Bacon Martini

Happy New Year!! "Wine and Dine in 2009" is what we're going with this year. Basically the same as last year...

We rang in the New Year at Paul and Lisa's next door with a small but excellent group of friends. As you can see by the collection of foot ware it was a formal event with ball gowns and black ties.

We had a collective dinner featuring Lisa's braised short ribs and spaghetti, Doug's bbq salmon, stuffed mushrooms made by Jules, Judith's killer Caesar salad, a melt-in-your-mouth strawberry tort by Amanda and a new version of my orange salad. It was all absolutely delicious.

We started off the whole celebration with a new drink we invented with the help of Jeffo and Sarah.

It all started with Al's discovery of how to infuse vodka with smoked bacon. We fried up the rashers and settled them into the vodka bath on November 1. Last night, we broke out the elixir.

Doug poured the vodka through a coffee filter to remove all the fats and leave only smokey goodness in the bottle. We made garnishes for the new drink that were blue cheese stuffed green olives, a little piece of bacon and a piece of smoked oyster. The bacon infused alcohol on its own was a bit overpowering, but with a drop of maple syrup over ice in a cocktail shaker, it was terrific. The consensus is that it is a hit... a bit of a hard core hit, but a hit nonetheless. Considering the ingredients, we're calling it the G-Had.