Food History

Today, I got drunk. The rest of the committee got more or less drunk, depending on how many were driving and whether they had to pick up children after the meeting. In fact, only two of us made it all the way through the twelve drinks that needed testing – I feel as if I’ve achieved something. I’m just not quite sure what that something is.

Anyhow, I’m sober again, which I need to be to interpret all our results. I thought that would be the end of it, but I need some help from as many of you as care to assist. I need help making the choices about names. Some of the drinks had obvious names and others … didn’t.

As well as naming drinks and scoring drinks, we had scribes and drunken scribes and one sober committee member who made notes about the things we didn’t think we were saying.

I have lots to report, in other words.

I’ll make this post a general report, I think, then I’ll give you the best of the comments in another post and then I’ll give you the names everyone has suggested and ask your opinions. One post with all of this would be just a bit much.

There was total agreement on the best three drinks and whether they should be offered before the Banquet or during the Speakeasy the next night. There was also total agreement on the cocktail at the bottom of the list: someone proposed a name for it “Ultra Dry Icky Cocktail.” With the middle bracket, I chose the ones with the highest average scores that balanced the best cocktails. We didn’t need 2 juleps on the one menu, for instance.

There was one drink that kind of invented itself due to problems with finding a particular ingredient. It was so very, very yummy that we’ve kept the changed version. Everything else is as authentic as we can get without spending vast sums of money in a land and time so removed from the original.

I think I’ve got it right. I hope I’ve got it right. I’m not a big drinker, you see (I made liqueurs rather than drinking, which is a sad thing to admit).

I am so not a drinker that I started becoming entirely besotted with coffee today. Don’t confuse this with the quality of drinks that everyone has put together for Conflux. They will be good, very good. And if I don’t drink for the next three months, I’ll enjoy them as well.

Watch this space for the other reports. Don’t watch this space for recipes until October, though. I promise – all the recipes will be up in October.