Happy belated Mother’s Day, everyone! Especially to all the mothers I’ve fisted.
Man, I’m seriously the worst. I called Satan on Skype the other day and he said I’m going to have a huge condo down in Hell, filled with angry mommy bloggers and food writers who hate me. He did mention that the view of the Third Circle will be nice. If you haven’t read it, I wrote a Mother’s Day post last year, which you can check out here.
Speaking of Hell, my life is still a mess. I try not to complain too much. Instead, I just watch the seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, and years slip through my fingers like grains of sand. Every moment is just part of the march to eternal darkness. Lay me in a grave right now. RIP, Dannis Ree.
I’m the funniest person ever.
Anyway, one of my favorite ways to cope with the giant void in my life is with alcohol. It’s a very healthy thing for someone to do. But really, I am going to say flat out that substance abuse isn’t actually hilarious, it’s very concerning. What is hilarious, however, is watching me run around wasted on the beach while wearing a bucket over my head in a full suit of medieval armor.
I was talking to my friend and a fan of The Pizzle, Davida (here’s her stuff on Twitter), and I told her I was looking to do more cocktails.
Then she said the magic words: Scope Julep.
I giggled like a child and said, “Davida, that is genius. It is possible to buy Scope without legal identification and it contains alcohol. Dannis Ree, you need to find other alcoholic beverages at the grocery store that you can buy without pulling out your driver’s license, and turn those into something that will pummel your engorged liver.”
I made some modifications to Davida’s idea and came up with three cocktails: The Rice Wine Spritzer, The Vanilla Extract Mint Julep, and The Scopejito.
This is another one of those posts where I highly, highly, recommend you do not do any of this stuff as some of it could potentially make you pretty sick. As someone who has nothing to lose, however, I’m cool with flirting with uncertain gastrointestinal issues.
The Rice Wine Spritzer is pretty easy.
Most drinks taste better with a garnish, so simply cut a half-wheel of lemon for the rim (job) of your glass. You can eat a slice if you want and make a funny face to put up on Snapchat or something.
The base of this cocktail is called mirin.
For those of you who only come here to see me hellbent upon my own destruction and do not know much about food, mirin is a sweet Japanese rice wine you use to season things like sushi rice and teriyaki sauce. It is very sweet and sometimes comes pre-salted, like the one you see in my photo.
You generally do not need an ID to purchase this beverage, which is 8% alcohol by volume. If you are a minor, don’t fuck around and just raid your parents liquor cabinet instead. If you’re a minor you should also probably not be reading this site.
Pour some of it (if not all of it) into a tall glass or champagne flute.
Next, just top off the glass with club soda!
That is all you need to do with a wine spritzer, which is the alcoholic choice of suburban mothers everywhere, who want to add just a touch of class to their daily morning routine.
Perch the lemon slice on the rim (job) and go to town!
Actually, don’t. I almost threw up after my first sip. As in, I involuntarily gagged. Mirin is very, very, syrupy-sweet, and the worst part about this drink is that it’s salted. Ever have salty wine? No? There’s a reason for that, and the reason is that you are much smarter than me.
Rice Wine Spritzer
- One small bottle mirin
- Club soda
- Fresh lemon slice, optional
Mix the two beverages in a glass and do not drink it.
A mint julep is a very famous drink from the south, but what many people do not know is that there are other variations.
Today, instead of the classic bourbon, I am using another high-octane alcoholic ingredient: Vanilla extract. You do not need identification to purchase this, as it’s mainly used for cooking and baking. It is legally required to have a minimum of at least 35% alcohol by volume.
Juleps are easy to prepare.
If you don’t want to bother with making a simple syrup (by boiling water and sugar together), you can go the lazy route and put mint leaves into a glass with some sugar. Take something like a wooden spoon or a muddler (a wooden rod for crushing aromatics), and crush the crap out of the sugar and mint. Doing this will bruise the mint and release its essential oils.
