Pumpkin Spice Cake Martini

Cocktail O’ Clock: Pumpkin Spice Cake Martini

Pumpkin Spice Cake Martini

I’ll admit it: I love cake vodka! Especially Three Olives Cake Vodka, because it seriously tastes like delicious vanilla cake mix batter. Then again, as a kid I would eat raw cake batter by the spoonful, so I’m not sure what this all says about me. I’m also one of those obnoxious people who unabashedly loves fall flavors, especially anything pumpkin spice related. Since everyone is going crazy for pumpkin spice lattes once again, I figured, let’s improve this autumn trend by spiking it! Thus the Pumpkin Spice Cake Martini is born.

Pumpkin Spice Cake Martini

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A Blackout Pasta Dish

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Monica’s Mercato, around the corner from our apartment in Boston, has hands-down the best Italian subs in Boston, but we were also mesmerized by the display of fresh and dried pastas. The eery ebony squid ink spaghetti called out to us. While we had never experimented with this type of pasta before, we had sampled it in Italy and various North End eateries, and loved its salty, briny sea flavor.

To accompany the spaghetti, we bolted across the street to the North End Fish Market and grabbed a few jumbo sea scallops to sear and pair with crumbled bacon and a garlicky lemon sauce. The combination of the slightly orange-hued bacon and the black spools of pasta got us thinking it’s about time to start planning for the upcoming ghoulish holiday.

Black Squid Ink Pasta with Seared Scallops and Bacon

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Cocktail O’Clock: Labor Day Lounger

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It may look like rain for a lot of Labor Day celebrants, but we can still toast summer!

Labor Day Lounger

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Happy IPA Day! + Coconut

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Yes, we have National Tequila Day, National Cheesecake Day—whatever you want. Thanks to the world of Hallmark making up expensive holidays for men, anyone can make up a holiday. But for this one, I embrace. Social media is everything, so it shouldn’t surprise you that two twitter fiends (Ashley Routson (@TheBeerWench) and Ryan Ross (@RyanARoss) decided to create international IPA day. So what are you going to do on this glorious occasion? Put down the Bud Light Lime and open your mind to the endless world of IPAs.

What’s a good choice to start with? How about the Stone Collaboration R & R Coconut IPA? Yes—coconut. The whole purpose of IPA day is to embrace craft brewing, so why not drink a craft brew that was also brewed with homebrewers? At 2013’s Stone Homebrew Competition, Robert Masterson and Ryan Reschan’s coconut IPA made it to the final tasting, where a panel made up of Stone CEO & Co-founder Greg Koch, President & Co-founder Steve Wagner, Brewmaster Mitch Steele, Craft Beer Ambassador “Dr.” Bill Sysak and several Stone brewers chose their brew as the best. A homebrewer’s dream: brew large batch with some cool dudes. Win.

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It’s ‘National Something’ Day!!!

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Nuts! I missed it again! Just like last year I woke up too hung over to remember that it was National Tequila Day. And each time this glorious day is celebrated I think back to that little neighborhood bar that I stumbled into 5 years ago. It was loud, it was packed, and it was National Tequila Day 2008 where I was taught the proper techniques for taking and giving Body Shots, a how-to course on slurping Tequila from the naval of female strangers, and the realization that just because you own a credit card that isn’t justification to scream “A shot for everybody!” multiple times in a crowed bar. It did make me a lot of friends though, none of which it turned out had bail money. But that’s a different story….

The origin of exactly why National Tequila Day is celebrated on July 24th is as fuzzy as my vision on the morning of the 25th. We celebrate Saint Patrick’s Day on March 17th because supposedly that was the day he died. And although I deeply admire the way in which the Irish celebrate the dead, I can remember many a day after a Saint Patrick’s celebration that I too wished I were dead.

But the 24th of July is set aside and solely dedicated to the celebration and appreciation of Tequila! Yaaay!!!!!

(Well… maybe not solely. It’s also National Amelia Earhart Day as well as National Drive-Thru Day which just goes to show how many national observances we have on any given day.)

So raise your shot glasses my fellow Americans and celebrate this smooth, clear, south-of-the-border nectar by licking some salt, tossing one back and sucking on a lime! Or if you prefer the amber brands you can do it like the Germans and lick some cinnamon, toss one back and suck on an orange slice. Either way, get a designated driver and stop at a drive-thru on your way home. Then do us all a favor and like Amelia, disappear into the night. You’re going to need your rest….

National Cheesecake Day is just around the corner!!!

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