The Oxnard Hippie or the Honey Do Do

An excellent mostly fruit drink for writers who should be living in reclusive yurts, but are finding time to write while their handsome, adorable, distracting and hypnotizing families are catching awesome rockshows with nifty new groups like The Daggers.

[Update: Music was too loud for my husband and our wee six-year-old. Hubby doesn't know how he escaped punkrock band years unscathed. Ptown playground was creepy...too many unattended adults working it out on monkey bars and making bench presses of slides.]

The Oxnard Hippie, or the Honey Do Do...hitchhike the galaxy, glean low hanging fruit, extract fresh honey from a beehive, snuggle up in a jungle of ripe melons for an afternoon nap, play a game of shuffleboard with a nice old lady down the street wearing a moomoo, and make a yurt your second home,...all in a tall refreshing glass.

Instructions:

* Chop 1/2 a ripe honey dew melon. Place into a large glass vessel.

* Add 4 ounces of clover honey

* Add 3-8 50 ml shots of bottom shelf rum (You're a writer, remember? Start with 3 if you usually get zoinked inhaling sage smoke or Indian temple incense alone. 8 shots is a sharing portion, people!

* In a blender, place the mixture of honey dew, clover honey, rum and 5 sprigs of fresh spearmint

* Add 5 ice cubes, blend until smooth. To a clean glass pitcher add several ice cubes, and your blended mixture. Pour the Oxnard Hippie into a wine glass or your best mason jar! Garnish with fresh spearmint, and serve immediately before separation occurs.

If you want a non-alcoholic, mood-enhancing beverage try adding a strong infusion of damiana, saw palmetto berries, or a combo of lemongrass and horny goat weed. Pretty decent flavor! Steep 4 ounces of herb or herbs in one cup of boiling water until it cools. Strain. Add this instead of the rum.

The Valley Grrrl

This lightweight-cheapdate-Pandora-cocktail employs the remaining essence of late Spring Lilies of the Valley. No longer fragrant for your bouquets, late Spring lilies of the Valley still got plenty of plant spirit mojo left in their delicate little blossoms. Valley Grrrl utilizes contrary flavors in a creative blend of opposing philosophical viewpoints. Peppermint Schnapps, Tazo Passion and Tazo Chamomile Calm tea show up to the debate, with a peanut gallery of wild blueberries and Mathilde Raspberry Framboise as the impartial mediator.

If you enjoy crisp mouthwash kisses, you'll love my Kitchen Nightmares-ready lovejoy. Meet The Valley Grrrl: part riot grrrl, part valley mall rat. A walking contradiction. Almost a Cosmo, not quite Sangria.

Move over highly trained mixologists with delicate palates, this herbalist-shaman is in wild-cocktail-making mode.


This is how I made it: (The safety of Lilies of the Valley is now questioned. It has been used as a cardiac tonic in Europe for thousands of years prior. Those crazy monks...)

1). First, I brewed my Passion-Calm Tazo sun-tea. (See earlier brewing instructions, and refrigerate tea over night.)

2). Next, I picked 2 cups of fresh Lilies of the Valley, and trimmed the sprigs to cut excess stems. I added these flowers to a mad-scientist beaker, poured in two shots of peppermint Schnaps, covered with a lid and shook for 20 seconds.

3). I strained the Lilies of the Valley through a cheesecloth. Added one flower-essence-imbued shot to each of two wine glasses.

4). Added a tablespoon of frozen blueberries to each glass. Poured 6 oz of chilled Passion-Calm Sun-Tea into each glass. Added 1/2 ounce Raspberry Framboise.

5). Couldn't resist the flapper headdresses! Sliced one orange. Added one orange slice to each glass and garnished with a slice of ripe pear and a sprig of Lilies.

For an alcohol-free version, add pear-juice or sliced ripe pears sliced to your glass for a sweet drink. Alternatively, brew a decoction of ginseng. (Do not use ginseng unless you have high blood pressure or blood sugar. Boil 2 ounces of ginseng root and 2 ounces of cut and sifted muira puama for 30 minutes on low heat in a covered pot with 4 cups of pear juice. Cool decoction-syrup until room temperature. Use this syrup instead of Peppermint-flavored Schnapps in the above recipe.

Raspberry Hibiscus Elixir with Sage Notes

This shamanic drink will have you nesting with perfect strangers like you're long time moondrunk warbuddy Pinochle partners, purring like cats who adopt baby rabbits with their six fuzzy nipples, and toasting to the Indian medicine men of the early American frontier like they done gone and saved your first born. With your glass held high and mighty, libate the living and the dead. Imbibe in the delicious doowop tralalas and the clucky undertones of the Waltzing Raspberry Lush. Its transcendent overtures of radiant post-apocalyptic zen animalism will charm the pants off of you.

Hibiscus Sun Tea and Honey Sage Tonic:

Hibiscus: lowers cholesterol, helpful in weight loss, a diuretic (helps in cases of fluid retention), soothes stomach and respiratory inflammation, a mild laxative, and astringent (dissolves phlegmatic conditions due to allergies, colds, and sinus congestion). Hibiscus is used in traditional impotence remedies for men. Side effects for men may include prolonged erections and multiple orgasms. Just saying, buyer beware.

Sage: analgesic (pain relieving), diaphoretic (increases perspiration), astringent (breaks up congestion), rejuvenative (anti-aging), high in antioxidants (fights free radicals)

Lemongrass: opens psychic awareness/intuition, relieves stomachache, slightly lowers blood pressure, anti-plogistic (fever reducing), and may help to relieve tension headaches

Chamomile: mild sedative, calms and tones nervous system



Instructions:

* First brew a sun tea with six Passion Tazo tea bags (or a hibiscus and lemongrass infusion of approximately 4 oz of dried herbs) and 3 Tazo Chamomile Calm tea bags for a whole afternoon (approximately six hours in one gallon of spring water). Refrigerate.

* Next, add 4 stems of dried white sage to 2 pints of water in medium sauce pan.

* Simmer on low heat covered with a lid until the liquid is reduced by half. Strain.

* Add 1/4-1/2 cup clover honey. Dilute 1 part spring water to one part sage reduction. Cool mixture.

* Combine sage honey tea with hibiscus chamomile sun tea to make a medicinal tonic.

* To make it a mild cocktail: add 1-2 ounces of Mathilde's Raspberry Framboise to 2 ounces of combined tea in a chilled glass.

And now you have your self a Waltzing Raspberry Lush! A Pandora special. Especially lovely after a day of readings and talking with dead people. If you skip the Raspberry liqueur, you can add fresh ripe raspberries and a sprig of spearmint.



Other potential drink names that are coming to me but may already exist somewhere: The Diaspora, The Diaphanous Punk, Punch N' Judy, Gypsy Thieves, The Rabbi's Razor, The Dirty Priest, Primping Rituals of Animals...I could go on all night.