I just wanted to reach out today to share something you may have already noticed: this site is changing. Its appearance has changed, and the former theme has been removed.
Please be patient with us as we make these changes and navigate this transition together.
— Dahni
I just wanted to reach out today to share something you may have already noticed: this site is changing. Its appearance has changed, and the former theme has been removed.
Soon, this site will become:
Please be patient with us as we make these changes and navigate this transition together.
Yes 5/5 was days ago. But there is always room for a margarita. This could be the best one you ever made/had.
🍋🟩 ‘El Cinco de Maya’ 🍊 (The Fifth of May)
Libatious’ #169 bonus drinks beyond 100
Ingredients
Juice of 1/2 fresh lemon 🍋 Juice of 2 limes 🍋🟩 Juice of 1 mandarin orange 🍊 1/2 jigger bergamot liqueur 1/2 jigger ginger liqueur 🫚 1/2 jigger blue curaçao (for color — turns the drink a lovely green) 1/2 jigger agave syrup 4 jiggers tequila 2 jiggers Grand Marnier or orange liqueur
Directions
Pour all ingredients into a high-speed blender and blend well.
Transfer to a hand shaker and chill in refrigerator until needed.
Rim two margarita glasses with lime juice, then dip into coarse salt. Set aside.
Prepare garnish:
two lime wheels
two strips lemon peel
two strips orange peel
two small pieces of crystalized ginger
Thread garnish through a knotted bamboo skewer and refrigerate until needed.
Remove shaker from refrigerator. Add ice 🧊
“Shaken not stirred, Bond, James Bond, 007.” 🤣
Pour into previously rimmed margarita glasses 🍸🍸 half-filled with ice.
Add garnish.
Makes two libations — one to share and one for you. 😀
Why yes, there’s a lot of alcohol in this drink… but you could find Margaritaville — and perhaps your last jigger of salt! 🧂 😂
Makes two libations — one to share and one for you.
ENJOY! 😉 Drink your ‘El Cinco de Maya’responsibly! 😂
Descriptor: A bright floral spring libation capturing sunshine, lilacs, and porch-time ease.
With lilacs blooming across Rochester and the Lilac Festival season underway, this week’s featured libation celebrates spring the way it should be enjoyed — on the porch, with something beautiful in the glass.
Yesterday evening, Susan & I enjoyed “Sun & Flowers” on the porch — a quiet moment to welcome the season, surrounded by blooming lilacs and the promise of warmer days.
Inspired by the blossoms now showing across Rochester, I made a fresh batch of homemade lilac syrup and lilac gin. An image of this drink shows homemade fig vodka and I will share this at another time. Homemade lilac gin captures the fragrance and color of spring in a bottle.
As a picture will show, the commercial lilac gin I used may no longer be readily available, so making your own is not only practical — it ensures the flavor and tradition can continue. Fig vodka, while commercially available, is also simple to make at home and adds a rich seasonal character to this drink. Again, more about this in the near future.
Note the color difference between this and the other image to follow. The original lilac gin was not color stable. Problem solved, keep reading.
🍸 Sun & Flowers (#18)
Ingredients
Juice of 1 fresh lemon 🍋
3 jiggers lilac gin (homemade or commercial if available)
3 jiggers fig vodka (homemade or commercial)
½ jigger simple syrup
Ice
Garnish: sprig of lilac or fig
Directions
Pour ingredients into shaker. Add ice.
“Shaken not stirred!” — 007, Bond, James Bond 😂
Strain into martini glasses over ice. Garnish with a sprig of lilac or fig.
Makes two libations — one to share and one for you.
ENJOY! 😉 Drink your ‘Sun & Flowers’ responsibly! 😂
Look at the subtle color, just as lilac should be.
FromSips with Susan — A Gathering Place Companion 🍸
This drink is part of a growing collection of original libations created and shared at The Gathering Place.
🌸 Bonus — Homemade Lilac Syrup & Lilac Gin
With lilacs blooming across yards and gardens — and the Rochester Lilac Festival season underway — it seemed only fitting to capture the fragrance and color of spring while the blossoms are fresh.
So earlier this week, I prepared some lilac syrup, followed by homemade lilac gin, using blossoms gathered during peak bloom.
Everything needed except a gin of your choice.
As shown in the photo, this homemade approach ensures that “Sun & Flowers” can be made even when commercial lilac gin is difficult to find or no longer available. The same applies to fig vodka — commercially available, but simple and rewarding to make at home.
