Belated New Years Toast with our Son Jason & Dinner from Hong's Gourmet Cuisine
It was Jason’s idea to toast the New Year with a Sidecar cocktail (Just one!). Cecile and I had the Grand Marnier and fresh lemon juice and Jason provided the Cognac. Normally, we would use a cocktail glass as shown in the photo but almost everything is packed away for our upcoming kitchen remodel. So we had to improvise by using copper mugs normally used for Moscow Mules. The drink is said to be invented at the turn of World War 1 in either London or Paris and is named after sidecar motorcycle attachment, which was very common in those days (Photo of Cecile and me in a souped-up modern-day version while vacationing in Maui a few years ago). The Ritz Hotel in Paris claims the origin of the drink.
“It is difficult to imagine any year when our need for this ritual has been greater. Many of us have lost those dearest to us and absorbed those losses in isolation. Livelihoods have been wiped out…We have never been so constrained in our rituals. That does not mean we are not celebrating. Inside lighted rooms, we raise glasses to the people who sacrificed for us, to the triumphant performance of our health care workers, and to a thousand small kindnesses already receding from memory…The end of a year may be an illusion, just a way to trick ourselves into keeping going. But we made it.”
—Ellen Barry
