State of Wonder Margarita

If you have deduced anything about me, one of things is the propensity to take things too far, deep cut through the layers (usually, hopefully in the best way).

I started messing around with these flavors partially inspired by Ann Patchett’s book, “State of Wonder”, and my friend and amazing business coach Tiffany Napper asking me to be a part of her first JOY Session. Something a little wild, full of flavor, steeped in wonder….

So, while I can get all existential and in my feels and ruminate on literally everything in the Universe, I will keep those thoughts to myself and give you this amazing drink for the hot weekend we’re about to have. And pro tip? Use the Rose Aleppo Salt from Sip’n Bite for your glasses because it is * chef’s kiss * a game changer.

Cheers!

Snow Day Sno Cone - But Make it Adult

I really cannot take credit for this, because until our group text received a message from my friend Kate that stated, “I put a container outside to catch the sleet for sno cones, you can thank me later,” I really had no idea.

So, thank you, Kate.

So that afternoon, post sleeting, now with a bucket about a quarter of the way full of the most tiny, perfect spheres of ice, I braved the cold and it was time to play. Kitty’s Cigar + Cocktail Lounge was open for business, even if just for myself since my roommate and boyfriend refused to come outside. I decided to go three different ways with this, to touch on a few different flavor profiles, I would just recommend to make sure all liquids are as cold as you can get them before pouring over so that the ice doesn’t melt as much.

We’ve got Chocolate + Bourbon, Pineapple Honey + Tequila, and a touch of the warmer weather with Banana Cream Rum.

So, bundle up yourself (and the kids, if you must) and head outside to enjoy. Pro tip, wear gloves. Recipes are at the bottom.

Don’t slip.

Wild Wednesdays - Stock the Bar - Part 1

The latest version of bar hopping is traveling from the kitchen table to the wine rack on the other side of the fridge, and deciding what you want from a menu is staring at your supplies and deciphering what ingredients you have to make something and the exasperation and exhilaration of yelling above the din of strangers and music to a bartender who you contemplate slipping your number to at the end of the night has now been exchanged to barking an order at your roommate or partner for a Gin + Tonic, heavy on the gin because the Zoom calls today…

The rise of the at-home bartender is at an all time high. Covid has taken away ease of accessibility of our favorite bars and restaurants (but if they’re still open, go order something from them right now). Maybe it’s instilled a sense of curiosity or given you the courage to tackle the seemingly tall task of conquering a cocktail. I get messages from friends or followers who are at the store and staring at the never ending aisles wondering what to buy, so I decided to give this very ambiguous overview for a starting point.

First of all, let that intimidation fall away. There are so. Many. Options. It’s ok if you didn’t buy the same top shelf bourbon as your friend or you can’t tell the differences between gins yet. You’ll get there and by experimenting will develop your palate and begin to notice those subtle differences. And trust me, friends will be delighted that you asked them over to make them anything and spend time with you, so don’t worry if it’s the very best, masterful drink they’ve ever had, the company makes it perfect. 

Cocktail wise? I suggest learning 1-3 drinks. Enough to give you a little range and once you have those under your belt and feel like you really own them, go forth and play. Experiment, mess up, play with variations, give yourself permission to annihilate ingredients! I’ve made some of my best cocktails when I let curiosity guide me and also knowing that you can adjust levels of ingredients doesn’t mean it was bad, improvements take time. 

Liquor. Recommending at least one clear and one dark liquor will give you at least two different profiles to educate on and that means you can also satisfy drinks for friends on either side. Some people will drink anything that tastes like kerosene and up, others won’t touch it if it isn’t vodka. If you have an offer of both you have a chance of catching both sides (and if you have a friend who hates everything, suggest they pick a bottle of wine or you can make them the H20 Cocktail with an extra lime wedge). 

