The Great Martini Debacle of 2024
My learning curve may have taken a couple of decades, but I no longer make the mistake of believing that the top of my cocktail shaker equals an ounce measure.
Yes, I almost fill the entire top with vodka. (Okay, I do.) But then I remind myself that the top actually holds 3 ounces, so I pour at least a 1/3 of that vodka back in the bottle. My vermouth is a scant 1/4 of the top. Add a splash of olive juice to make it just that little bit dirty. This precise measuring will make a delicious, and much-needed, 2.5-ounce martini. (ISH). I pop in some ice and shake-a-shake-a-shake-a, immensely enjoying the feel of the icy frosting on the outside of the shaker. I take the lid off and pour the contents into a sturdy martini glass.
Then, when I am attempting to pull the strainer off to throw in the remains of the ice-cubes, I jostle the glass, spilling some of that martini perfection onto the wooden cutting board. My immediate instinct is to hold my hair back and suck up the jettisoned cocktail from its resting place. My lips are on the verge of kissing that board when I recognize that this is a desperate manoeuvre, lacking in class. I need to find one of those wee veterinary syringes that we have on hand for cat meds.
Dispirited, I realize that we no longer have said syringes in the house. None. In any of our usual cat paraphernalia hiding spots.
Will the alcohol soak into the wood?!?
I eyeball the board. The liquid sits there, a dirty-martini-scented oil slick. An eighth of an inch – sixteenth?? – almost hovers upon the cutting board. David must have waxed that board really well the last time he went to town on our wooden countertops. Maybe if I grab some… waxed paper! and slide it under the liquid, capturing the alcohol and then fashioning that waxed paper into a DIY funnel and return that 1/2 ounce that has gone astray from my glass?
I’d like to say that I didn’t try. I’d like to say that I came to my senses and knew that the physics of scooping up alcohol with waxed paper do not check out. (Turns out the waxed paper just sticks to the wet cutting board and you cannot slide it under the alcohol at all.) What I should have done is tip the entire 21 x 26 cutting board sideways over top of the waxed paper. Obviously.
As peel the now-wet waxed paper off the cutting board, I remind myself that I was never really intending to mix more than a 2-ounce martini in the first place, which is probably what remains in the glass now. Before wiping the alcohol off the cutting board, I mutter an apology to Dionysus. I carefully pry the strainer off the shaker, plop my disintegrating ice-cubes into the martini glass and pat myself on the back for not licking the cutting board.
I’m calling this a win.