Nermo

Because I couldn’t just spend the weekend celebrating the 4th and packing for Tales, I:

1. made a batch of hot sauce from farm-fresh chilies
2. created a tincture of shiso
3. made a gallon of traditional umeshu
4. improvised almost a gallon of apricot/pluot “umeshu”
5. infused a bottle of Hendrick’s gin with cucumber and persimmon
6. devised the Tomcat Collins with the aforementioned gin (recipe posted soon)
7. hosted the “Squash Blossom” dinner party with the lovely TSB (we may not be together any more, but we still throw one hell of a dinner party), where I served the aforementioned cocktail the following hors d’oeuvres
8. deep-fried two kinds of cheese-stuffed squash blossoms (chevre and mascarpone) with 4 dipping sauces (southwestern salsa, spicy tomoato, lemony aioli and a green onion sour cream).