth.