INGREDIENTS
1 ounce melon liqueur
1 ounce lemon vodka
3 ounces cranberry juice
Splash of coconut water
INSTRUCTIONS
Fill a disposable cup (if you can afford one) with ice. Pour in all the ingredients and stir.
HOW BADLY YOU NEED THIS DRINK
For the attractive, single crowd, Sunday brunch is held around 1 PM. However, family-friendly brunch, where the restaurant is overrun with screaming children and nary an awkward one-night stand is in sight, is at 9 AM. Mommy is starving by then, having been up since the crack of stupid, but at least at that hour there are fewer hipsters giving her the stink eye. Actually, the only person there with a hangover is the waiter/drama major who looks like he wants to off himself. Mommy can smell last night’s rye and ginger seeping out of his pores. (And for a split second she is actually tempted to lick his arm just to get a taste of last night’s shenanigans. God, she needs to get out more.) At first you are well-behaved as Failed Actor performs his obligatory, “Oh how cute, do you want a mimosa little man? Ha ha ha” routine, but before Mommy even gets a hit of caffeine you’re flinging rice cakes, or you’re smashing the bread plate, or you’ve taken an epic shit. Mommy is determined to finish her Eggs Florentine, and it’s Romper Room hour right now anyway, so she apologizes profusely and endures the “you-are-tipping-me-30-percent” death glare. And she does, even though she’s 100 percent sure he spit in her home fries.
INGREDIENTS
1 ounce vodka
½ ounce crème de cacao
1 ounce hot espresso
Frothy, warm milk
Freshly grated nutmeg
INSTRUCTIONS
In a mug, combine the vodka, crème de cacao, and hot espresso with the milk. Dust with nutmeg and irony.
HOW BADLY YOU NEED THIS DRINK
As if the role of parent wasn’t already a full-time gig, for the first time in her life Mommy is now also expected to wear the hats of Easter Bunny, Halloween Witch, and Santa Claus. Given these milestones will most likely be erased from your young memory before Mommy’s paid the resulting Visa bill, the endgame of these momentous first holidays is to capture the perfect photo. Unfortunately for all mankind, they involve you perched in a pumpkin patch or adorned in a pastel Onesie with bunny tail. Said photos come at a hefty price, usually paid in Mommy sweat and tears. Take your Baby’s First Christmas photo. Even though she knows better, Mommy waited until the very last minute to get this done, which meant circling the mall parking lot for twenty minutes and waiting in line for more than an hour as your mail-order elf outfit became increasingly soaked with drool. Mommy knows you’re currently suffering from a raging case of separation anxiety, but handed you to a portly stranger with a foot-long white beard anyway and was shocked when you burst into hysterical tears. Mommy was (surprise!) upgraded to the Gold package at the cash register, because ten crying photos of you and a keepsake ornament are better than one. After enduring other preholiday pain, including the in-laws and a smackdown at Toys “R” Us, Mommy wishes she could book a spontaneous Christmas Eve flight to Jamaica. Instead, the week will be spent schlepping you from one obligatory family event to the next. The holidays used to be about watching crazy Uncle Carl get drunk, work parties, and taking advantage of the sales. Now it’s about not scarring your childhood, dodging unsolicited parenting advice from the relatives, and deep breathing.
(If you’re not pregnant this holiday season, bust out the raw eggs* and alcohol.)
INGREDIENTS
8 eggs, separated
⅓ cup plus 1 tablespoon sugar
4 cups whole milk
1 cup heavy cream
1 cup bourbon
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
Loads of freshly grated nutmeg
INSTRUCTIONS
In the bowl of a stand mixer, beat the egg yolks until they lighten in color. Gradually add ⅓ cup sugar and continue to beat until it is completely dissolved. Add the milk, cream, bourbon, vanilla, and nutmeg and stir to combine.
Place the egg whites in a separate bowl of a stand mixer and beat to soft peaks. With the mixer running, gradually add the remaining 1 tablespoon of sugar and beat until stiff peaks form. Fold the egg whites into the egg yolk mixture. Chill and serve.
NOTE
Serves 8. Don’t serve to Uncle Carl.
