Nachi Cocum

Over the past few weeks, I've been thinking about Cozumel more than is healthy. There are a few reasons for my preoccupation. First, we (meaning Dale, Carol, the Tiki Gal and I) are going on a mid-winter cruise that stops in Cozumel and the word excited isn't strong enough to describe my feelings for this upcoming trip. Second, Carol called last week and - maybe in the midst of a tough day - told the Tiki Gal that we needed to invent a drink called the Nachi Cocum in honor of the beach club in Cozumel where we spent Dale's birthday on our last cruise. Never one to turn down the request of a lady, I set to work concocting a drink.

Since this will be Carol's third "first visit" to Cozumel, I knew I had to use the reason for her missing memories – tequila – in the drink. I've written about our first visit to Cozumel in the Spanked with a Noodle post. Our second visit was in the summer of 2008. We were on a cruise but decided to skip the excursions sold by the cruise line and struck out on our own. Carol discovered the Nachi Cocum beach club through Cruise Critic so we decided to give it a try. After disembarking from the ship, we found an available cab. As usually happens when the four of us ride in a cab, I ended up in the front seat. When I sat down next to the cab driver, I noticed something peculiar. There was a portable DVD player sitting on the dash playing the Simpsons in Spanish. Cool, I thought, the cab driver is providing entertainment for his customers. I am so naive sometimes. While the cabbie drove us through town, I noticed that he was only paying cursory attention to the road because he was focusing on the Simpsons. I was starting to get a little worried. Once we got outside of town onto the highway, the cabbie accelerated to near mach speed. This increase in speed, however, didn't impact his Simpsons watching experience. He laughed at the jokes and was genuinely having a good time. Even worse, since we were now catching air each time we went over a bump the DVD player would slide around on the dash when we crashed back to the ground. The cabbie would nonchalantly reach up and slide it back into place each time it moved, focusing whatever minuscule attention he had been using on the road completely on the DVD player. I was now gripping the door handle so tightly that my fingerprints were permanently embedded in the plastic. After nearly running under a truck and wiping out several mopeds, we arrived at Nachi Cocum relatively unscathed. What does this have to do with tequila, you ask? We found that Margaritas will calm you down after watching the Simpsons in Spanish while going 120 km/h in a tiny cab in Cozumel.

Once inside the beach club, we found that it was better than our wildest expectations. It had a full restaurant serving some great food. It had boat and jet ski rentals, para-sailing, snorkeling and banana boating. It had a sarcastic guy that walked around asking to braid your hair. It had thatch huts on the beach to block the sun while you watched the waves roll in. And best of all, it had a swim-up bar. I've mentioned here before that there really isn't much that can top a swim-up bar and Nachi Cocum’s is no exception. We had Margaritas, shots of tequila in honor of Dale's birthday, and the girls had a drink called a Mamasita that I don't remember all that well. Surrounding the pool area, however, I do remember palm trees. In honor of those palm trees, I decided to use coconut rum in the Nachi Cocum cocktail.

After a day at the swim-up bar, we left Nachi Cocum feeling much bubblier than we did when we arrived. (This bubbly feeling occurs each time we leave Cozumel for some reason. It must be the water.) In honor of the bubbly feeling, I put Sprite in the cocktail.

Finally, back on the cruise ship, those of us that are still able to walk always enjoy the beautiful sunset visible over the coast of Mexico. To commemorate the sunset, I used cranberry juice as the base of the drink. The full recipe follows.

Nachi Cocum

Color: Red.

Ingredients: 4 oz. cranberry juice, 1 oz. tequila, 1 oz. coconut rum, Sprite

Directions: Shake the cranberry juice, tequila and rum and pour over ice. Top with Sprite.

Comments: The Nachi Cocum is almost as good as a swim-up bar.

I can’t wait until we are back on the beach at Nachi Cocum but until then, I’ll have to settle for this drink and my somewhat hazy memories.

Lusting in her Heart

This past weekend, the Tiki Gal, Dale, Carol and I went to St. Louis, Missouri to see the Peter Mayer Group perform in the Duck Room at Blueberry Hill. Dale and Carol had introduced us to Peter Mayer's music when we went to the Jimmy Buffett concert in April. Dale had been making jokes all weekend that Carol was going to run off with Peter Mayer if she ever got the chance so we listened to some of his music on the way home. It is entirely different than Jimmy Buffett's music but I thought it was good. I ended up buying his Romeo's Garage CD and have enjoyed listening to it but I never paid much attention to the music or the lyrics. I treated it like background noise while doing other things.

