IMBIBE: Your Guide to the Bloody Mary

It’s that time of year, kids. You know, the time where you’ve shoved chocolate-covered, gin-soaked, cheese-smothered, ham-glazed, bourbon-nutball-smashed-whatever-the-hell-it’s-calleds into your quivering mouth for likely over a month.

Happy Holidays.

As first-world westerners living upon a New England foundation built from stoic puritanical immigrants, it’s important to flog ourselves once said indulgences are over. Many of us like to do this by crafting oft-unattainable resolution lists, such as:

• Going on a diet of nuts and veggies until June
• Volunteering every Friday night rather than dating
• Shaving, something, anything, regularly
• Waking up an hour early to run 5 miles
• Giving up processed foods
• Replacing beer with tepid mineral water

We all know resolution lists are crap and make us feel like crap. Many of us also know that on New Year’s Day, we’ll open bleary eyes, parched lips, and with voices cracking we ask for what will make us feel better: Bloody Mary, please.

Ah, Bloody Mary. This prohibition-era elixir has a contested birthplace – bars in New York and Paris lay claim to the invention as well as a few bartenders between the 1920s and 1930s. Kind of like how barkeeps, magpies and drunk uncles argue about how to make one. There are thousands of recipes with thousands more suggestions.

We’ll keep this ode simple.

In honor of lists that are actually attainable and because Bloody Marys are just so damned good when they’re good, here are a few bullets on places to grab one, mixes when you’re lazy and a little ditty of a recipe for home bars.

Find Your Bloody Here*

• Nick’s On Broadway
• Salted Slate
• Julians
• Trafford
• Midtown Oyster Bar
• The Ocean Mist
• Matunuck Oyster Bar

• Decent Bloody Prepared Mixes for the Lazy
• Stirring’s
• New England’s Best Bloody Mary Mix

An Easy Bloody Mary
Because sometimes we just can’t bear to drink in public, here’s a decent recipe that’ll set you right on New Year’s Day. It’s for a pitcher to share … or to keep to yourself.

5 lemons, juiced
1 tablespoon celery seeds
3 tablespoons grated fresh or prepared horseradish (or more if you’re brave)
2 quarts tomato juice, chilled
2.5 tablespoons hot sauce (Frank’s Red Hot or Tabasco or your favorite)
1 1/4 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce (I like more, personally)
Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper (to taste)
1 1/2 cups vodka** (Choose your favorite as long as it’s plain or pepper, bacon, or pickle infused … mmm pickles)
Garnishes (Whatever you want such as celery sticks, cucumber slices, pepperoncini, shrimp, bacon, provolone, olives, lots of olives, your ex-lover’s pinky.)
Take the celery seeds, a dash of salt and pepper and muddle or grind them up. Then throw everything in a big pitcher or whatever vessel you have. Stir, stir, stir. Taste and add more of anything you want to taste. I usually add more salt. And vodka (or sometimes gin). If you have time, let it chill for a while in the fridge. Or, shakily, hastily, pour over ice-filled tall glasses and dump in your favorite garnishes. Drink, with relief.

**[Weird alert: If you wanna get weird, try substituting Tequila or London Dry Gin. If you wanna get really weird, keep the vodka and add dashes of Bitterman’s Orchard Celery Shrub and/or a couple of hits of Amontillado Sherry.]

Resolved: Bloody Marys cure most night-before-ills, and really, just burn the sin right out of us. Definitely going on this girl’s resolution list for 2015 to craft them and drink them — more often, of course.

*This is a highly subjective list based upon months of bloody research. Please note the reviewers love very spicy, olive or accoutrement-laden glasses, thick with horseradish, not the runny thin type of tomato juice cups your favorite airline pours at 20,000 feet.