Another Cloudy Friday...

One forgets how deeply strange Spring can be from year to year, no matter how many times one (in this case yours truly) has been through it. Right now, I'm looking out the window high atop the Potter building at a sulky grey sky that's actually some sort of misty moisty thing trying to burn off, although it's almost noon and it should have done that by now. Maybe the weather is feeling as lazy as I've been. But it's cooler, at least...

COOLER at least, you say? You want COOLER in the spring? Yeah, I do. It was 91 degrees in our swanky neighborhood near you earlier this week, and we're talking full-bore Hudson River Valley 91 degrees: schweaty schweaty sweat. I staggered into a few shops in a fever dream in search of sleeveless girly tops that I hadn't worn to death last August. Decided I was too hot to try anything on, and staggered back out.

Today, it's 55 degrees, and it'll get a little warmer, but not much. It was warm enough on Sunday last to have Easter dinner outside--and to HAVE to grill the lamb because roasting it in the house would have made the folks gathered there to celebrate the Resurrection miserable. That is, if they hadn't all been outside, anyway. It's been so unseasonably hot here that I'm sort of lost in time. WAS last Sunday actually only Easter? It could be June...or early September...or late July. The ancient apple tree just outside my office, having miraculously cheated death once again despite the nasty winter storms of only about a month and a half ago (!!), is in bloom. We'll have apples again in the fall, but who knows what temperature it'll be by then?

The knee-jerk thing would be to make a blender drink with melons and rum and mint, but I'm resisting that for now. I've been into a lot of antique gin drinks lately, and I think we'll be enjoying this one today, in honor of Robyn Hitchcock's new CD, released just around the time the temperature started going nuts.

The English Rose

2 oz gin (I'm thinking Plymouth, nothing too funky. You could use Hendricks, I think, too)

1 oz dry vermouth

1 oz apricot-flavored brandy

1/2 oz lemon juice

1 tsp real grenadine

Shake hard, serve up, garnish with a brandied cherry.

The Internet Cocktail Database suggests a sugar rim for this drink, but I'm thinking that unless you pretty much doubled the amount of lemon juice, it would be too sweet that way. And you should ABSOLUTELY taste before you shake--a little less apricot brandy and a little more lemon juice might be more to your liking.

It sort of fits this week--a recipe I'm still playing with to see if it's going to be sweet or tart. Kinda like the weather.

See you at four Eastern on Randoradio.com!!