🌿 Lilac Syrup
Ingredients
2 cups filtered water
2 cups sugar
2 cups fresh lilac flowers
1 handful blueberries *(the secret trick — adds a beautiful violet color and helps stabilize the natural lilac tone)*
Directions
Bring water to boil in saucepan. Add sugar and stir until dissolved.
Reduce heat to simmer. Add lilac flowers and blueberries.
Stir gently until desired color develops.
Remove from heat and allow to cool.
Strain twice:
1️⃣ Through a strainer 2️⃣ Through cheesecloth
Pour into a sanitized container.
Use & Storage
From this double batch of syrup:
Reserve 3/4 cup of syrup to make lilac gin.
The remaining syrup can be used directly in drinks — including an up-and-coming recipe, “Lilac Lemonade,” which I will be sharing soon.
If making syrup only, the full batch may be stored and used as needed.
Store refrigerated in a sealed container. Shelf life: approximately 2 weeks.
🌸 Kitchen Note
The handful of blueberries is the quiet secret in this recipe.
Lilac petals alone often produce a pale or fading color. The blueberries deepen the violet tone and help stabilize the color naturally — without changing the floral character of the syrup.
Sometimes the smallest additions make the biggest difference.
🍸 Homemade Lilac Gin
To prepare lilac gin:
Place 3/4 cup lilac syrup into a sanitized bottle or jar.
Add:
1/4 cup grain alcohol
2 cups gin (I used Gordon’s Original Dry London Gin for its strong start and finish of juniper.)
Cap and shake gently.
It is basically ready when you are — and delicious.
Store bought, your homemade Lilac Gin in the Mason jar, a gin of your choice and the Lilac Syrup you make in whatever sanitized container on hand.
Note: I used some of the leftover Lilac Gin made locally. It had already lost its color. So, I saved some of my Lilac Syrup, which according to the recipe in “Sun & Flowers” uses 1 jigger of simple syrup. This made our drinks color stable and so is the Homemade Lilac Gin, seen in the Mason jar above.
🌸 A Rochester Tradition
Here in the Rochester area, lilacs are more than flowers — they are tradition. With the Lilac Festival season underway and blossoms appearing across yards and parks, it feels like the right moment to celebrate spring properly.
And sometimes the best way to do that is simply:
A porch. Blooming lilacs. Two glasses. And time enough to enjoy them together.
Yesterday evening gave us exactly that.
🌿 Coming Soon
In the coming weeks, I’ll share more ways to use this homemade lilac gin and syrup — including a layered lilac lemonade, where violet syrup rests below bright yellow lemonade.
Today, for this week’s Drink of the Week, I thought to do something a little different.
Below is a YouTube video featuring a drink that, although not in the present offering of Sips with Susan, could certainly find its way into a future volume.
Makes two libations, one to share and one for you.
ENJOY! 😉 Drink your “Sips” responsibly! 😂
From Sips with Susan — A Gathering Place Companion 🍸
Each week, we’ll share one recipe from Sips with Susan — A Gathering Place Companion. Some will be simple, some a little more involved, but all are meant to be shared — one to enjoy and one to pass along to a friend.
We begin where many of the drinks begin — with Ginger Jazz. Drinks in Sips with Susan feature ginger liqueur — often shown using a familiar commercial bottle. Ginger Jazz is our homemade version, crafted right here at The Gathering Place.
Ginger Jazz is a bright, spicy house liqueur that brings warmth and character to your cocktails. Once made, it quickly becomes a favorite to keep on hand.
Ingredients
2–3 oz fresh ginger root (2 oz = milder | 3 oz = hotter)
1 whole vanilla bean
1 cup orange blossom honey
1 tsp cinnamon (ground)
1 tsp cardamom (ground)
Zest from ½ orange
1⅜ cups water
1⅜ cups V.S.O.P. brandy
¼ cup neutral spirit (190 proof grain alcohol = 95% alcohol) (see note below for substitute)
Directions
Peel ginger and slice thin.
Slice vanilla bean lengthwise.
Add ginger, vanilla bean, water, and honey to a pan and simmer about 20 minutes.
Strain through fine mesh lined with a coffee filter into a bottle.
Allow to mellow 24 hours before use.
Makes approximately 2½ cups of Ginger Jazz.
