Home At Last! with Patty Gironda

  Every home bar should stock simple syrup. Equal parts water and sugar. Easy to make and essential in the art of making cocktails that taste like your favorite restaurant or bar. Although, technically, the addition of other ingredients equals flavored syrups-until they change color-I still call my concoctions simple syrups. Take for instance,mojitos . . . the addition of the simple syrup takes the drink to a deeper level of minty lime goodness-faster. Mint leaves provide the contrast and balance to the refreshing lime characteristics of the drink. For an easy simple syrup I sanitize sparkling water bottles and mix the batch right in the bottle. For mojitos I add 10 mint leaves and a bottle pourer before placing in the refrigerator. Stored in the refrigerator the cold liquid keeps the drink from becoming watery and adds the desired sweetness to the rum.

        Thinking that we wouldn’t be seeing sunshine and warm weather for a few more days we were forced to create a little faux-sunshine here on the ark with a big box of juicy California lemons. It’s time to make one of the two batches of Limoncello that we will make this year so I solicited my husband-the expert lemon peeler-juicer person in our family. The fragrant oils wafted through the house lifting our spirits and turning our thoughts to Italy! We imagined ourselves living in Tuscany and handpicking lemons from our own trees, tending the olive trees and imagining the first yield of our own cold-pressed olive oil. In the short time we fantasized about our villa in Tuscany, Ron peeled and juiced 10 pounds of lemons. We covered the peels with a quart of vodka and retired them to a nice, cool dark spot where the oils and flavor will be leeched out of the rinds. With some of the fresh juice I created a batch of lemon simple syrup that will begin a transformatio...