While watching the Peter Mayer Group live on Saturday night in a crowd numbering around one hundred, I had the exact opposite reaction that I had at the Motley Crue concert all those years ago. I could hear the distinct sound of each musical instrument but they all blended beautifully together. Peter did a great job on the vocals, especially on the Beatles songs that he covered, and the entire band seemed genuinely excited to be there (even the bass player who was not feeling well.) Better yet, the band played with only one break for over three hours. In that time, there were only two mistakes. I know this because Peter Mayer stopped the band after both of them and made them do it again. If Motley Crue had stopped after each mistake, I'd still be sitting in the Myriad today with some scary, smelly people.

I bought Peter Mayer's Still In One Peace CD at the concert and listened to it when I got home. The songs are good and I enjoyed it but I don't think it is as good as the live music we saw on Saturday night. Part of my preference for the live event is, I'm sure, due to the small venue, being with my wife and friends, and being able to watch the musicians while they play. The other part of my preference is I think some acts are just better live. We saw Collective Soul in a smaller venue a few years ago and I thought they were better live as well. However, Dale and I saw Shinedown live and our ears still have not recovered. The moral to this story is: go see Peter Mayer and Collective Soul if you get a chance.

Here are a few other random thoughts from the weekend.

• R. Scott Bryan played a few songs before the Peter Mayer Group came on stage. During his first song, the Tiki Gal and I noticed an obviously intoxicated woman either dancing or doing Tai chi (it was hard to tell which) in a corner of the room. We chuckled and turned our attention back to the music. A few songs later, the drunk, dancing woman climbed onto the stage and attempted to seduce Scott Bryan while we all watched. It would have been funny if it hadn't been so sad. She was led, carefully, off the stage and she then tried to seduce - in a very obvious manner - a guy who was keeping her from going back on the stage. Eventually, she was evicted from the premises. This is the kind of person that shows up wherever I am. Carol has even considered ending our friendship to get away from these folks - seriously.

• Peter Mayer has a huge thumb nail that he uses instead of a guitar pick. Carol, although still infatuated with Peter, has some trepidations about this grooming habit.

• The Duck Room had New Belgium's Fat Tire on tap. Live music and one of our favorite beers on tap. Life doesn't get much better than that.

• The bass player was really getting into the music and he danced around with a lot of hip action. The lady next to Carol admitted she was lusting for him in her heart.

• Maggie Estes was incredible on the violin. We were surprised to find out she is only nineteen, has been with the band since she was fifteen, and is now in college majoring in music.

• Peter did a solo version of Strawberry Fields Forever that was amazing. I'll be buying his upcoming Beatles cover album in hopes that this song will be there.

• On our way home, we stopped in a store in Cuba, Missouri hoping to find Fat Tire to bring home. We had never seen a store quite like this one. The guns were stocked right beside the whiskey. You could also get fishing bait, beef jerky, and, luckily for us, Fat Tire. We were all stocked up on guns and fishing bait so we passed on those.

• And finally, in the "someone has too much time on their hands" department, we stopped at a McDonald's for a bathroom break. Apparently, someone thought it must be too mentally taxing for us homo sapiens to get our hands wet in a sink, squirt soap on our hands from a dispenser, rinse our hands back in the sink, and then dry our hands at a dryer on the wall. Since we aren't bright enough to handle these seemingly simple tasks, this McDonald's had an all in one machine to do the job. You put your hands into a hole in the machine and it automatically squirted water on your hands, then theoretically squirted soap (Dale and I don't think we got any soap), then squirted more water and finally blew your hands dry. Was this really a problem that McDonald's needed to solve? Shouldn't they be working on a way to make decent, cheap food that won't inflate you like the Goodyear Blimp?

Fruitcakes

This past weekend, Dale and Carol over to the Tiki Hut for dinner and cards. The girls wanted me to surprise them with a drink so I made Fruitcakes. You may recall that we invented the Fruitcake late one evening after we'd already had a drink or two so I forgot to take a picture for the blog. This time I didn't forget.

Fruitcake

Color: Ruby red

Ingredients: 5 oz. cranberry juice, 2 oz. pineapple rum, 1 oz. Cointreau

Taste: Carol said, "It tastes like an orange cranberry muffin in liquid form."

Comments: The Fruitcake was even better than I remembered. It isn't nearly as fruity as you would expect based on the ingredients.

Dale and I also had a few beers.

Pacifico

Color: Gold

Skunkiness: 0 skunks

Taste: Smooth and refreshing. Well balanced. More character than most cervezas.

Comments: While Pacifico isn't the best beer we've ever had, it is a great summertime beer. We could drink many of these while sitting on a beach (or anywhere else, really.)

Carol Rating: 1 on a scale of 1 or 5. The girls are not fans of hoppy beers.

Rating: 3.5 pints

Westmalle Dubbel

Color: Dark amber

Skunkiness: 0 skunks

Taste: Really hoppy for a dark beer. Very fizzy and slight fruity taste.

Comments: We were really surprised that this double bock was hoppy. Every other double bock we've tried has been malty.

Carol Rating: 1. Again, the girls don't like hoppy beers.

Rating: 3.5 pints.