HOW BADLY YOU NEED THIS DRINK
*
* BUZZKILL ALERT: Our lawyers “suggest” caution in consuming raw eggs due to the slight risk of salmonella.
Mommy has an unhealthy crush on the Nanny. She can see why Jude Law went astray. This magical woman not only takes care of you all day, but she also manages to tidy the house, do the laundry, and prepare meals—a feat Mommy told Daddy was “not humanly possible, so stop asking.” A total stranger when Mommy first placed you in her arms, she is now one of Mommy’s top three people in the world, often hedging out Daddy for second place. However, the Nanny is also the reason you will be going to Online U instead of the London School of Economics. She costs an absolute fortune. Mommy is jealous that the Nanny is teaching you how to say your first words and gets to take you on playdates (aka snoop on neighbors’ houses). Mommy wishes she could spend all day with you, but instead she has to sit in back-to-back meetings about optimizing meetings. Even though Mommy is eternally grateful for this woman who gives you such wonderful care, if you so much as hint that you love her more, Mommy’s got the INS on speed dial.
INGREDIENTS
Lemon juice
Celery salt
1 ounce vodka
3 ounces tomato juice
Dash of Worcestershire sauce
Pinch of salt and freshly ground pepper
Tabasco sauce
1 celery stalk
INSTRUCTIONS
Rim a glass with lemon juice, then celery salt, and fill it with ice. Pour in the vodka and the tomato and lemon juices. Add the Worcestershire, salt and pepper, and Tabasco to taste. Garnish with the celery stalk. Chase with a spoonful of sugar.
HOW BADLY YOU NEED THIS DRINK
From the outside, having a baby didn’t really change Daddy’s life all that much. Physically, he didn’t have his penis ripped in half delivering you, though he did put on a few pounds in “sympathy weight,” aka “excuse to eat more chicken wings.” Daddy can still drink when it pleases him, not having to worry about incubating a human being or feeding you from his man boobs. He didn’t have to put his career on hold to take what he once jokingly referred to as “staycation.” (Daddy learned the hard way never to make that hilarious joke again.) No one asks him if he suffers from debilitating guilt when leaving you to go to work, and in fact, becoming a father only upped his cred as a corporate man. To be fair, it’s not all rainbows and unicorns for Daddy—he too has to get up at Early as Fuck O’Clock and his man cave is now your nursery. Gone are the days of drinking Champagne off Mommy’s naked body on a Tuesday. Now he has to put up with Mommy flying off the handle because he put the forks away incorrectly. She’s lucky he hasn’t “gone for smokes,” never to be seen again. Mommy may not say it often enough, but she loves Daddy a whole lot.
INGREDIENTS
1½ ounces rye
½ ounce sweet vermouth
2 dashes of bitters
Cherry
INSTRUCTIONS
Combine all the ingredients in a shaker with ice. Shake well, strain, and pour into a glass. Garnish with a cherry. Serve it to Daddy. He’s earned it.
HOW BADLY YOU NEED THIS DRINK
Mommy had barely issued your birth announcement when people started asking her when she was going to give you a little brother or sister. Now that your first birthday is approaching, Mommy can’t go a day without being confronted with the question. It comes from all directions—in-laws, colleagues, a middle-aged guy in the Starbucks line—and it’s almost always accompanied by unsolicited advice about the importance of perfectly timing the age difference between siblings (accordi
ng to the latest perspective on the subject from a totally credible news source like Tori Spelling’s Twitter feed). But the question most often comes from other new Mommies, disguised as actual interest in Mommy’s life but truly a cry for help along the lines of: “If I’m going down this miserable road again, this time with toddler in tow, you better the hell be coming along with me!” Even worse than the questions are the prying eyes, scanning Mommy’s midsection for clues and monitoring her wine consumption at social events, forcing her to make a big production of pouring herself a second glass of Cabernet, which then haunts her the next morning when you wake up at 5 AM. Though several women from her prenatal class are already aglow with swollen ankles and pregnancy acne again, Mommy is simply not ready. Yet.
INGREDIENTS
1 ounce Irish cream
INSTRUCTIONS
Fill a short glass with ice. Pour in the Irish cream and consume while listening to the sweet sounds of Deee-Lite, Take That, or Vanilla Ice.
