A “French 75″ is a Champagne cocktail named for the French 75mm howitzer artillery gun used during World War I. The legend is that the drink was created by a fighter pilot who wanted his Champagne to pack a little more punch. So he added gin. (Or Cognac, depending on who you ask.)

The drink caught on with Americans living in Paris at the time, like F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway. And they knew their drinks.

It has history.

You just can’t say that for Mad Dog 20/20 Blue Raspberry.

Continue reading: French 75 (+ New Year’s Ideas & Links!)

© 2011 Rebecca Crump. All rights reserved.

What will you remember most about this summer?

This afternoon, I’m sitting here with a big glass of lemonade, writing down my list:

Waking up to the mating call of a thousand horny locusts.

Driving through the Delta with Jeff, singing the Pixies’ “Here Comes Your Man” at the top of our lungs.

Hearing my baby niece’s first word.

Laney’s second birthday party. My older niece turned two, and the second her grandparents pulled out of the driveway, she stripped down on the front porch and ran naked into the front yard, chasing the pink balloons that had escaped from the house.

Pure unbridled joy.

© 2011 Rebecca Crump. All rights reserved.

Note: This recipe is part of our Harry Potter-themed celebration.

Yesterday we did a full-blown, rated R Butterbeer.

Today, we’ve got the PG version, a Butterbeer Float!

I love floats so much that my birthday lunch has been the same for years: a BLT on sourdough with a Coke or root beer float. There’s just something about that mix of cold creaminess and carbonation – racing to catch the tingly foam, sipping the frosty mix of softened ice cream and soda, and finally switching over to a spoon to savor those last spoonfuls of stubborn ice cream at the bottom of the glass.

So, let’s get going.

Continue reading: Butterbeer Float

© 2011 Rebecca Crump. All rights reserved.

Note: This recipe is part of our Harry Potter-themed celebration.

Oh, man. This took a while.

How do you replicate a drink that’s very well-known and well-loved but (probably) isn’t REAL?

Everyone familiar with J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series can tell you about Butterbeer. It’s butterscotchy. Served warm or cold. Slightly alcoholic, but only house-elfs seem to be able to drink enough of it to get trashed.

There are plenty of recipes out there, but most of them are attempting to match the taste of the frosty Butterbeer served at the new Wizarding World of Harry Potter theme park. People have used cream soda, butterscotch sundae topping, Werther’s candies, apple cider, coffee creamer, butter extract, sweetened condensed milk …

It’s crazy. It’s crazy-making.

So, let’s rethink this. And create an adults-only version.

© 2011 Rebecca Crump. All rights reserved.

The only thing scary about this cocktail is how much you might want a second glass. Or a third.

You start with rum, add equal parts cranberry and pineapple juice, and top it off with a splash of grenadine, a blood-red pomegranate syrup that intensifies the color of the cocktail.

Sweet and fruity, with just the right amount of rum kick, this cocktail makes for some easy sippin’.

Just be sure to keep your neck covered.

Or not.

© 2011 Rebecca Crump. All rights reserved.

After a week of soaking in the Delta sun, Jeff and I came home to a yard full of newly molted 13-year cicadas. Big, red-eyed bugs who crawl out of the ground to shed their skin on trees, eat and make babies with the first cicada who’ll have them.

Right now, they’re swarming Nashville, bleary-eyed and horny as hell, chirping a 120-decibel mating call. I like to imagine that, to a female cicada, the song sounds like “At Last” or “The Very Thought of You,” but I have a feeling that it goes something more like, “Hey, Girl! Girl! GIRL! Can I holla atcha? Can I holla atcha? CAN I HOLLA-HOLLA-HOLLA-HOLLA-HOLLA?”

Tonight, we’re going to sit outside and toast our winged friends with this Pomegranate-Champagne Punch. I’m usually not big on pomegranate, but the pear nectar in the punch smooths its edges, so you get a drink that’s easy sipping. Perfect for a few minutes spent quietly listening to the cicadas – a million horny voices singing songs that won’t be heard for a decade.

If only they’d learn some Marvin Gaye.

© 2011 Rebecca Crump. All rights reserved.

Don’t you think Santa gets bored with milk and cookies?

Doesn’t the man have the right to get his party on?

Here, we’re ready to hook him up with some homemade Cranberry and Orange Vodka.

Just heat some fresh cranberries, sugar and water in a saucepan, pour everything into a big glass jar (or four small jelly jars), and stir in the orange peel and vodka. Then let the mixture sit out at room temperature for at least three days and GET FESTIVE!

P.S. This stuff makes a great last-minute gift. Print some recipe tags for Cranberry Cosmopolitans or Poinsettia Cocktails, and tie them to your jars. Swank!

© 2011 Rebecca Crump. All rights reserved.

If you’ve never enjoyed a tender Tennessee summer, you should know that at a certain point, everything stops and it gets quiet. Cookouts stop. Mowing stops. The kids stop playing outside. Even the crazy-hardcore woman who does reverse lunges in long, jerky, backwards steps past the house twice a day suddenly disappears. The only sounds you hear outside are the crickets, the rustling of the dry grass and “Pop Goes the Weasel” blaring from the ice cream truck as it circles the neighborhood, completely uninterrupted.

Because it’s just too hot.

Unmercifully hot.

Wringing-the-sweat-out-of-your-bra hot.

When it’s this hot, you just have to give in to it. Relent. Stay inside, get naked and catch up on “Shark Week.” And hook up some ice-cold adult beverages.

© 2011 Rebecca Crump. All rights reserved.

It’s 5 o’clock, somewhere, isn’t it?

Let me tell you why I love a Whiskey Sour. The ingredients are simple, and they work. No expensive trip to the liquor store required. It’s not particularly a man’s drink or a woman’s drink. It doesn’t have a silly, embarrassing name. It doesn’t come in a glass full of pinwheels and swords.

The Whiskey Sour is a classic. A cocktail with at least 150 years of history. Freshly squeezed orange juice and bourbon, sweetened with sugar and soured with fresh lemon juice. Definitely a sippin’ drink.

P.S. If you don’t have bourbon on hand, you can use a Tennessee whiskey, like Jack Daniel’s or George Dickel. They have basically the same ingredients as a bourbon, but Tennessee whiskeys are charcoal-mellowed before they’re aged. If you have neither bourbon nor Tennessee whiskey, then I’m not sure how you’re keeping house. Get thee hence to a liquor store! Or just borrow a few cups from my Mommaw.

© 2011 Rebecca Crump. All rights reserved.

OK, I just paid our electricity bill – the First Official Electricity Bill of Summer 2010 – and I’m declaring an early Happy Hour.

OF COURSE, we could turn off the air conditioning and save money! But do you know what would be at stake? My marriage, the lives of everyone around me and possibly the ozone layer. So, it’s money well spent. I just need a little something-something to take the edge off.

Here’s my glass, I mean jar, of white sangria. White Zinfandel, peach schnapps, orange liqueur, club soda and fresh fruit poured over ice. For the fruit, I used what was handy – orange slices, lemon slices, peaches and strawberries – but you could toss in some blackberries, pineapple chunks, sliced pears, chopped green apple, grapes or mango,  as long as you have something citrusy in the pitcher. Something that tastes like sunshine but doesn’t feel like it. Because feeling the sunshine leads to sweating. Some people think sweat is sexy, but you know what’s really sexy? NOT STINKING.

Just bill me.

© 2011 Rebecca Crump. All rights reserved.