Parsley Cooler

The end of our garden is here. Over Thanksgiving weekend, we saw our temperatures dip below freezing and our wind chills push us to near zero. That forced us to pick or cover the hardiest of our plants. One of those plants that was still going strong was our parsley. So, if you have something extra lying around the house, do what we do in the Firewater Lounge, drink it!

Since we've been tooling around the U.S. in our Around America series a bunch, and since there's no parsley in any of our most recent trips, we decided to give you a parsley Holly's Original cocktail for what's left of your Thanksgiving. It does have green chartreuse in it, which is increasingly hard to find and expensive, but, given the amount of Millennials and younger not drinking, I suspect the prices will come down in the future. If you have the chartreuse and the parsley, go for it!

Parsley Cooler
Holly's Original

2 1/4 ounces gin (we used Death's Door)
1/2 ounce green chartreuse
1 dash of Hella citrus bitters (you can sub a celery, orange, or lemon bitters)
splash of cold 7up
parsley

Place 10-15 parsley leaves in a double old fashioned glass or similar sized rocks glass. Splash them with a bit of gin (about 1/4 ounce). Muddle gently. Add ice. Add remaining gin, chartreuse, and bitters. Stir gently to combine. Top with 7up, stir with one or two revolutions, careful to keep the effervescence. Garnish with parsley if you like.

Hampton, New Hampshire

When you think of drinking in the Northeast, the New York boroughs are the first places that come to mind. Hell, they all have famous cocktails named after them with the exception of Staten Island (All the recipes for the boroughs can be found in the Firewater Lounge's recipe index). So there's a good chance that New Hampshire probably isn't on your list for cocktail meccas. That said, there are libations to be had in the Granite State.

Cherry Bounce

Door County cherry season is here, so let's part course with the Around America Series for a recipe for sour cherry cordial, classically known since as far back as 1690s as cherry bounce. This fruit-filled concoction made its way to the United States, like many things in our history, through England. Originally this infusion was made from brandy and cherries, which I'm sure is the method of most of our Korbel-loving northerners, but since Cindy isn't a tremendous fan of cherries or brandy, we are going to use the sweet woodiness of bourbon. 

Key West, Florida

Time to take the Around America Series as far south as humanly possible and crash Ernest Hemingway's haunts in Key West. Although the author has been dead for more than sixty years, both his home and his cocktails still hold sway over the island. 

Butte, Montana

 The Firewater Lounge has been on a hiatus since September 2023 due to a brutal work schedule, but we are back and better than ever. We have made some edits to our old pages, updated our cocktail recipe list, and set up a queue of future posts for you to peruse- everything a Lounge Lizard could ever ask for!

For our return post, we'll return to our continually-growing Around America Series. We have 12+ locations we want to detail for you over the next two years, and why not start again in one of our favorite states- Montana.

A few years back, we found ourselves in Butte, the 'richest hill on Earth,' a moniker earned through its mining history and its elevated geography. Halfway up the hill that is Butte, you'll find the tasting room of Headframe Spirits, one of the only woman-led corporations in Montana. The distillery offers its own versions of the traditional stock spirits: whiskey, gin, and vodka. We stopped at Headframe, though, for their bourbon cream liqueur, which they call Orphan Girl.

Orphan Girl is a mix of cream and Headframe's Neversweat bourbon. Like so many upper Rockies and Plains states, you aren't going to see a huge menu of froufrou Coastie cocktails. You can drink Orphan Girl straight on the rocks or in a Dirty Girl- a one-to-one mixture of Orphan Girl and root beer. That's right, an adult root beer float. What's not to like?

Drink: Dirty Girl
Establishment: Headframe Tasting Room
Location: Butte, Montana
First Connoisseur: Cindy

1 part bourbon cream (Orphan Girl)
1 part root beer

Build on ice. Stir to combine.