gin and tonic

HENDRICK’S GIN—confusing as always

I’m thinking maybe this should be…

Hendrick's Atheism Remedy

“Hendrick’s Theism Remedy”?

No matter. HENDRICK’S GIN has always confused me. The first time I tried it, I paired it with lime and tonic. I didn’t bother reading labels back then; I saw the word “gin,” and that said G&T to me. How strange it was to notice a weird, incongruous flavor intermingling with my citrusy mixture. What the hell was it? I struggled for several minutes, my fellow inebriates, not for a moment suspecting this novel taste to be…cucumber.

Yes, cucumber. The very things P and V eat voraciously during the summer—one of few vegetables they tolerate without complaint. In my gin. However did this come about?

Hendrick's gin

I do not know who David Stewart is—Annie Lennox’s Eurythmics partner, perhaps?—but one day he lurched into a rose garden looking for cucumber sandwiches and had a dubious stroke of genius: cucumber-flavoured gin. Thus HENDRICK’S came to market in the year 2000, boasting 11 botanicals (coriander seeds, angelica, chamomile, yarrow, lemon peel, orange peel, orris root, elderflower, caraway seeds and cubeb berries), and subjected after distillation to lashings of cucumber and rose essence.

If you enjoy sacrilege and you generally like weird things, HENDRICK’S may be for you. I like both, and I also like 41.4 percent alcohol, but goodness knows I have to find a better mixer if any more HENDRICK’S comes into the house. Perhaps, if I pray hard enough, my parents will think of something.

 

 

BOOMSMA YONGE GENEVER—Here’s to you, Miss P, poor kid

My Fellow Inebriates,

Miss P accidentally left her spelling words at school today. With a ten-word test looming tomorrow, we had no choice but to try to imagine what ten words might be on the list. Our only clue:

The words relate to the province of Ontario.

“How many do you remember, P?”

“Um, none.”

“You don’t remember any words on the list?”

“Zero.”

Wow. This from a kid who remembers the name of every damn pony in that kingdom of ponies she and V are collecting. OMG, what the hell are those things called? I can’t remember.

my filly

Fortunately, as we tried to guess P’s spelling words, she was able to confirm when we hit one. By bedtime we’d scored seven:

  • Ontario

  • Niagara Falls

  • Toronto

  • Great Lakes

  • Ottawa

  • curling

  • hockey

She didn’t want to do it, but Dad made her copy each one out multiple times. In the morning she’ll at least have seven under her belt, and she can try to cram the other three into her brain when she gets to school.

Except Dad had spelled “Niagara” like “Viagra.” Which meant P had copied “Niagra” ten times on her practice sheet, effectively cramming her head with a misspelling.

bOOMSMA

By that point she didn’t care. She’d already had too much drama. Forgetting your spelling list at school is apparently a big deal, and she’d cried actual tears. Four hours earlier she’d been stung by a bee. She was stressed about the odor her orthodontic Schwartz appliance container has taken on (it’s bad). And Mum had suggested she eat vegetables.

If I could have offered P a gin-and-tonic I would have. But I couldn’t, so I had one myself. Made with BOOMSMA, now down to the dregs following our recent Shoot-Out, it was pretty good. Not BROKER’S good or even GORDON’S good, but pretty good. BOOMSMA is a creeper. It’s light and slightly sweeter than typical London Dry gin, which tempts you to add more to your tonic, which I couldn’t because everyone had emptied the bottle. When it was gone, I felt a little like P. Worn out.

Cost of the new LBHQ?