NOTE
Whoever said “the more, the merrier” never endured nine months of pregnancy.
HOW BADLY YOU NEED THIS DRINK
If you can sleep in, spend $26 on lemon sage ravioli, fly last minute to Croatia, get your eyebrows waxed, have nothing in your fridge but Stella Artois and mustard, take Yoga Muay Thai Fusion Wednesdays at 6 PM, say things like “This season of Walking Dead was staid and uninspired and couldn’t live up to neoclassical themes woven into the existential tapestry of Game of Thrones,” or own nice things, then you are single. Single people complain about being single all the time. Mommy nods politely as they whine about eHarmony, their cat’s digestive issues, or the end of a Tribeca Film Festival selection, but all the while Mommy is fantasizing about wearing their skin to become them, just like in The Silence of the Lambs. Single people don’t pee when they sneeze. They really don’t know how good they have it. This, of course, does not apply to single parents, who are heroes and should be given keys to the city’s wine cellar immediately.
INGREDIENTS
1 ounce mandarin vodka
½ ounce cherry vodka
½ ounce Cointreau
Splash of lime juice
Splash of pomegranate juice
INSTRUCTIONS
Combine all the ingredients in a shaker with ice. Shake well and strain into a glass.
NOTE
The traditional Cosmo may be the single girl’s go-to drink, but this delicious tipple is just for you.
HOW BADLY YOU NEED THIS DRINK
Nothing used to make Mommy feel more relaxed than a bath. Bubbles, lavender-scented candles, and some Sade were all she needed to unwind. Now bath time gives Mommy several mini–heart attacks (fear of hypothermia/drowning/soap blindness), and it’s worse now that you keep trying to stand (fear of splitting head open on Moen faucet). Mommy is not sure who is more soaking after tub time, you or her. Then the other day you “dropped some kids off at the pool.” Weird face + making your own bubbles = suddenly you’re bathing in feces. Mommy briefly felt triumphant after she successfully held you squirming and slippery while using the massage feature on the hand wand to beat last night’s mushy peas down the drain. Then you peed on her.
INGREDIENTS
1 ounce light rum
1 ounce blueberry schnapps
3 ounces blue Gatorade
Frozen blueberries
INSTRUCTIONS
Fill a highball glass with ice. Pour in the rum, schnapps, and Gatorade and stir. Garnish with blueberries. Enjoy on a nonslip surface.
HOW BADLY YOU NEED THIS DRINK
Mommy didn’t know how good she had it during your first few months of life, when the only thought she had to put into meal planning was whether to offer you the right or the left breast first (and even that she got wrong half the time). Your voyage into the world of solids started with the puree phase, where Mommy learned that her blender had functionality beyond margarita making. Unfortunately, just when she had finally perfected her sweet potato–banana–pea medley, it was time to move on to more substantial solids. This meant brushing up on the baby Heimlich, bracing for new surprises in your diaper, and learning whether this self-directed feeding craze would be as horribly messy as it sounded. (Check.) Mommy’s fantasies of preparing a week’s worth of elaborate meals every Sunday afternoon died before she finished typing “Baby + Meals” into Google. In real life, meal preparation involves cutting up whatever random assortment of fruits and vegetables happen to be in the crisper into bite-sized pieces, at least 50 percent of which end up on the floor. The books say this will get easier in a few months when you’ll be able to eat everything Mommy does. Sadly, Mommy’s pretty sure that a diet of frozen pizzas and Häagen-Dazs bars do not the next Bill Gates make, and she’s counting on you to make her dreams of early retirement come true.
INGREDIENTS
1 ounce light rum
3 tablespoons coconut cream
3 tablespoons crushed pineapple
2 cups ice
INSTRUCTIONS
Bust out the blender and dump all the ingredients inside. Let the sound of the whirring motor bring you back to all-inclusive trips of days gone by when the only planning you had to do was deciding which minidress to wear to the foam party.