⚠️ Note on Neutral Spirits
Grain alcohol (190 proof = 95% alcohol) is extremely strong and should never be consumed straight. It is used in small amounts to help extract flavors during infusion.
If neutral spirits are unavailable or not preferred, substitute:
¼ cup mixture made from:
⅛ cup water
⅛ cup brandy
Finished Ginger Jazz averages about 56 proof(28% alcohol) once diluted.
ENJOY! 😉 Use your Ginger Jazz responsibly! 🍸 From Sips with Susan — A Gathering Place Companion
Sips with Susan — Volume 1 A Gathering Place Companion
Some books begin with an outline.
Sips with Susan began with a habit.
Not a business plan. Not a publishing goal.
Just an evening… a glass… and a willingness to try something a little different.
At The Gathering Place, drinks were never just drinks. They were conversation starters. Excuses to sit longer. Reasons to laugh one more time before calling it a night.
It started with a Moscow Mule — changed just enough to make it ours.
Then another variation.
Then another.
Before long, we were doing what creative people often do without realizing it — we were keeping track.
Not because we planned a book… but because we didn’t want to forget.
Names were given. Tweaks were made. Favorites were repeated.
And somewhere along the way, the number quietly reached one hundred.
That’s when the idea finally spoke clearly:
Maybe this isn’t just a collection of drinks. Maybe it’s a collection of moments worth saving.
That thought became Sips with Susan — Volume 1.
Not as a commercial product first — but as a memory preserved.
Today, the book exists. But more importantly, the gathering continues.
If you’d like to explore the finished collection, you can find it through I-Imagine Press, where it is available in both free and paid editions.
And if you’d like to see where the drinks truly live — where new ones are still being created — visit The Gathering Place, where the stories behind the glass are still unfolding.
Because in the end, this was never just about cocktails.
It was about connection.
And connection, like a good drink, is best when shared.
Thomas Wolfe had written a novel and it was posthumously published in 1940. Many had thought it was titled by his editor. On the face of it, the fact that the novel ended up with a different name to the manuscript would imply that we have Wolfe’s editor to thank for the title, but actually it seems that the title was Wolfe’s because, according to Gail Godwin’s introduction to a 2011 reprint of ‘You Can’t Go Home Again,’ Wolfe took the title from a conversation he had with Australian-British journalist Ella Winter who remarked to Wolfe, “don’t you know you can’t go home again?” Wolfe was so taken with the expression that he asked Winter for permission to use the phrase as the title of his book.
The expression is meant- If you try to return to a place from your past it won’t be the same as it was.
you could then…
never leave home
move back home
return to wherever you call home,
but you can’t ever go home again
Home is, where ever you hang your hat, wherever your heart is and with whoever you live with. It’s good to be home again.
Besides Food, What Else Can Be Done on Thanksgiving
The annual Macys Day Thanksgiving Parade – But of Course! Apple Toss– With baskets and red and green apples for points and scoring (make your own rules) Chop Firewood – This will warm your heart and someone’s hearth. What a great gift and exercise too Make a DIY Candle – pour some wax into some old metal piece of junk, add some wicks and there you go. Start a collection of heirloom cast iron skillets to hang on your kitchen wall
Skillet Wall
Take a Drive – Go get lost. Enjoy the adventure! (always have a map and GPS to get un-lost at the end.
Take a Walk – with your dog, a friend, family member or some kindred spirit.
Read a Book – to yourself or to children. Maybe both.
Susan inspired(my wife),Kid friendly Craft– make something turkey-delight with the kiddies
Rake leaves —Throw yourself into a pile or throw some other kids into piles
Look at Family Photos
Gather ‘Round a Firepit – roast some weenies, marshmallows and or S’mores – tell tall tales, get all smoky😂
Collect Food Donations
Be a secret Turkey Dinner Dropper-Offer – Take a whole dinner or the makings ring a doorbell then run away
Gratitude Game — (a paper plate, some glue, rope, fabric, a pushpin, ink pen and letters. Spin the fabric around on the pen until in stops revealing what is underneath. 6 possibilities. Whatever it lands on and whose ever turn it is, tell everyone what you are grateful – say the word and then elaborate a little on that word
Gratitude Game
Make your own Tic Tac Toe game — with stones, pinecones and a piece of wood and stuff.
