We're all busy growing this way and that, constantly changing and updating. We deserve to kick back and recharge now and then. It may have been a good health week so far, but a bad day today, and it is too easy to reach for that 6-pack or box of wine on your way home from work. So let's have our nightcaps without sacrificing our souls to the big beer gods or the purple juice that wishes someone had told it what a grape was supposed to taste like box, shall we?
As a bartender/mixologist for nearly a decade, I have seen people ingest ridiculous things in the name of a good time. Or to forget a bad one. Alcohol's value to our nervous system is complicated and highly regulated.
A contradiction of itself where volume is vital; small amounts can be euphoric, calming, and socially lubricating. Too much, however, can be fatal and devastating. Yet, in some form or another, it has been an alluringly enduring substance in society, dating back more than nine millennia ago.
Essential to many mythical, religious texts and traditions, humanity has hailed its invention as divine at times and nefarious at others. Sometimes both...even during the 1920's Prohibition, half of American doctors thought whiskey was therapeutic, and a quarter thought that about beer!
Drinking moderately can help the body defend against heart disease and some cancers. Therefore, moderate consumption is better than complete abstention, especially regarding wine.
Alcohol, in many forms, seems to be around for the long run...so why not play with our drinks as we play with our food and spices? We can satisfy our craving for the euphoria alcohol brings—in responsible quantities, of course—and give our bodies something nourishing. So let's adapt to cover a wider variety of usage for what we put into our bodies, shall we?
Let us shall, then.
We'll start with a top-five for globally consumed liquids:
Tea!
Hardly any better healthy beverage to add to your creative cocktails, and get your inner mixologist on! There are hundreds of different varieties of teas and thousands more flower and herb combinations to create new flavors. If alcohol is fundamentally rooted in our humanity, then tea is inveterate. Tea is often touted for its broad uses in traditional folk medicine to aid the mind, body, and spirit. It has also shown such potential that Western studies have turned to plants and flowers for their basic molecular structures to mimic certain compounds proven beneficial to human chemistry. So we find Aspirin from Willow Bark, opiates from poppies, Quinine from a tree in South America, and all kinds of fun things from mushrooms!
Now the kind of tea I brewed for this particular concoction is relatively simple; only three ingredients.
Black tea, dried rose, and hibiscus flowers. Black tea contains antioxidants, excellent for your heart and blood pressure health, and bonus...caffeine!
Black tea has a heavy, dark, malted, almost nutty flavor and needs no accessories. Except we're talking cocktails here, so let's get deeper by going lighter with floral flavors that will balance the beverage-drinking experience for both mind and body.
Roses, beautiful roses; historical, literary, mythical, and ever so nutritional. If the bright aromatics aren't enough to boost your mood, the immune-boosting health benefits should cheer you and your various systems up.
Mythically symbolic to the goddess of love, beauty, and desire; Venus, Aphrodite, Innana, the Virgin Mary, etc. Politically poignant symbols for the women's suffrage movement:
“...Hearts starve as well as bodies: Give us Bread, but give us Roses!”.
For roses feed our very human souls, the great writers have often compared a woman's nature to that of a rose, beautiful but edged with thorns. The one to top them all is the morally pious parenting metaphor implanted into a 'budding' young woman to protect her delicate crotch rose from pollinating penises.
Wildly popular across cultures and time, flowers have always been in the mainstream of our minds and morals. Both roses and hibiscus are well-known for their abundant Vitamin C content and immune-boosting powers.
Hibiscus came to the Americas via Jamaica, where they combine the flowers' tart, cranberry-like nature with ginger, cinnamon, clove, lime, and rum. Recent studies have shown hibiscus to be especially helpful in lowering blood pressure and cholesterol. 7
To be clear: any
potential beneficial effects of tea, rose, and hibiscus comes over significant periods. This cocktail serves only to aid in the lifestyle habit that is constantly herbal, and in this life, sometimes that means you deserve to have it spiked.
So when you take all these ingredients and turn them into tea and make something so delicious for every cell in your body, you could stop there. But why would you...we've come this far!
Once that tea has cooled down (or not!), combine it with 11/2 oz. of nutty Amaretto goodness.
Lime wedge optional.
This smooth, comfortingly refreshing cocktail is perfect for all occasions.
Did you enjoy this easy cocktail recipe? Let me know in the comments...Cheers, ya'll!
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