Tiki Party Planning

I love summer.  Really love it.  It comes post-allergy season**, I get to play in the garden, the sun is out longer, all sorts of good things happen.  Including use of the beautiful Penthouse for parties. 

My first party of summer is retro/tiki themed, and the preparations, goodness.  I have been reading all sorts of Tiki literature, making cocktail ingredients like crazy, and in general, making a mess of my kitchen.

 Serious Eats has been a great resource for recipes for common Tiki ingredients, like allspice dram, cherry heering, banana liqueur, orgeat, and falernum.  My co-host and I both had sips of the cherry heering and banana liqueur, and wow.  Worth it.  And yes, there are going to be explanatory notes about all of these ingredients at the party, I'm realistic in that most people have no idea what allspice dram is. 

Powerpoint, what would I do without you?

And--tomorrow night is the night to make all of our frozen drinks.  I know, rough life.  Now, if only it would stop raining!


**Usually.  This year has been horrible.  I don't even know what to blame at this point.  The weather?  The derecho?  The plants, trying to get back at me for some unknown slight?  Climate change?  Last night after I just couldn't fall asleep because my sinus pain was radiating into my teeth, I caved and took a vicodin.  Yes, that bad.