It’s that time again! Apparently, it’s been a while since the last one, and I’ve discovered more nerdy cookbooks on our shelves that deserve some time in the spotlight. This time around, I’ve accidentally hit on a theme, and rather than filling your stomach with food, I’ll be quenching your thirst with tea and cocktails1. There will still be some nibbles to start, but I’ll primarily focus on the libations today. Before we get too far into this, I should probably warn my readers that I’m by no means an expert on cocktail mixing or even cocktail drinking. I enjoy a nice cider once in a while, but alcohol has never been something I’ve gone out of my way to partake in, and mixing drinks sounds like a lot of work. That said, I have family and friends who enjoy a nice mixed drink, and just like with making coffee for my wife, I’m happy to pick up a new skill to show off with make their life more enjoyable.
I’ll start sober with one of the tea books. Thanks, Maya, for setting up beautifully for this section with your ways to hide from winter, though I’ll contest that tea is a year-round drink. Admittedly, The Official Downton Abbey Afternoon Tea Cookbook has more to do with food than tea, but given that it’s all food meant to accompany an afternoon tea, I’ll give it a pass. To the surprise of (probably) none of you, I know nothing about Downton Abbey beyond that it was a TV show with a rather large following. Is it particularly nerdy? The audience might prefer to avoid hearing this, but yes. British (and world) history mined for what is essentially late-Edwardian early-modern era fan-fiction? Nerdy as all get out2. So what’s in this book? Surprisingly little tea. Pages 15 and 16 cover Tea at Downton Abbey, including Tea Etiquette, Preparing the Tea, Serving the Tea, and Types of Tea. There’s also some talk of British tea history in the preamble, but most of the recipes are for sweets and treats, which makes me think that tea time was just an excuse to indulge one’s sweet tooth. Dish names here are surprisingly standard; they didn’t name a single one after a character from the show, though pictures and quotes are scattered throughout. Will the book make you feel like you’re enjoying afternoon tea at Downton? Probably not, but does that matter when you’re scarfing down English Toffee Shortbreads or Sticky Toffee Pudding3 in a very un-Edwardian fashion? Not one bit. Before moving on, I want to point to Royal Teas, which also has very little to do with actual tea and is more about the food eaten during tea time. I’m tossing it in here since an obsession with royalty is its own kind of nerdery.
Keeping things sober and moving slightly more into my wheelhouse insofar as I’ve never stopped enjoying animated movies4, I present to you Disney Princess Tea Parties. Are the Disney princesses anywhere close to their original fairy-tale counterparts? Nope. Are they any less of a media powerhouse with millions of fans (of all ages) because of that? Certainly not. Will the recipes in this book make you puke diabetic rainbows? Surprisingly not, near as I can tell. There’s a good mix of savoury and sweet treats, and even a section on Tea Party Sips, which gives us Cinderella Pumpkin-Spice Hot Cocoa, which doesn’t give my ‘not puking rainbows’ claim much to stand on. I can point to Mulan Iced Orange Green Tea, which only uses green tea bags, a touch of honey for sweetness, and orange slices to complete the drink to support my findings. Decent-sounding grub isn’t the most surprising thing about this book: though published in 2022, there’s no mention of Elsa and Anna anywhere. After doing some research, I discovered this is because those two are marketable enough that they don’t need to be in the lineup. There’s also a standalone Frozen Cookbook.
