Shamrock Sour

Shamrock Sour, what a name! The alliteration is excellent and who wouldn't want to drink something festive and best of all, green!

For me, and apparently Shakespeare, the concept of name is pretty important. And I don't mean you have to name your child something really deep, I mean, the overall concept of "what's in a name" can make or break whatever it is. Just talk to an advertiser!

When I was living in France, I had a job in real estate. I had this one client who was perfectly nice, but his personality was so far from exterior. I was having a rough time. I mean I was going to spend 8 hours with him and was pulling out every trick in the book just trying to get him to engage. The real low point came when we came to the third apartment.

First, we are in France, and a lot of things in France have not changed in the last 300 years. In this case, the key. That's right, the key for the apartment looked like something right out of the Louvre. Right off the bat, I was like, "well this is cool." But, that wasn't even the kicker! The name of the street, rue Dragon.

How in the world can you not take an apartment on rue Dragon with the coolest key in the world! I mean really.

I said this to the guy. His response, "Well, I haven't seen that apartment yet."

This is where my aunt would insert the expression, "no shit, Sherlock."

Did I really expect him to take an apartment sight unseen based off a key and street name. No way. But my joke was lost on him which made me sad as my cleverness had just gone unnoticed. My aunt has dubbed my Brittany the Clever, I have a crest! However, I will say, as the end of the day, he turned out to be a very, very nice man, and we found him another place that he was very pleased with, so all was well.

But I still stick with the Bard, "What's in a name?"

When Hood and I moved to Florida, on five days notice, for his final pilot training, we had no clue where we were going to live. I wanted to live off base but he wanted to live on. His case wasn't helped by us pulling up at dusk, in an old neighborhood, with a perpetually unhappy woman behind us yelling at the woman in front of us about the bear running too close to her kids again.

What? We are in Florida?

Well, upon returning to base housing the next day, the woman was gone, it was sunny, the was no bear at the moment, the rent on the house was being lowered for us, we could see the ocean, I was open. But then the street name came and I was sold.

Starfighter Avenue.

How could we live somewhere while training to be a pilot and not take the house on Starfighter Avenue. I can take this even further and tell you the x-wing is a class of Starfighter and that Hood's journey to the Air Force is not too far off from Luke's to the rebellion. Or did I go too far with that reference?

Either way, I will tell you, telling anyone your address when it is Starfighter Avenue is awesome because they think it is just as cool.

So I digress to the Shamrock Sour.

With Saint Patrick's Day rapidly approaching, it only seemed appropriate to be a little bit prepared should we need to whip up a festive cocktail from the $20 entertainment center bar.

There are a lot of Saint Patty's day drinks out there, but none of them are anything more than green and sweet. For me, color really is a requirement, but so is flavor and taste, I can just dye some sweet water green and call it good. So when I came across the concept of the Shamrock Sour at 3:52pm on a Friday afternoon, I was in for the try.

The Shamrock Sour has a few variations, but what I felt to be the most authentic was is being an iteration of the Whiskey Sour. More specifically, the Shamrock Sour is a green take on the Whiskey Sour. However, the whiskey sour in my mind was always a drink for a boring adult. Sorry to all of you cool and uncool adults who enjoy whiskey sours.

According to my driver's license, I am an adult but the name whiskey sour really does nothing to make we want to drink it. No rue Dragons or Starfighter Avenues here. Sure, sours in the beer world are more popular than ever, but in general, sour just sounds, well sour. And on top of that you have whiskey, which is what old men who lived on the prairie drink when they are cold.

Let me insert here that I have no problem with the prairie. I love the prairie in fact, from Oklahoma to Wyoming, I am happy girl.

But beyond the prairie and the name, have you ever had a whiskey sour?

Hello, hold the phone. Lesson number one, right here. Bourbon with any sort of acidity is transformed into something else, let me tell you. For all you people out there saying, I don't like bourbon, or bourbon smells great but tastes terrible, do I have news for you.

Step one, you need to try the 38 minutes from Buzz's Steakhouse in Kailua.

Step two, you need to make a whiskey sour.

A whiskey sour is one of the most delightful cocktails out there. Gone is strong and overpowering aroma and taste of the alcohol and hello to the smooth, vanilla sweet cocktail.

Now we can enter the Shamrock Sour. A way, way better name. A festive name, a reason to have whiskey sour. And it's green from Saint Patrick's Day. And in the words of what I would have told the guy, you have to make this with Jameson because Irish Whiskey. In all reality any whiskey will do.

Try our recipe for a Shamrock Sour below. Full disclosure if you didn't pick up on this from above, it's a whiskey sour dyed green. So you can have really have this any time of the year, the name is just so much better!

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