Smorgasbord #29

40B40, Tina, Cinco & Derby

May 03, 2024

Hello friends! This is Smorgasbord, a self-service buffet of ideas—the bean and cheese burrito of newsletters.

Holy cow, Peregrino passed the 200-subscriber mark this week. Peregrino goes to 39 states in the US and 24 countries worldwide. Thank you all for wanting to receive my ramblings weekly.

Alright, let’s get into it.

40 Before 40

In April 2023, I decided to write 40 essays before my fortieth birthday in December of last year. That didn’t go as expected, and I published the last essay, “On Joy,” on April 29th, almost exactly a year after the introductory post for the series.

Right now, I’m basking in the accomplishment of something I said I would do (albeit a tad late) and reflecting on the whole experience. I’m planning on posting a debrief of the entire thing for anyone who might be interested.

After that, I’ll take some time to re-group and figure out how I want The Tortilla Stack to look; in my head, this is kind of a “food diary” series covering Mexican Gastronomy and a bit of history in the form of a personal essay.

In the meantime, we’ll still have Smorgasbord on Fridays, and if you want to peruse 40 Before 40, you can read all the essays here.

Summer Concerts

According to McCormick-Stillman Railroad Park, it’s already summer in Arizona, which means that every Sunday night between 4/28 and 6/23, there will be a free concert at the park. Diana and I have talked about going to one of these for ages, and now that our baby is three years old, we thought we would try it.

The first concert was a tribute to Tina Turner, maximum respect for her, but we’re not big fans or anything, so we were on the fence about going or not. We were walking around the block around 6:00 pm on Sunday because the kids were still hyper and I asked Diana if she wanted to go, as a test run, before going to one of the concerts we actually want to attend (All McCartney, for example). So we got home, packed our picnic basket and blankets, and headed over.

The concert started at 7:00, and we arrived at 6:55, so obviously, no parking was available. I unloaded our stuff, and the kids and Diana went to park the van while we were trying to find a geocache (more on this in the future). Unfortunately, we didn’t find it. Once Diana returned, we headed to the lawn area, where the concert was well underway.

We found a spot towards the back and set our picnic blankets as the sun was setting. “What’s Love Got to Do with It” started playing, the only song I recognized, except for the other one about the ragdoll. Anyway, we should’ve hauled the camping chairs since almost everyone and their mother were sitting down in these, which affected visibility slightly.

My children love music, and we are infamous for impromptu dance parties (mostly in our living room), so they were in hog heaven with live music. They were dancing their little hearts out, making me nervous that they would fall over people sitting around us because their dancing involved much running around. Exhibit A:

Even though being in a crowd with our kids is slightly stressful, everything went as well as it could. I’m trying to be okay with occasionally bending the routine and letting the kids stay up, even if it means handling overtired toddlers and a couple of meltdowns. I know they will start remembering these outings, especially the two older ones.

The next morning, they kept asking if we could go to another concert that day, which tells me they had a blast. Next time, we’ll arrive early and have chairs and a cooler; we will be prepared. How about you? Do you have any cool summer plans?

Cinco de Derby

We’re having people over this weekend to celebrate Cinco de Derby because of Cinco de Mayo and the Kentucky Derby, which is mainly an excuse for me to make two punch bowls, and so can you!

Margs

The classic Margarita is a 2-1-1 cocktail, meaning two parts tequila, one part orange liqueur, and one part lime juice. This makes it easy to scale up if you put a whole 1-liter bottle of tequila in; then it’s a no-brainer: half a liter of the other two.

Since I have a two-gallon punch bowl, I’m going to need:

One 1-liter bottle of Tequila (Silver Tequila works)
500 ml Orange Curaçao
500 ml Lime Juice

When you make one Margarita, you usually shake it with ice to add air and dilution, but since this is a punch bowl, I’m going to fill it 3/4 of the way with ice and stir it so the first few people pour aren’t super strong. This punch bowl serves 20 guests.

Julep

The Mint Julep is basically an adult shave ice with mint, simple syrup, and Bourbon. I don’t like fussing around with garnishes, so I think I will make a mint-infused rich syrup by combining two cups of white sugar, one cup of boiling water, and half a cup of chopped fresh mint. I will let the mixture infuse overnight and then filter out the mint.

If I want to make one Mint Julep, I’d add a half ounce of the rich mint syrup and two ounces of Bourbon, shake with ice, and pour into a cup with crushed ice. But since I want to make a batch of these, I must account for dilution. I’ll add water to the sweet, minty Bourbon mixture and keep it in a pitcher for people to pour over a cup of ice. It would be something like this:

750 ml bottle of Bourbon
12 oz mint rich syrup
6 oz water

This should yield about 20 cocktails as well. That is if you use 8 oz cups filled with ice to the top. The beauty of it is that people can adjust how strong they want their drink by adding more or less ice, so have plenty of ice available for your guests.

And there you have it, two cocktails (or punch bowls) to try this weekend. Which one sounds good to you?

Peregrino is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.