Game Time Decision

It's midseason, yet I hadn't posted any cocktail recipes for our beloved Pittsburgh Penguins since preseason. Part of it is that I've been uninspired. I've either come up with drinks that are far too precious to whip together before a hockey game (lavender-sage simple syrup with Meyer lemon-infused vodka, anyone?) or extremely simplistic ("Hmmm, what would go good with this flavor of Zevia? Oh, vanilla vodka with that, too!").

Mostly, however, it's that injuries have made the season depressing. Sidney Crosby came back to us....for a whole eight games. Kris Letang's broken nose and flu, which were bad enough, ended up actually being a concussion. Zbynek Michaelek and Tyler Kennedy were also concussed. Other players have had more standard injuries to their feet, hands, and knees: Richard Park, Ben Lovejoy, Paul Martin. Yesterday, the Penguins disclosed that Jordan Staal will be out for 4-6 weeks with a knee injury, Craig Adams suffered a knee injury during this morning's practice, and James Neal has a broken foot. I may have missed somebody, and at this point, I don't care.

Oh, and the Steelers are now officially out of the playoffs! Yippee!

A couple of weeks ago, one of my tweeps (I apologize for forgetting which one) suggested that I make something called a "Game Time Decision," as so many of our Penguins and even our AHL boys have those words printed after their names. I went with something that tastes a bit harsh, but is warming in this oh-so-cold winter and tastes like courage in a cup. Our guys need it.

Game Time Decision

6-8 ounces hot brewed coffee
2 ounces bourbon
1 teaspoon sugar
1 or 2 dashes cayenne pepper
1 or 2 dashes cinnamon

Brew the coffee. Slowly stir in the cayenne, cinnamon, and sugar, then the bourbon. Drink while it's still hot.

First Taste of Hockey

I haven't done much here at Cocktails with the Penguins, or my personal blog either, this summer. I've been busy, and Twitter has absorbed most of my words. Also, it's been one hell of a depressing offseason. But we have hockey tonight! Pittsburgh Penguins hockey! It may only be preseason, but it's against the Detroit Red Wings and looks to be lots of fun. (My wife and I have bet our earlobes, and I sincerely hope I'm not wearing her itchy, ugly Winged Wheel earrings to work tomorrow.)

I came up with a drink involving late summer/early autumn fruit that tastes as good as preseason hockey feels. Get out the blender!

First Taste of Hockey

Half a black or red plum
4 ounces peach cider
2 ounces bourbon
Dash of ginger
Dash of vanilla
Cup of ice

Peel and seed the plum half. (Eat the other, or do whatever else you want with it.) Puree it with half of the peach cider and half of the bourbon. When that's smooth, add in the ice, ginger, vanilla, rest of the cider, and rest of the bourbon. Blend together. Pour into a tumbler, enjoy the game, and hope that absolutely no Penguins get hurt!

Kunitz Comes Back

Have you ever felt like maybe you were losing your touch at something you used to be okay at? And then you have a moment where you realize, "No, I'm still pretty good at this"? I had it when I made this particular drink earlier this week. I used Bigelow's Cinnamon Stick black tea as my base. When I tweeted about it, the person behind Bigelow Tea's account tweeted me back to say it sounded good!

Chris Kunitz might have felt that way, sort of, last night. Last season was a bummer for him--he spent much of it injured, and just wasn't right when he was on the ice. He was absolutely diesel against the Hurricanes last night, doing everything he needed to. He ended up scoring two goals, although the second needed to be cleared with the war room in Toronto.

I've named a drink after Kunitz. It's the first of these cocktails ever, the Cussing Penguin. It lightened up a loss when he hollered "Aw, fuck!" into a hot mic on live TV. But it's nice to have actual good hockey stuff to remember Chris Kunitz by, so I felt I should name this after him, too.

Kunitz Comes Back

1 bag Bigelow Cinnamon Stick or other cinnamon-flavored black tea
2 ounces bourbon
half a clementine orange (if you have a particularly big one, you may want less)
1 teaspoon sugar or Splenda
hot water

Steep the tea bag in a large mug filled 2/3 of the way with hot water. Give it 3-5 minutes while you peel your clementine and get the bourbon. When the tea's done, take the bag out. Pour the bourbon and sweetener in; stir. Gently squeeze the clementine half into the mug (don't let seeds or a lot of pulp get into it). Stir once more, and drink immediately.