I’ve had another busy week so I’m making this post short and sweet. Just like the Tiki Gal.

Back from the Dead

In the immortal words of Mark Twain, "The reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated." As you may have noticed, I've been on a hiatus for the last few weeks. I would like to report that I was on an island in the Caribbean looking at promising spots for the Tiki Bar, but I wasn't. I would even be happy reporting that I was just on an island in the Caribbean, but I wasn't. Unfortunately, I have to report that my work life interfered with my real life to the point that it impacted my digital life. In short, I had a big project at work that took up an inordinate amount of my time over the last few weeks. I try not to let this happen very often because, when I'm old, I don't think I'll look back over my life and think, "You know, I wish I'd spent just a few more hours on that project at work." Instead, I plan to look back and think, "You know, I wish I hadn't had that third margarita at the beach party last night - I went to the bathroom more often than a supermodel at a buffet." (Calm down supermodels, I'm just kidding.)

I did find some time to concoct a new drink while I wasn't working on my spreadsheet skills. The Tiki Gal is a big fan of Creme Brulee so I wanted to capture those flavors in a cocktail. I searched my recipe books and the Internet and didn't find exactly what I wanted so I decided to invent something myself. I discovered a recipe for the actual Creme Brulee dessert and found that it contains a vanilla bean simmered in heavy cream, vanilla sugar and egg yolks. I used deductive reasoning to determine that the egg yolks are probably there to make the custard part of the dessert custardy, thus they wouldn't be required in the cocktail. (Besides, I'm pretty sure the Tiki Gal and Carol would object to a cocktail containing raw egg yolks.) That just leaves the cream, the vanilla bean and the vanilla sugar.

Since my preparation time is usually limited, I decided to substitute some ingredients so that I wouldn't have to simmer a vanilla bean in heavy cream. I decided to use half and half instead of the cream (less calories and fat) and vanilla liqueur instead of the vanilla bean. Also, instead of using raw sugar I used simple syrup because it mixes better in cocktails, especially cold ones, than the raw sugar does. I needed a liquor that would give the drink some alcoholic content but wouldn't add any flavoring so I used vodka. And finally, Dale and Carol had mentioned Frangelico a few weeks before so I bought some the last time I was at Bubbles, our friendly neighborhood liquor store. Frangelico has a nice, hazelnut taste but it is fairly strong so I decided to use just a splash in my Creme Brulee cocktail. With all the ingredients ready, I mixed one for the Tiki Gal. She seemed to like it but wasn't overly excited so I think I have more work to do.

Creme Brulee Cocktail

Appearance: Looks a bit like Creme Brulee.

Ingredients: 3 oz. half and half, 3 oz. simple syrup, 1 oz. vodka, 1 oz. vanilla liqueur, splash of Frangelico, brown sugar

Instructions: Pour the liquid ingredients in a blender with one cup of ice. Mix until smooth and pour into a margarita glass. Sprinkle brown sugar over

the top to give the appearance of caramelized sugar.

Taste: It tastes a little like Creme Brulee.

Dale and Carol came to the Tiki Hut last weekend for cards. Dale brought a new beer and a collection of old favorites so we decided to try the new beer first.

Jenlain Ambree

Color: Dark golden

Skunkiness: 0 skunks

Taste: Smoky and malty with hints of honey. As it warms,

more hoppiness is apparent.

Comments: This beer is the first French beer I've tasted. It reminded me of Fat Tire, although not quite as good.

Carol Rating: 5 pints on a scale of 1 or 5. The girls thought it was better than a 1 but they weren't excited about it. They are quite the dark beer snobs these days.

Rating: 3.75 pints out of 5.

We also had a shot - aptly named by Dale - that was inspired by the Irish Car Bomb we had earlier in the summer.

Irish Car Bomb Interior

Ingredients: 1 oz. Bailey's Irish Cream, 1 oz. Jameson Irish Whiskey

Taste: Creamy and smooth.

Comments: It was a tough week at work. Don't judge.

Finally, I'd like to report that the house in Cozumel won the vote by a landslide in the last installment of the Changes in Latitudes House Hunt contest. The newest entry is a lovely three bedroom, three bath home in Roatan, Honduras. It has granite counter tops and other nice features but who cares. Look at that overlook deck in the pictures. Do you really need anything else? Actually, I wouldn't even need the house. Put a cot and a lantern on that deck and I'll improvise for any other needs that may arise. This house is also much cheaper than any of the other choices so far at just $775K. Of course, it is in Honduras and the U.S. just cut all non-humanitarian support for that country because of the military coup that occurred there this summer. But like I always say, a little martial law never hurt anyone... as long as you have a stunning view of the beach.

Use the comments area to vote for your favorite between the family compound in Cozumel and the Roatan house with the overlook deck. Whichever house wins could be up against this beach cottage in the next round. Or maybe not.