Cocktail Recipe Confession

I’m not a real blogger. I don’t share very much about my kids—my two teenagers would kill me if I posted a photo. Yes, I write a lot about the things I’m doing to keep my family healthy, but you don’t really see a lot of said family, do you? I don’t share many recipes (in all honesty, I’m not a very good cook). And I might use the opportunity of a pinkwashing post to share that my mother-in-law and aunt have both battled breast cancer, but I just can’t give a step-by-step account.

Perhaps it’s because I’m too old for social media. Maybe it’s because I was trained as a journalist to stay out of the first-person at all costs. Who knows? (And who cares?) But I’m sharing a little window into my personal world with this post.

You see, I have an alter ego. No, I’m not changing into a blonde wig any time soon, and nobody’s lining up for my autograph. But here’s my bloggy confession: Sometimes, on occasion, I sing. With real live musicians. In a band. And next to loving my family and typing on a keyboard, it is my absolute favorite thing in the world. Want to listen?

We’ll get to that. I’m a tease, I know. Or maybe I’m flattering myself and you stopped reading two paragraphs ago. Whatever. I love writing and playing music so much that it doesn’t matter if nobody listens. It just makes me so happy to finally give voice to all the songs that I’ve always heard in my head.

So my band is called Picwood. (Angelenos, leave me a comment if you know where this name came from!) And if you really, truly want to hear me—gulp—sing, take a look at the Picwood Facebook page, where you can see a video and also find out about our December show if you’re in LA. (Please come!)

But performing makes me a little nervous. Stiff, in fact. I’m just so scared that I’ll forget the words that I tend to stay very, very close to my music stand.

I need to loosen up. Seriously. And I have enough sober friends to know that one can do this without it, but for me, loosening up requires alcohol. Not a lot. Not so much that I’m twentysomething sloppy (we’re about two decades too late for that). But enough so I don’t death grip the microphone and break it off the stand.

Unfortunately, beer and wine make me cough when I sing. But at the last (and first) Picwood show, I discovered my perfect recipe for something to sip that made my throat feel great and calmed me down a little: I squirted honey and lemon juice into a cup, filled it with hot water, and then splashed in whiskey. I thought I was a genius.

And then, after meeting the amazing Jordan and Jocelyn of the truly awesome This Girl Walks Into A Bar, I realized that my perfect mixture is actually a version of a traditional Hot Toddy. So maybe not such a genius after all.

Anyhoo. Here’s This Girl’s much-more-professional recipe. I adjusted the ingredients a wee bit to include organics, especially Koval Organic Whiskey, a single-grain, single-barrel whiskey handcrafted in Chicago. Yum.

It looks like a drink, right? But for me, this is a cocktail recipe for courage. Especially now that I am—gulp—singing in a band.

This Girl Walks Into A Hot Toddy
2 ounces organic whiskey
1 slice of organic lemon
2 whole cloves
1 ounce raw organic honey
5 ounces boiling water

Directions
• Pierce the lemon with the cloves and add it to a tea cup or coffee mug
• Add the squirt of honey
• Add the boiling water and stir, then the whiskey
• Serve once it’s cool enough to drink

It looks like a drink, right? But for me, that’s a glass full of courage.