New Year's Eve

Carol and Dale and their children joined us at the Tiki Hut to celebrate New Year's Eve a few weeks ago. We've turned New Year's Eve into quite a tradition but our celebrations got off to a bit of a rocky start. 

The first year after we started spending time with Dale and Carol, they invited us to their house for New Year's Eve. The evening started off well with our usual mix of music, cards and drinks. As midnight drew closer, Carol pulled out some lovely crystal Champagne flutes that were a gift from Dale's mom. Each flute had a different symbol signifying a blessing you would have that year if you drank from it such as prosperity, love, and health. We spent a good deal of time negotiating over which flute each of us would use. Dale and I were both angling for the love flute because, what the heck, it couldn't hurt to try. Little did we know at that time that the health flute should have been much more popular than the others.

Dale pulled a bottle of champagne from the refrigerator and filled each flute. Now, I must explain that we were all much younger and less worldly at that point in our lives so we didn't even blink an eye when we heard that the champagne was a bottle that Dale and Carol had saved from their wedding nearly fifteen years before. We had heard that wines got better as they aged so we assumed that champagne did the same. It turns out, we were wrong.

If you ever have a chance to drink vintage champagne, you should decline politely. If someone manages to sneak it to you anyway, the good news is that you probably won't suffer any lasting damage. Vintage champagne is also a good test of a new friendship. If you can all remain friends after such an experience, there isn't anything that you can't get through.

We all laugh about the vintage champagne each New Year's Eve but I am now in charge of all champagne and sparkling wine purchases. We are still drinking out of the champagne flutes that may or may not bestow blessings on the drinker. A few years ago, we were trying to remember which flute bestowed which blessing. We could remember prosperity, health and love but we couldn't seem to remember the fourth blessing. This may have had something to do with the extra potent batch of Margaritas I had made. Anyway, Dale is extremely good on the drums and guitar. He's been in professional bands with gigs and groupies - at least Carol anyway - and everything. The Tiki Man has so little musical ability that his children laugh him off of Guitar Hero, so I joked that maybe the fourth flute was the rhythm glass and maybe it would help with my musical deficiencies. (Also, I had tried the love flute a few years in a row and I can report that it does not work.)

I drank from the flute we called the rhythm glass for two years but it hadn't helped my problem at all. This year, I was going to try the love flute again but Dale and Carol surprised me with a gift. It was a lovely glass inscribed with the word "Rhythm", spelled correctly and everything. I was, and am, very grateful to my friends for trying to help with what may turn out to be an insurmountable lack of talent. I drank champagne from my Rhythm glass this year and will drink from it every year until we see progress.

I had put together a music playlist earlier in the evening that included pretty much every good song I own. I didn't think we would get through all 297 songs but it is always better to have too much music than not enough (the girls get testy when something goes wrong with the music.) The playlist also included my latest Jimmy Buffett albums: A1A, Son of a Son of Sailor and Havana Daydreamin. If you like Buffett and you don't have one of these, get it. They are all very good.

We played our typical card games. Carol won at cutthroat and the girls won at pitch. Dale and I were getting worried because the night is usually pretty grim if we lose at pitch. We started to rally when Dale beat Carol by one point to win Oh Hell! Carol was not happy with this turn of events and there was even some talk of faulty scoring since Dale is the designated scorekeeper. Nothing could be proven, however, so we started a game of Spades amid much grumbling. Dale and I usually try to avoid Spades because, for some reason, we typically don't do well. Tonight was our night, however, and we pulled out the split for the evening by winning handily. 

The girls were in the mood for boat drinks so I made them one of their favorites and a new drink they had never tried. The details follow:

Tiki Gal's Tropical Punch

Color: Red

Ingredients: 3 oz. pineapple juice, 3 oz. cranberry juice, 1 oz. Mango Rum, 1 oz. Myer's dark rum, dash of grenadine.

Taste: Sweet and tangy.

Comments: The Tiki Gal invented this one evening when I was making Mango Margaritas. It is now one of the favorites at the Tiki Bar.

Bolero

Color: Red

Ingredients: Myer's dark rum, brandy, fresh lime juice, orange juice, simple syrup, grenadine.

Taste: The combination of orange and lime juice is better than it sounds. Slightly acidic and gently sweet.

Comments: This is a recipe for the Bolero I found in the Ultimate Bar Book by Mittie Hellmich that I altered slightly. If you are interested in mixing drinks at home, I highly recommend this book.

At midnight, we toasted with our traditional non-vintage champagne. A lady in a liquor store recommended this to me several years ago and we've had it every New Year's Eve since.

Sigura Viudas Sparkling Wine

Color: Champagne, of course.

Taste: Crisp and dry with a refreshing finish.

Comments: This sparkling wine from Spain - only sparkling wines from the Champagne region of France can be called Champagne, as we learned on a cruise last year - is very good. None of us are champagne fans but we all enjoy this one very much.

Carol drank from the Peace flute this year. Dale drank from the Prosperity flute. The Tiki Gal drank from the Love flute (don't get excited, I already explained that it doesn't work) and I drank from my new Rhythm glass.

I had discovered a tiny bottle of Jaegermeister hiding behind a bottle of tequila so Dale and I decided we would drink it. Dale had had "an experience" with Jaegermeister before but I had never tried it so we put it in the freezer. We poured it into some small glasses and each had about half a shot. 

Jaegermeister

Color: Cough syrup brown.

Skunkiness: 0 skunks, however, this herbal liqueur has a mighty aftertaste that will climb back up your throat and nasal cavity much like a large bite of wasabi.

Taste: Initial crisp, licorice taste followed by the wasabi experience.

Comments: Once the aftertaste goes away, it is not bad. Truthfully, it is not all that good either.

Dale and I also drank beer.

Super Secret Gray Market Beer

Color: Caramel

Skunkiness: 0 skunks.

Taste: Heavy hop flavor and detectable alcohol content, but not bitter. Malty, smooth finish. 

Comments: This beer may not be allowed in this country and, if it is not, we guessed at the taste based on the color and shape of the bottle.

Ranking: 4.5 pints of 5. One of our highest rated beers of all time. 

Boddington's Pub Ale

Color: Light gold.

Skunkiness: 0 skunks, although the girls thought it did smell beer-like.

Taste: Low hopitude. Mild and mellow. A slight honey taste as it warms.

Comments: This is a very forgettable beer. There just wasn't much character, however, it did foam all over the Tiki Bar when we opened it so that was nice.

Ranking: 2.5 pints.

Red Stripe

Color: Light gold.

Skunkiness: 0 skunks.

Taste: Crisp and snappy although we were a bit disappointed. The last time we had Red Stripe was at a swim-up bar at a resort in Jamaica. When you are waist deep in a pool in the middle of the Caribbean, Red Stripe is the best beer on earth. Sitting in the Tiki Hut in Oklahoma, however, it is not quite the same.

Comments: The girls were amazed at the extreme fizziness of Red Stripe.

Ranking: 3.5 pints (except at a swim-up bar in Jamaica where it rates significantly higher.)

Chimay Tripple

Color: Honey. (The girls say it is the color of butterscotch but they only get to rate skunkiness.)

Skunkiness: 0 skunks.

Taste: Hints of caramel and hops. Very complex and rich.

Comments: Chimay Tripple was a great choice for our first beer of 2009. Even though it was the fourth beer of the night, increasing its strength-of-schedule for you college football fans, it was still extremely good.

Ranking: 4.5 pints.