Kitty’s Picks:

• Bourbon

• Gin

• Tequila

BOURBON/WHISKEY

• Old Fashioned

• Whiskey sour

• Neat

• Manhattan

• Hot Toddy

GIN

• Gin + Tonic

• Dirty Martini

• Gin Fizz

• French 75

• Bijou

VODKA

• Moscow Mule

• Marinti 

• Vodka Tonic/Soda

• Bloody Mary

TEQUILA

• Makes me crazy (not a drink, just fact) 

• Margarita

• Paloma

• Tequila Soda

• St - Rita

MEZCAL

• Mezcal Negroni

• Neat

• French Intervention

• Mezcal Margarita

RUM

• Daiquiri

• Cuba Libre

• Mai Tai

• Dark & Stormy

Liquers/Digestifs/Apertifs. When I started filming the short little intro I began to realize I had SO much more to say about literally everything, so maybe at one point I’ll do some fun facts about each liquor and its sisters or derivatives? 

It got me really going on the Digestifs and Apertifs part, there are so very many to choose from, different levels of alcohols, flavors, etc, so, just gonna say. Try them. And don’t be afraid of starting with a pick from the bottom shelf *gasp* I know, but this way if you start with Triple Sec and find out you like the cocktails you’ve made with it, then you can graduate into using Cointreau or Grand Marnier or Dry Curacao and up your game even more. Amaros are a game all of their own with the Rabarbaros, Melettis, Braulios, Avernas, then the Fernets, Chartreuses, Aperols, the list goes on. Tasting profiles range from a cola-esque profile to pine and mint, so, once again, if you don’t like one, move onto the next because there is a flavor for everyone.

Kitty’s Picks:

• Dry Curacao

• Aperol

• Campari

• Meletti

• Averna

Bitters. Something you don’t know why you need it but the Old Fashioned Recipe calls for it and you bought it and the same bottle has been sitting on the shelf for four years. Ironically, bitters and amaros are very similar, they are sort of the same thing in different concentrations. Both are botanicals and herbs mixed with clear liquor at highly concentrated alcohol contents, the different is that bitters have a 35-45% alcohol level and you only use a few drops at a time, which is technically why are they are considered non alcoholic. 

Adding a few drops is meant to enhance the flavors of the liquor in your cocktail, not to overpower them, which is why you only use a small amount. There are many kinds of bitters, but starting off I recommend the Angostura Aromatic Bitters and Orange Bitters. With those two you will be able to start making more variety of drinks and can expand from there into chocolate bitter, rhubarb, mint, etc.

Kitty’s picks:

• Angostura

• Orange

Simple Syrups. So easy to make it’s not even funny. Literally just a type of sugar and water, meant enhance and potentially change a flavor profile. These can be made using white sugar, honey or agave, and equal parts water. That is a basic simple, and from there you can add fruit, herbs, etc for your cocktails. 

Kitty’s Picks;

• Basic

• Pineapple

• Honey

I’ve always got limes and lemons on hand and the citrus is needed to cut through and give way to other flavors in drinks, but be careful that they don’t overpower. Also, drink water. Throw that citrus shiz in that glass with some ice and your body will be giving you pray hands emojis. 

Kitty’s Picks:

• Lemons

• Limes

• Orange 

Have fun, enjoy responsibly, and let me know what you’re making.

Wild Wednesdays - Bathtub Bon Appetit

The time has come.

Bathtub Bon Appetit. What is one of my favorite and ultimate ways to relax and what appears to be everyone’s less than secret obsession, is here. It’s kind of extra, self-indulgent, and pretty incredible. I feel like I should have my friends who have no gone on to try it for themselves to write reviews to show that it lives up to its hype. I’ve been doing it so long I don’t really remember when it started, only that at the first time I did it was because there was no other thing I needed most than to eat a McDonald’s burger in the bath. Fairytale beginning, amiright.

Now it’s moved onto cooking complicated dishes (or doing a fun game of what can I make from the pantry), sipping on a cocktail that fits the food and r-e-l-a-x-i-n-g.

It’s a combination of all the self care. Amazing food, tasty cocktail, bath, oils, crystals, reading or watching. Music and cooking. A time to decompress and stop time. The cooking begins the art of the slow down, the bath running, music playing, beginning to let the day go.

Soak a minimum of 20-30 minutes. You’re welcome.