Note on ingredients: If you can't find the cinnamon tea or don't want to buy a whole box, use a standard bag of black tea and add 1/2 a teaspoon of cinnamon to it while it brews. Chai tea will *not* work, trust me.

Atlanta Beauty

I hadn't felt inspired lately. Neither had the Pittsburgh Penguins. After the debacle on 11/10/10 which I'll forever refer to as the Boston Bruins Massacre, things were looking pretty bleak indeed for our guys. There were several question marks. Two big ones were Marc-Andre Fleury and Evgeni Malkin.

Then on the 12th, the Penguins roared back to life with a 5-1 win over a severely injured Tampa Bay Lightning. (Hey, our team started the season with tons of injuries, so fair's fair.) Last night, they went to Atlanta to play the Thrashers.

The influx of former Chicago Blackhawks into Atlanta, as well as the fact that the Penguins were playing the second of back-to-back games, had me worried for a moment. So did the fact that Brent Sopel, a Thrashhawk who I normally like, scored the first goal, and it went unanswered for a very long time. But Fleury made some amazing saves. Then Evgeni Malkin, bless his heart, scored the first Penguins hat trick of the season! 4-2, baby! Everyone's right. I worry too much.

This is a drink that I made as a tribute to Atlanta. I actually drank this last night. It's a beautiful city. It gave us Coca-Cola and OutKast, the zoo has a lovely panda family, and it's got a fascinating mixture of old and new. It's also still a wonderful place for slumping Penguins players to come back strong. I love Atlanta!

Atlanta Beauty

6 ounces Coca-Cola or Coke Zero
2 1/2 ounces Southern Comfort Peach

Combine ingredients in a glass with a few ice cubes. Stir gently.

Didn't say it was gonna be complicated, right?

Housecleaning

Hockey's coming back! The Penguins are coming back! No, really! So I decided to organize my blog a little bit better, update my links list, and finally make my logo grammatically correct. If you think I should link to your blog or someone else's, please let me know.

The roster's not completely set yet, but there will be some changes. We say goodbye to several players, with varying degrees of enthusiasm: Mark Eaton, Sergei Gonchar, Bill Guerin (okay, I keened over him for a day on my Twitter account, don't judge me), Jordan Leopold, and Alexei Ponikarovsky. The drinks I named after them are under the "past Penguins" tag.

We say hello to Arron Asham (several tomato juice baths and a Little Tree around his neck will help with the Flyer stink), Paul Martin, and Zbynek Michalek. I look forward to getting inspired by them, and any other new additions to come. Also, I completely forgot to name one after Alex Goligoski! I'll be fixing that next season.

While you wait and bite your nails, maybe you'd like a drink. This milkshake is nice and cold while it's hot outside, but uses good autumn-y flavors.

Taste of Hockey Season

1 scoop black walnut ice cream (butter pecan will do if you have to)
2 ounces bourbon
1 ounce milk
1 tablespoon pure maple syrup (maple/agave blend is a cheaper substitute)

Pour all ingredients into blender; blend until everything's mixed. Pour into a glass and drink immediately.

This one is perhaps a bit better for you, but it's cool and tasty and has an excellent green color.

Summer Street Hockey

1/2 cucumber, peeled
1 cup honeydew melon, in chunks
2 ounces light/white rum
1 ounce Midori melon liqueur
Handful of ice cubes

Blend all ingredients in blender until everything's the same consistency. Pour and drink immediately.

SCF10

Just because the Penguins' season is over doesn't mean the NHL season is over. Like me, many of you have probably decided that you may as well keep watching and see who wins the Stanley Cup. I knew the Chicago Blackhawks versus the Philadelphia Flyers was going to be difficult to watch. Game 1 last night proved me absolutely correct. NBC was at least considerate enough to bring in Ryan Miller as a commentator to balance the Flyers' collective ugliness. But as both goalies became sieves, the teams traded leads, and Scott Fucking Hartnell* scored, that wasn't quite enough.

When NBC broadcasted Penguins games during the regular season, I responded by posting recipes for blender drinks, mostly high-octane. The cocktails I post here are meant to be quick beer alternatives that can be fixed during intermission or right before the game. But nobody minds if one runs the blender while Pierre McGuire or Mike Milbury are talking, right?

