Things can become monotonous during this pandemic, so we decided to shake things up and investigate a new way to relax. Being mainly wine drinkers, we thought it would be fun to delve into the world of Cocktails – of which we knew very little. So we decided to break out the liquor and the cocktail shakers and see what we could come up with.

Barbara likes gin, and because we lived in Brooklyn for many years, she decided on something called “Red Hook Criterium.“ Every March since the late 2000s, a bike race called the Red Hook Criterium tears through the Brooklyn waterfront neighborhood it’s named after. A bar owner named St. John Frizell would watch it from his bar, and as the race got bigger over the years, he decided to commemorate it with a special cocktail. He was trying to create a drink that you could conceivably still ride a bike after having one or two. Barbara thinks he should have tried harder! The rhubarb liquor used in the drink made it much too bitter.

Laura tried her luck with Irish Whiskey as a tribute to her favorite TV criminal, Thomas Shelby from the series Peaky Blinders. He drank it straight up, so Laura chose to soften it a bit. She found a recipe featuring Jameson Irish Whiskey, sugar diluted with lemon and a dash of sparkling water and topped with a cherry and called it a “Laura Shelby.” Rather cheeky of her, but the cocktail was fabulous!

So with one hit and one miss, the sisters can now check off their “C” and continue on their ABC COVID-19 life journey.