Odell - Day Drinking

Day

Drinking

cocktails for a mellow buzz

kat odell

workman publishing new york

For my grandmother Babi, to whom I owe it all.

Acknowledgments

Id like to thank my parents for being my parents and also for introducing me to wine when I was ten. Id also like to thank them for insisting that I try everything, always.

Thanks to my brother Peter (aka Lulu) for being my cocktail guinea pig.

A mega-huge thanks to my amazing editor, Kylie Foxx McDonald. I feel very fortunate to be under your discerning guidance. Thank you to everyone else at Workman who helped make Day Drinking a thing, especially: Jean-Marc Troadec, for the great design; Anne Kerman, for organizing everything (and rescuing my hat); Ying Cheng, Liz Davis, Evan Griffith, Louisa Hager, Thea James, Justin Krasner, Randall Lotowycz, and Kat Millerick for showing their pretty faces; Angela Cherry, Kate Karol, Rachael Mt. Pleasant, Barbara Peragine, Julie Primavera, and James Williamson. Thank you, thank you.

Nicole Franzen (plus Kirsten Francis!), your photos are killer. Im so grateful that you took on this project. Sara Abalan, thank you for my favorite new tie-dye shirt and for hunting down those vintage vessels. Kate Schmidt, those passionflowers! Thank you for making everything look too pretty to drink.

Big thanks to Stephanie Gomez and Adriana Gomez for hair and makeup; Jamal Birkett; Earlicia Gibb; Steve Stathis, owner of Boarders Surf Shop; and M Apisak from Goodlight Studios.

To the McCarren Hotel gangespecially Ronny Baroody and Stephanie Geyerthank you for letting us take over your turf for the day. And many thanks to Alexa Mehraban at Tacombi, Fany Gerson at La Tiendita, and the folks at Pulqueria and the Bowery Market.

Thanks to Henry Huang for sticking with me over the years. Rather fittingly, it all began at Coffee Tomo...

Thanks to Patty, Nish, Marian, Hannah, and Diane for modeling as my friends herein, and to all my close friends who also allowed me to mildly intoxicate them with the beverages in the book. John, adding milk was indeed the call...

And finally, Rebecca. One of my absolute best friends. Reb, I really owe this book to you. Thank you for being open to my gustatory experiments, from college to today. While 101 Bananas and Cristal Light plus vodka may be behind us, I am still down to make you a cocktail with those ingredients any day. :) I love you a million. Thank you.

Contents

hi,

im kat!

come day drink with me!

Growing up, I was the kid in school with the smelly lunch. Perhaps it was some super garlicky pesto my dad had made the night before, or it could have been chicken tikka masala from two days past (my dad is of the camp that likes to assert that certain dishes taste better a few days later). Do you know what chicken tikka masala smells like when its been in a brown paper lunch bag and not refrigerated for hours? Ill spare you the details. Sometimes, all I wanted was to fit in.

But thats what happens when you grow up in America with non-American parents. Theres no Kraft macaroni and cheese (a dish I came to love eating at my childhood friend Laurens house), no chocolate chip cookies (which I didnt start to like until I was about fifteen years old), and no peanut butter and jelly sandwiches on white Wonder bread.

My mom, Vlasta, is from the Czech Republic, and my dad, Andrew, was born in London to Czech parents but grew up in New Jersey. When I was born in New York City, my maternal grandmother, whom I call Babi (thats Czech for grandmother), came to take care of me while my parents worked. Shes an incredible cook and I grew up preparing countless Czech dishes with her, from cookies and sweet breads (the carby things, not offal) to savory knedlicky (dumplings). And it was my grandmother who instilled in me a passion for food and cooking.

My parents wereand still arevery European. And while that was apparent in the food my younger brother, Peter, and I ate growing up, as kids we took for granted all the fresh (never from a box, frequently from my mothers garden) meals we were served. Looking back, its easy to see how fortunate we were to have parents who embraced a slightly Old World way of lifewith family dinner every night composed of made-from-scratch food.

One of the perks of having European parents is their European approach to drinking. As in, they didnt believe that alcohol should be off-limits until age twenty-one. Besides loving food, my dad loves winelike really loves wineand there was always a bottle (or two!) on the table during dinner. This meant that when I was about ten years old, to my mothers dismay, my dad decided it was time for me to develop a palate and introduced me to wine. I clearly remember my first few sips of red wine: I instantaneously hated the sour, tannic liquid. I thought it tasted like vinegar.

Over the years I continued to take sips of wine during dinner, and eventually I started liking the stuff. So, I guess the moral of the story is that Ive been drinking since I was ten? Ha, well, no, not really. Its that being exposed to alcohol from a very young age, with my father as my guide, taught me to appreciate beverages for their flavor more than their intoxicating properties.

I was recently talking to my dad about this book and he didnt quite understand the concept of day drinking. Who day drinks? he asked. I thought about it, and my response was, Everyone. Its true: Maybe youre having wine at a business lunch, drinking Bellinis at a friends baby shower, or sipping beers at the beachall are examples of day drinking. Day drinking oftenthough not alwaystakes place on weekends between the hours of noon and 6 p.m., but, hey, if you want to start the mimosas at 10 a.m. on a Tuesday, Id definitely file that under day drinking, too. Day drinking often takes place outdoors during warm weather (because theres no better way to celebrate the sun than with a mildly boozy drink in hand); that could be on a tropical vacation or simply during spring, summer, or fall months. But day drinking isnt exclusive to warm temps, and can really occur anywhere, during any season, at any time of day.

Now, its important to distinguish night drinking from day drinking. When youre night drinking, you have a few boozy cocktails, maybe get drunk, then go to sleep. With day drinking, regardless of the setting, you dont want to be gulping strong cocktails because (a) you need to be able to speak without slurring and (b) you probably have responsibilities to attend to later in the day. So, in an effort not to get full-blown wasted, and instead maintain a mellow buzz, the answer here is: low-alcohol libations. And thats where this book comes into play.

I loosely define low-ABV (alcohol by volume) drinks as those containing less than 10 percent booze, which is roughly half the alcohol (or even less) of standard cocktails like a margarita or cosmopolitan. Obviously, thats not an absolutethere are an endless number of tipples in the world with varying amounts of alcohol.

While typical spirits like tequila, vodka, and whiskey contain around 40 percent alcohol by volume, as a point of comparison, wine contains anywhere from 7 to 18 percent alcohol, while beer comes in at around 4 to 9 percent (of course, there are always exceptions). But the point is that cocktails as a category dont rely solely on hard liquor. Popular day drinks are often based on beer and wine, which means they are immediately lower in alcohol than their spirit-based counterparts. Take, for example, the beer-based michelada, the prosecco-based Spritz, or even the wine-based sangria. And there are more options to build on from there: fortified wine, hard cider, sake, soju, flavored liqueurstheres so much alcohol with which to play. In fact, lower-alcohol beverages fare beautifully when combined with other flavors and liquors (even the hard ones).