I used a ceramic pestle, but don’t do that in a glass cup like I did in the photo above because you can break the glass if you are not careful. This is not a glass julep recipe. Unless you want it to be.
Pour the 1 oz. bottle of vanilla into the glass and enjoy its beautiful smell.
Your mother came home one time reeking of vanilla, drunk off her ass, and it turns out she’d broken into a bakery and got into their stash. She can get really creative when it comes to getting inebriated.
Dissolve the sugar in the vanilla and mint mixture.
Or, alternatively, like I said, don’t do this at all. I’m pretty much begging you not to do it.
One of the most important parts of a julep is crushed ice, so put some in a high-powered blender on crush mode.
If you have a small cat named Cricket, make sure she is not in the kitchen when this happens. She will run away and hide, terrified. It is a very loud and scary noise and I actually shit my pants a little when I turned the blender on.
Your ice should look more or less like pebbles, flakes, or snow.
This type of ice makes juleps very difficult to drink sometimes. I always get my nose into the ice when I am drinking one.
Oh God.
The first sip of a Vanilla Extract Mint Julep goes down easy, just like someone I know. It smells nice, but it is not an easy beverage to keep drinking. The fresh mint makes it grassy, and the vanilla extract makes it taste like a floral perfume. After a while, it becomes bitter, and the alcohol starts to burn going down. After drinking about a quarter of this glass, my stomach started getting really upset.
I finished it anyway, due to an excess of self-hatred that lives deep inside my heart. I felt the alcohol, but I also felt the shame.
Vanilla Extract Mint Julep
- 4 leaves fresh mint
- 1 tablespoon granulated sugar
- 1 oz. bottle vanilla extract (the real stuff, not imitation)
- Crushed ice
Smash mint in glass with granulated sugar. Mix vanilla extract in, stirring until sugar is dissolved. Fill glass with crushed ice.
Get stomachache.
The last alcoholic abomination for today is The Scopejito, which is honest-to-God one of the dumbest ideas I’ve had in a while.
Scope mouthwash contains about 20 percent alcohol by volume. It also contains a lot of mentholated ingredients that don’t taste very good if you sip it straight (yes, I tried). Either way, it’s no good for you, which makes it perfect for me.
My Scopejito is a take on the mojito, a rum drink with lime and fresh mint.
Of course, instead of rum, I decided on Scope. Like the julep earlier, you need to muddle the mint with sugar along with the juice from half a lime, except in a taller glass.
Next, add the mouthwash.
This is horrible. I suppose if you want, you can also use Listerine, but Listerjito doesn’t roll off the tongue quite as well. Plus, this whole thing started from Davida’s idea of a Scope Julep.
I won’t fail you, Davida. Not like I’ve failed my parents as a childless son with no marital prospects or a steady job with retirement benefits.
Your drink should be a delightful shade of potential esophageal cancer.
But we’re not done yet. We won’t be done until I accidentally off myself with one of my recipes.
That took a left turn real quick.
Fill the glass with ancient ice from the freezer that tastes freezer burned because it has been sleeping in there for so long.
Top off the drink with a splash of club soda, garnish the rim (job) with a half-slice of lime, and you’re done. With everything.
So, uh.
I may have a problem. Because…I kind of liked the Scopejito. The first few sips are surprisingly drinkable, but the more I drank, the more I noticed a strange warming sensation down my food hole. Sure, it’s a little bitter and artificially minty, but with the melting ice cubes, I found myself surprisingly okay with the potentially toxic beverage.
If you’re worried, I made myself pour it out and I drank a warm cup of melted Velveeta instead.
The Scopejito
- 6 leaves fresh mint
- 2 tablespoons granulated sugar
- Juice of half a lime
- 2 oz. Scope mint-flavored mouthwash
- Club soda to top
Don’t.
I think Harvey and Mr. Bee are a little worried about me.
It’s okay, everyone. After a while we will all end up in the same place anyway. You probably think I’m talking about death, but you’re wrong. I’m talking about Taco Bell.
[Thanks again for the inspiration, Davida! •]
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