A favorite high-octane drink of mine is the classic Zombie, which I based Salvaging the Game on during a particularly miserable game against the Vancouver Canucks. It certainly seemed appropriate for suffering through this series. However, I also wanted something cold and slushy. Also, I didn't want to track down a bottle of apricot brandy which I'd have to blow the dust off of before I could open it. Also, I had, as usual, lots of good fresh fruit and half a bottle of bourbon in the house . So I tweaked the basic recipe once again and made a...zombie-rita? Zombie-quiri? Either way, it's gonna get me through the rest of this horrid series just fine. The name reflects the reason to drink it.

SCF10

1 apricot, peeled and seeded
1/2 cup cubed pineapple, fresh or canned
2 ounces orange juice
2 ounces light rum
1 1/2 ounces dark rum
1 1/2 ounces bourbon
1/2 ounce Bacardi 151 (or other 151-proof) rum
2 handfuls of ice

Put the fruit and juice into the blender with 1 handful of ice; blend for about 15 seconds. Add all the liquor, excpt for the 151-proof rum, and the other handful of ice. Blend another 15 seconds. Pour into a tall glass. Float the 151-proof rum on top. Take a sip whenever a Flyer scores or NBC *sniff, sniff, sob* shows footage of Sidney Crosby hoisting the Cup.

* Isn't it amazing how, despite their varied ethnicities, Scott Hartnell shares a middle name with Chris Pronger, Alex Ovechkin, Martin Brodeur, Jimmie Johnson, and Carl Edwards?

Cleaning out the Lockers--the Shot Blocker

What else for Jay McKee but something that will have you taking lots of shots in one go? Those familiar with this blog know that when I want to get more than lightly toasted--like, oh, if the unthinkable happens and the Flyers are contending for the Cup, knock on wood--I head in the direction of the tiki bar.

The Shot Blocker

3 ounces pineapple juice (fresh if possible)
3 ounces orange juice
1 1/2 ounces Grand Marnier or other orange liqueur (NOT blue curacao)
1 1/2 ounces dark rum
3 ounces bourbon
Crushed ice

Blend all ingredients in a blender for a few seconds, or shake if your shaker's big enough. Fill a big glass about three quarters of the way with crushed ice. Pour the liquid into it. Make sure the number of the local cab company's programmed into your cell phone.

The Skoula Bus

Martin Skoula is one of the Penguins' newbies, and serves as the seventh defenseman. He saw a lot of ice time after InjuryFest 2009 hit the Penguins defense and performed fine. Skoula had himself one hell of a game with two goals against the Atlanta Thrashers the night of November 21st.

If this looks familiar, that's probably because it's a spinoff of the Lynyrd Skynyrd. I think Lynyrd Skynyrds are a bit too sweet. Swapping out orange soda for ginger ale turned it into something I liked much better. It's not the prettiest color, but it does the job, the way Skoula did in Atlanta.

The Skoula Bus

2 oz bourbon
4 oz ginger ale, regular or diet
4 oz orange juice

Pour bourbon into a collins glass almost filled with ice. Build the drink--first orange juice, then ginger ale. Stir.

The Lucky 13

I don't normally name the drinks I invent--as with most of the food I make, I just throw things together based on the season, what is in my kitchen, and "eyeballing." What I had in my kitchen the night of November 14, when the Penguins played a somewhat discouraging game against the Boston Bruins, was a huge jug of apple cider. I liked the resulting drink lots and wanted to fix it again.

Then Bill Guerin scored a game-tying goal at literally the very...last...second. My mother is an inveterate triskaidekaphobe. When I told her how crazy I've been about Guerin since the 2009 Stanley Cup playoffs, she snapped, "What kind of man would wear a number 13 on his jersey?"
"He's a lucky 13," I told her. Boy, Guerin proved me right against the Bruins! Even though he would probably consider this far too girly, that was one hell of a time for him to snap his goal-less streak, and luck doesn't get much better than that.

The Lucky 13

1 ounce bourbon

1 1/2 ounces pomegranate liqueur

About 5-6 ounces apple cider

Dash allspice

Shake bourbon and pomegranate liqueur with 2-3 ice cubes in cocktail shaker. Pour it, ice cubes and all, into a tumbler (plastic's fine). Pour in apple cider until the glass is about full. Add allspice. Stir, then sip.

Since it isn't my objective to kill myself or anyone else, I should probably note that I mean non-alcoholic/sweet apple cider, not hard cider. If I were trying to impress you with my bartending skills, I'd strain out the ice, serve it in a chilled glass tumbler, and garnish it with a few pomegranate seeds. But hey, it's just game night.