Homemade Tic-Tac-Toe
Volunteer at a food kitchen
Make a Family Heirloom Table Runner — Take inspiration from television personality and cookbook author Nancy Fuller, whose linen table runner features the signatures of family members. To create your own version, have family members write their names with a disappearing ink pen, and then stitch over the hand-lettering.
Write Letters to Soldiers – those that cannot be home as they are serving us freedom and even those veterans that have served us freedom that may be alone this Thanksgiving
Write Letters to Santa — for yourself or help other children write and send theirs🤣
Interview Family Members – make a journal, a book or a recording
Host Your Own Turkey Trot– run walk or push baby carriages and wagons around the neighborhood. Organize your own version of a family Turkey Trot, whether it’s a one-miler, 5K, or something in between. First turkey across the finish line gets all the leftovers!
Watch a Holiday Classic Movie – Holiday Inn – Charlie Brown Thanksgiving
Good Ole Charlie Brown
Football – if you have to? 🤣
Some Open Stores on Thanksgiving(limited Hours- yay)
Whole Foods Kroger Buc-ee’s Harris Teeter Meijer Safeway Rite Aid Walgreen’s CVS Dollar General – In case you want to start your stocking stuffer stuffing early😂 Family Dollar Cabela’s Bass Pro Shops– Besides just shopping, take the whole family for fun and frivolity and maybe even a chance to sit on Santa’s lap and tell him what you want for Christmas. I did 8 years ago. 😂
Many closed on Thanksgiving, including Walmart. Good on them!
Restaurants(if you don’t want to cook)
Red Lobster – sure seafood for Thanksgiving, why not! Dunkin Donuts Golden Corral Waffle House – Yay! T.G.I. Fridays Ruby Tuesday Popeye’s Subway Ponderosa Bonanza Applebee’s Sonic I-Hop Bob Evans – “Down on the Farm!” 😂 Cracker Barrel– Even if you don’t eat, or buy a thing, it’s worth just looking around! 👍 Sizzler Denny’s – But of Course!
Others may be open and others closed as they all should be. But if they are open, just go anyway!
OK, and Then There was Food
Even now, it is pretty likely that you already know what you are going to cook. Some don’t like turkey. Some will have ham. Some look forward to leftovers, making new dishes with those leftovers and soup. This year. I’m bringing champagne, some apple sugar spice for champagne flute rims, apples for slices and apple cider. I call these Apple Cider Mimosas. Figure it out and make your own.
Susan (my wife), is bringing batches of her world-class cranberry, orange,🍊 walnuts and white chocolate scones. My sister and I don’t care if they are frozen, served hot, warm or at room temperature. We figure we are good for about 1 every half hour. 🤣 Make your own or ask Susan for her recipe.
Now if you want turkey that everyone will like, do the following. Susan’s dad never liked turkey, but he loved this. I did not like dark meat, but I do with this. As a matter of fact, even though we grew up with turkey for Thanksgiving and Christmas, looking back, I never liked any of it. It was just something we did and combined and smothered under with the good stuff like gravy, masked potatoes, dressing and cranberry, to mask the blandness of turkey— white or dark. That’s the way it was for years for me anyway until…until I came up with my Citrus Salt Rub years ago. I will give you the ingredients, but you will have to either buy my book when finished or figure out how to do it on your own.
¼ cup of coarse salt
¼ cup of virgin olive oil
1 whole lemon🍋 cut into halves
zest from the whole lemon above
5 sprigs of fresh whole rosemary
Zest the lemon and combine with 2 sprigs of finely chopped rosemary, olive oil and salt. Mix together.
Pour olive oil onto clean and dried turkey. With hands covered with culinary gloves, coat inside of turkey with the oil too. Place the two lemon haves into the turkey cavity and the remaining 3 sprigs of rosemary.
Coat the outside of turkey with the citrus salt rub. Elevate turkey in pan to contain the salt drippings as it melts. Envelop entire turkey with aluminum foil not just cover, ENVELOP! Cook 350° F until it reaches an internal temperature of 165°F. Raise temp to 425°F, remove foil and allow to brown for about ½ hr. Let rest. Carve. ENJOY!
The secrets to this citrus rub.
Salt tenderizes to the point the turkey though still juicy, falls of the bone. The lemon, oil, and rosemary get the flavor into every part of the turkey, white or dark meat.
Note: be careful if using drippings for gravy or soup etc. as it is really salty
For left over ham, get a sister name Carol Lee to make some Ham Jam Sammiches’!