Kids can still read this paragraph, though some of the drinks from this next book aren’t kid-friendly. However, professors at Hogwarts probably needed a strong drink occasionally. Just look at the kids they had to deal with on a daily basis. I do question them taking their drinks with Afternoon Tea Magic, though. At least wait till the teaching day is over! Though it’s a cookbook, it gives some behind-the-scenes insights into the movies, including the Fantastic Beasts series, with tidbits like all the wizarding-world newspapers smelling like coffee on set since the crew used coffee to stain them, given in the intro to the New York Ghost Wake-Up Call Drambuie Brew. It also suggests that the crew would have appreciated Albus Dumbledore’s Apple Butter and Brandy Hot Toddy on the many overcast days they had to film on. Do you like the idea of hot chocolate from the Disney princess book? Give it an adult-friendly twist with the Goldstein Sisters’ Cointreau Hot Chocolate, which instructs you on how to make your own marshmallow-filled chocolate bombs. Huh… I said this paragraph would be kid-friendly but focused only on the cocktails and spiked drinks. Let’s bring it back to tea with Hogwarts House Teas, which has four recipes for hot leaf juice that end up being the colour of the house they represent. The Butterfly Pea Flower Ravenclaw Tea sounds scrumptious and is a lovely deep shade of blue in the picture. I think I remember the official HP house sorting test giving me Gryffindor all those years ago, but I’ve always felt an affinity for Ravenclaw. I should retake that and see where I’d land these days.
Finally, we get to the cocktails proper. Now, dear readers, I give you a warning: run. For what follows is puns. Wordplay. Cold humour. Dad Jokes. Nerdy references. Mostly. Cocktails for Book Lovers and Dragtails; Fierce Cocktails Inspired by Drag Royalty aren’t complete pun-fests. However, for the latter, it’s entirely possible that I’m simply not getting the puns, as I’m not well-versed in drag. My colleague swears by the book and has told me I need to try the Cream-A-Ballerina inspired by Canadian Queen Brooke Lynn Hytes. I’m a simple man: I see maple syrup in the recipe, I approve. I’d have reviewed it for this post, but not having amaretto or the time to buy it put a damper on that plan. From the former, the Salted Caramel and Bourbon Milkshake inspired by Flannery O’connor’s A Good Man is Hard to Find and other Stories, is what I’ll eventually be making. Ice cream is like maple syrup.
And now, the moment you’ve all been dreading/waiting for, the punny cocktails. First up, what is apparently a classic in the scene: Tequila Mockingbird; Cocktails With a Literary Twist by Time Federle and its sequels Are You There God? It’s Me, Margarita, and Gone with the Gin; Cocktails with a Hollywood Twist. I’ll let the drink names speak for themselves: Hazy Rich Asians, Gin Eyre, The Drinking Game of Thrones, The Canterbury Ales, No Country For Old Fashioneds, Jurassic Port. The best part is that all of these drinks can help you forget the amazing god-awful creative names5. All three volumes start by introducing tools, techniques, and terms so that neophyte mixologists can delve into these drinks as confidently as someone who’s been knocking them back for years. Each drink has a paragraph that explains why that drink is associated with that movie/book6. Even if you’re a non-drinker, these books are a riot, and Margarita has a virgin section based on children’s classics; my favourite title of these is Frog and Toad are Sober, although Goodnight Moonshine is a close second (and has an option to booze it up too).
Our final punfest is Are You Afraid of the Dark Rum?; and Other Cocktails for ’90s Kids. Choice drink names here are Ginny In A Bottle, The Fresh Mint of Bel-Air, and I Saw the Wine. I think this one likely took some inspiration from the trio above, as there’s the same intro to techniques and tools, though, in those books, the methods and terms are generally not done in humour mode. Not so here, with author Sam Slaughter’s self-deprecating and pun-filled humour on display throughout. There’s also an intro to each drink that stirs up the ’90s nostalgia before giving you the recipe.
Assuming you’re still sober enough to read this, that’s all from me this month. Next week starts something slightly different on the HOTS Blog, so look forward to that! See you all in a month.
1I could not find any sufficiently nerdy coffee-related books, or this would have been titled Coffee and Cocktails and Tea, Oh My! One might argue that a coffee obsession is, in itself, nerdy, but I have very loosely defined standards to uphold! Also, I’m a tea person, so there.
2Did I mention loosely defined standards? I did. Always assume my tongue is firmly in my cheek if you don’t already.
3Can you tell I like toffee?
4Growing old is a mindset, and thinking animation is only for kids makes you old. Sumayyah knows what I’m talking about, go read her posts (again) and then borrow everything she wrote about.
5Please enjoy in moderation. The names aren’t that bad.
6Beyond the pun potential, of course.