Tiger Kitty Tears - A Cocktail

An odd name for a cocktail, to be sure. I’ve said how much I hate long, drawn out paragraphs to recipes because we don’t need to know every minute detail of the weekend you just had, but this one does owe some backstory.

It was the week of the launch for Wild Wednesdays. I was exhausted, suffering from Impostor Syndrome, questioning everything I’ve ever done and will I ever make enough money to like, have a savings account much less buy a house or send my plant babies to college. The spiral hit and every issue I’d bottled up inside came bursting forth. I couldn’t stop it. Family issues, hurt and disappointment from romantic relationships, that comparison of legit everyone is better and more talented than me, feeling like everything I was touching wasn’t good enough, people were disappointed in me and I was running at 100000% but the production was 50%. That I was choosing to do this thing that I felt so compelled and drawn to but was it all a complete joke and should I just go get a desk job somewhere and let them start calling me Kathy and die a slow, drawn out death but be able to chat about my 401K.

So, instead of working out, my roommate sat at the kitchen table with me, tears streaming down my face, my breath catching and voice shaking as I unloaded it all, ashamed that I was feeling and acting like a child and yet I couldn’t stop. My chest ached and my heart hurt. Barely able to see through the barrage of tears, my hands fumbled around my bar cart, picking up bottles, putting them down, keeping the ones that felt right, until I had ingredients in front of me.

I needed to play and produce one thing right. Something to end the day. To close on a high note and be born anew in the morning. It wasn’t really about the cocktail, getting drunk or showing off my perfect life and perfect skills on social media. It was about the familiar, the unknown and, mostly, trusting my instincts. The same instincts that I’ve trusted through this entire process and that haven’t let me down, but because of the world, insecure people projecting their shit, lack of grounding and burning the candle at both ends, I’d started second guessing.

So I played.

I didn’t think. I didn’t second guess. I didn’t measure carefully. Tears ran down my face and splashed onto my arms, I’m sure a few forayed into the shaker. I felt.

It was exactly right.

And so was that night. While I don’t advocate for always treating your friends as therapists, there are time and places when that happens authentically and I am always and forever grateful to the humans who have been there for me in moments like that, and feel honored when I can be that person for one of my friends. We skipped a workout for a walk and Mexican Food, a movie and margaritas. I handed my worries to the next day and in the end, it was perfect.

It can be hard when you live the type of life that no one has a rule book for or hands you the to-do list to be successful or is like, here’s your tasks for the rest of your life. It’s exciting and thrilling, freeing and inspiring. The world is ours and can be intoxicating with the possibilities. And yet, to produce all the time can take you to dark places, is terrifying, constantly putting yourself out there because the separation between art/work/self is a constant battle.

So, close your laptop at 5, put down your brush, place your camera back into its case. Do something creative that isn’t for production. Write some thoughts to burn. Treat yourself like a child and eat some food and put yourself down to bed early.

Episode One - Shaken, Not Stirred - Wild Wednesdays

Welcome to the first official episode of Wild Wednesdays! Happy Hour feat. “Shaken, Not Stirred.” Throughout this episode I’ll go through a little bit of history of the cocktail, liquor, creation of it and the supplies, intermixed with a narrative. Extra? Probably. Hilarious? Definitely.

“Shaken, not stirred,” the infamous quote from James Bond that transcends borders of land, time and space. For all of my love of cocktails and trying new things I have always been intimidated by the martini. I love ordering Dirty Martinis at the bar (the dirtier the better) but making them at home scared me, they seemed so classy, so refined and elegant, so….not me.

But then the pandemic hit, and I had less time with friends and more time to get annoyed at the fact that I was intimidated by them. So. Here we are. Turns out they’re super easy and now one of my favorite things.

Tune in below. Recipes are at the end of the page. Narratives are fun but when you’re basically working with a low-key professional actor (um, hey friend, next time give a girl a heads up) it makes you think twice about yourself acting in front of the camera ;)

Videography/editing: Angell Foster

Creative Direction/Still Photography: Ashtin Paige

Talent: John Pritchard

Location: Studio Nous