Holy Perfect Martini!

The Perfect Temperature Martini Maker has got to be one of the coolest useless inventions, ever.

So, this thing ‘shakes or stirs’ (!!!) your fixin’s until they achieve the perfect 34 degree temperature required to make perfect homemade martinis.

From the ad: The stainless steel shaker moves up and down vigorously during the shake cycle and gently rotates in stir mode, melding the ingredients during either cycle for 60 seconds.

It also mentions having an ‘ice’ line and a one ounce cap to get that perfect ratio of ice-to-ingredients going.

But still. C’mon. How necessary is this thing, anyway? I have watched dozens a few bartenders mix martinis in my time. They all do it about the same way: They scoop a bunch of ice into a pint glass (yes, a pint glass) and then they magically ‘just kind of know’ how much vodka or whatever they’ve poured into it, and then they put another pint glass on top of it and shake like the dickens for a while, often while engaging in Witty Banter with the drunken customers.

And then they slap a little thingee on top and pour the drink through it into one of those Spill-Ensure™ elegant martini glasses and hand it to me whoever might have ordered such a thing.

I’m pretty sure they would scoff at the idea of a ‘perfect martini machine’.

That said, here in the Den, perhaps one of these could be considered an upgrade. Let’s go over the martini-making process around here and see what we find.

I have a real martini shaker! We got it as a gift from one of the husband’s old bosses, and at the time we did not drink any form of martini, fruity or otherwise so it was one of those “Wow, it’s a…well. It’s a…oh, look honey! It’s a martini kit!” kinds of gifts.

That I have since worn it down to the point where the seal on the cap is somewhat questionable is testament to how poorly suited for Mommyhood I am many years have gone by since then.

Anyway. I take the shaker and I put a bunch of ice into it. Then I get out my Starbucks espresso measurer. I’m not sure what I’m supposed to use it for (and I really can’t remember where I got it in the first place, either – I know I didn’t buy it, it just sort of appeared in my house one day and made itself at home), but I find that it works very well for measuring out my booze roughly an ounce of liquid.

ANYWAY. So I put one and a half measures of vodka, half a measure of Cointreau (or triple sec, depends on what I’ve got left over from the last party we threw), and between one and two measures of cranberry juice. I prefer the pure unsweetened stuff, but often settle for cranberry cocktail because I am easily wearied in the supermarket and the pure unsweetened cranberry juice can be like the Holy Grail of juices because apparently my fellow Americans feel that cranberries, left unsweetened and/or blended with other juices like pear, or apple, are ‘too bitter’ and they do not like them.

There is no accounting for taste.

And I resent that their lack of taste buds results in my finding pure cranberry juice hard to find in my local stores.

But I digress.

Where was I, anyway. Oh yeah. So. Then I add a highly scientific measurement of lime juice I like to call ‘a fairly robust squirt’.

Then I stand over the sink and begin shaking like the dickens, praying to $DEITY that the damned cap doesn’t spray sticky Cosmopolitan martini makings all over the kitchen like it did that last time.

Then I pour it into a martini glass (I have those too! THREE of them! I used to have four, but, well. Let’s just say that delicate glasses with HUGE rims balancing on stop of wee little stems which require things like Attention To Detail and perhaps good hand-eye coordination don’t tend to last long around here), and try to drink it fast before one of the kids comes by at Warp Eleven and sends it crashing to the floor.

Hey, did you know that martini glasses actually attract toddlers? It’s true. They can be playing with the coolest set of Cars From The Movie Cars, and the instant a parent tries to sip daintily from a martini glass?

BAM. There they are, trying to climb up into the parent’s lap.

The same is true of lace knitting. I have recently embarked on thorough scientific research and can tell you that if I even think about picking up my lace, Captain Adventure (previously playing happily with his cars on the floor in the kitchen and ignoring me completely) will immediately rush over and act cute: “Oh, HI, Mommy! Hi! Sit down, mommy? Mommy sit down? Captain Adventure sit down! Get pillow! Pillow for nite-nite, sit DOWN mommy!” If thwarted in his mission to sit on me, he will immediately pitch a monster tantrum. “I wannit sit wif MOMMMMMMEEEEEEEEEEEE!”

Behold, the abused, neglected, unloved child who never, EVER gets to sit on his mother’s lap.

On a related note, Captain Adventure would like it to be known that Cosmopolitan martinis are, in fact, yucky. Oh, they might look like Kool-Aid, and the fact that Mommy is slurping one down faster than he goes after a bag of Go, Diego, Go Fruit Snacks (now with real juice!) may lead one to believe that it is some kind of priceless treasure of a snack.

But it is not.

It is yucky.

And his mother would like to submit to the Guild that the expression on the face of a three year old who has been warned repeatedly that something is “really yucky!” who then insists on giving it the old college try anyway is a riot.

Seriously. It was a face which clearly said, “And I thought vegetables were nasty! OH MY GAWD, woman, how can you drink that?!?!”

And then he said, “Oh. That YUCKY!” and went around the house repeating it over and over and over and over again. And each time I took a sip of it, he would stare at me with an expression of combined disgust and awe.

I’m cooler than that kid who eats beetles right now. Yeah, crunchy bugs are gross, but you should get a load of what my old woman sucks down every night sometimes…

Wow. Two digressions in one post. I’m on a roll!

ANYWAY!

I think it might be an upgrade, sure.

However.

I can buy an awful lot of vodka for a hundred bucks, which is what that fool thing costs. And think of all the exercise I’d be missing out on, not having to shake them by hand. And then clean up the mess from the leaky cap. And then the broken glass off the floor, with the bonus weight-lifting involved from bodily seizing whatever kid knocked it over away from the razor-sharp shards they were about to start dancing on like the great Grape Stompers of France.

Yeah, I think I’ll just keep doing things the old fashioned way around here, and leave the perfect martini maker to the MI6 folks.

Although I’m willing to bet theirs would have some kind of nuclear power source that could also control satellites, and a handy laser cutting tool in the cap…