HOW BADLY YOU NEED THIS DRINK
Mommy was already a fringe member of the neighborhood Mommy circles, given her lackluster baking skills and shameful habit of dressing you in sleepers at all hours of the day, well beyond the three-month grace period. But now you’ve sealed her social fate as a Mommy pariah with your newfound hair-pulling fixation. Unfortunately, Mommy’s desperate cries of “Gentle! Gentle!” only make you pull your victim in closer, until Mommy is forced to pry you away, beg for forgiveness, and then disappear with you into the night, her head bowed in shame. Mommy thought hairless babies were safe from your iron fist, but apparently you don’t distinguish between a handful of hair and scalp. Even more upsetting than the trauma you’ve inflicted on your former playmates is Mommy’s realization that, for the rest of her life, any bad behavior you engage in will always reflect on her and something she should or shouldn’t have done/said/taught/discouraged/encouraged/practiced. Mommy wants to pull her hair out just thinking about it.
INGREDIENTS
2 ounces coconut milk
2 ounces lime juice
Sparkling water
Sprig of fresh mint
INSTRUCTIONS
Combat baby-induced social isolation by getting in touch with your inner Tom Hanks with this Castaway-inspired mocktail. Chill a tall glass and fill it with ice. Combine the coconut milk and lime juice in a shaker, and pour into the glass. Fill with sparkling water, stir, and garnish with the mint. If you’re feeling lonely these days, befriend a volleyball. “Wilsonnnnnnnnn!”
HOW BADLY YOU NEED THIS DRINK
One of the unwritten commandments of parenthood is “Thou shalt digitally capture every waking moment of your child’s first year of life.” This means Mommy and Daddy are perpetually lugging around the ten-pound Canon EOS-can’t-believe-how-much-they-paid-for-this-when-they-only-use-the-auto-function-Rebel T4i everywhere you go. They have also been forced to purchase multiple external hard drives to store the 198,736 high-res photos of you that Mommy plans to organize sometime between now and her retirement, not to mention all the photos from Mommy’s previous life featuring her, a throng of girls clad in minidresses, and a bottle of Prosecco. Although she maxed out her Visa printing the best (read: every) photo of you in month one, at least she didn’t succumb to one of those newborn photo shoots, with their overuse of props and poses that involve curling you naked into flowerpots like a demented Anne Geddes tribute. Seeing those kinds of photos in her Facebook newsfeed before bedtime is a guaranteed recipe for nightmares and ruthless unfriending action. Mommy has opted to keep you off Facebook altogether to protect your privacy.* Anyway, Mommy can’t keep up with the extensive Instagramming now required before a photo is deemed Facebook ready. Why does
every baby now look like it was born in 1977? At least now that photo postproduction is socially acceptable, Mommy can delete the massive bags from under her eyes before applying the Sutro effect.
INGREDIENTS
Chocolate syrup
Graham cracker crumbs
1 ounce marshmallow vodka
½ ounce chocolate liqueur
½ ounce Irish cream
INSTRUCTIONS
Rim a shot glass with chocolate syrup and then graham cracker crumbs. Combine the vodka, chocolate liqueur, and Irish cream in a shaker with ice. Shake well and strain into the shot glass.
NOTE
Now that’s a perfect shot.
HOW BADLY YOU NEED THIS DRINK
*
* Actual reason: to pretend she’s still single and twenty-three.
Mommy’s lucky if she makes it to her annual physical every three years. But now every other month she’s trucking you to the pediatrician, forcing her to confront some of her greatest maternal fears head on: fear of side effects from your vaccinations. Fear of the splinterrific rocking horse in the waiting area. Even the twenty-five-year-old receptionist with the perma-frown frightens the hell out of her. Mommy honestly can’t think of a more physically and emotionally taxing way to spend a Friday morning. And she’s not even the one getting a needle shoved into her thigh. After an excruciating hour wait (spent desperately trying to keep you from manhandling the toddler with the hacking cough), Mommy’s too drained to remember all the burning questions she prepared. Like should she have called poison control when you drank some of your No More Tears baby shampoo last week, and will you still become a Rhodes Scholar if the only thing she can get you to eat for dinner lately is cheese? At least Mommy can satisfy her inner nerd with your height and weight percentile scores. Finally some payoff for those 3 AM feedings!
Reasons Mommy Drinks Page 6