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• Hitting the Bottle: How to Make Cheap Champagne Taste Good

  It happens every year. You head to the wine store to buy some bubbly for your honey, and find your self standing in front of the Champagne/sparkling wine with a look of sheer terror on your face. Is the $100 bottle really 10 times better than the $10 bottle? Will my husband/wife/mistress know the difference? How drunk can you even get on one bottle of bubbly? The answer is not really, probably, and pretty drunk. But don't buy that pricey bottle just yet… Read More... Posted Feb 12 2009, 12:00 PM by KeriF with | with 3 comment(s) Filed under: hitting the bottle, champagne, kitchenista, Keri Fisher, Valentine Day

• Hitting the Bottle: Mojitos

  The last time I had an actual cocktail at an actual bar was, well, I don't remember, so it must have been a long time ago. But I haven't given up on cocktails just because I can't really stay up past 9:30pm any more (what can I say, I have an 8-month-old who likes to wake up with the roosters). Making cocktails at home is a far better investment anyway, because at a hip bar a Mojito will cost you $12, while the same money can get you a whole bottle of rum and limes and mint (and a whole lot more sloshed). This is a recipe for the basic Mojito, but you can mix it up with flavored rums (I like raspberry mojitos; just muddle a few raspberries with the mint) or seltzers. Read More... Posted Feb 07 2009, 12:11 PM by KeriF with | with 1 comment(s) Filed under: cocktail hour, hitting the bottle, kitchenista, Keri Fisher, mojito

• Hitting the Bottle: Sunday Bloody Sunday

  Remember back in the day, before you had kids, when Sunday mornings meant long leisurely breakfasts at the local café, sipping Bloody Marys and reading the New York Times in its entirety? Or was that just a movie I saw once?  Well, your Sundays may no longer be your own, but that doesn't mean you can't sneak a Bloody Mary now and again. You can make a batch of the mix without vodka and sip it throughout the day. Cut back on the horseradish and Tabasco and your kids might even like it. Just tell them it's Vampire blood. Read More... Posted Feb 01 2009, 09:10 AM by KeriF with | with no comments Filed under: hitting the bottle, kitchenista, bloody mary, Keri Fisher, brunch

• Hitting the Bottle: We've Got Your Alibi

  I've already hunkered down in the house for Christmas, so why not New Year's? Instead of making your way through the phone chain, trying to find a sitter who hasn't already made her own plans for ringing in the new year (not to mention plunking down the small fortune on said sitter's fee and your bar tab), might I suggest hitting the bottle at home this holiday?  To ensure a good return on your investment, we offer up the recipe for the best home renditions of Auld Lang Syne (with some help from our friends at Stolichnaya). Read More... Posted Dec 30 2008, 02:26 PM by JeanneSager with | with no comments Filed under: New Year's, hitting the bottle, vodka, Jeanne Sager, saving, babysitter, celebrating, stolichnaya, accomplice, stoli, alibi

• Hitting the Bottle: Chill Out

  And I'm only partly talking about the weather-induced tantrums. Mostly I'm just talking about the weather. It. is. hot. Wipe-warmer-from-hell hot. But, thankfully, it is also Friday, so that can only mean one thing. Hitting the Bottle. In this edition, we have the Chill Out   Read More... Posted May 16 2008, 03:02 PM by Mike Adamick (Cry It Out!) with | with no comments Filed under: hitting the bottle

• Hitting the Bottle: Preschool Dropout

  So what do you do when your kid doesn't get in to any preschools? When her fate is all but sealed and you just know one day she'll either be out on the street or forced to attend a really seedy school, like Stanford? Read More... Posted Apr 25 2008, 04:36 PM by Mike Adamick (Cry It Out!) with | with no comments Filed under: hitting the bottle

• Hitting the Bottle: "Kids Say the Weirdest Things"

  My daughter and I happened upon a giant sidewalk art sculpture in the shape of a spider, and when I asked her what it's name was, she matter-of-factly replied, "Jesus." I could understand if, in the week leading up to Easter, we actually spoke about Easter. But instead, most of our conversations have been about bunnies and hidden eggs. I'm chalking this one up to grandma's influence and chilling out with something a little more innocent this week: The "Kids Say the Weirdest Things."   Read More... Posted Mar 21 2008, 06:46 PM by Mike Adamick (Cry It Out!) with | with no comments Filed under: hitting the bottle

• Hitting the Bottle: "Family Time"

  I love whenever a politician resigns out of the blue for seemingly no reason whatsoever -- other than the ubiquitous "I want to spend more time with my family" excuse -- because you know there's a 22-year-old emperor's club hooker with an awesome MySpace page just lurking around the corner. So in tribute to a certain New York governor who shall remain nameless, this week's Hitting the Bottle is dedicated to the age-old, innocent yearning to simply be closer to one's kin. The "Family Time."   Read More... Posted Mar 14 2008, 04:02 PM by Mike Adamick (Cry It Out!) with | with no comments Filed under: hitting the bottle

• Hitting the Bottle: "Something to Cry About"

  At just shy of 23-months, my daughter has decided that the Terrible Twos can't wait, and so pretty much every moment of the day, good or bad, is cause for an enormous crying jag. "Want some milk?" Waaaa! "Want to take a nap?" Waaaa! "Want to ride a carousel with ponies dipped in sweet honey and rainbows?" Read More... Posted Feb 29 2008, 05:03 PM by Mike Adamick (Cry It Out!) with | with 1 comment(s) Filed under: hitting the bottle

• Hitting the Bottle: The Candy Heartini

  Valentine’s Day was the one chance I got as a child to safely express my unrequited love for my secret crushes in 8 letters or less through the confectionary text messaging of my time, the Candy Heart. Through an innocent and seemingly innocuous note scratched into the surface of this heart-shaped courier I could tell Stephanie Fillipello that I thought she was “Hot Stuff” or reveal to April Micare that she was my “True Love” or errantly insinuate that I thought Paul Denunzio was a “Cutie Pie”. (I just like you as a friend Paul.) Read More... Posted Feb 08 2008, 04:06 PM by makeitadouble with | with 3 comment(s) Filed under: hitting the bottle

• Hitting the Bottle: Write Your Name in the Snow

  In a recent survey of the people writing this post the question was posed, “As a child, which of the following was your favorite wintertime activity?” A) Making Snow Angels B) Making Snowmen C) Making Snowmen make-out with Snow Angels D) Sleigh Riding E) Snowball fights F) Building a Snow Fort G) Overcharging Neighbors to shovel their Driveways H) Other. As I stare out the window here in Upstate NY and watch the first couple flakes of an imminent snowstorm drift lazily from the sky I’m overcome with the reverie of childhood and the memories of my favorite wintertime activity. H) Other – Writing my Name in the Snow. Read More... Posted Feb 01 2008, 05:10 PM by makeitadouble with | with no comments Filed under: hitting the bottle, make it a double

• Hitting the Bottle: Party In Your Stomach

  When it comes to drinking there are countless rules, truisms, not-so-truisms, axioms, clichés, words of wisdom, words to live by, words of advice and clever little rhymes that will help you avoid public humiliation, social faux pahs, projectile vomiting, incapacitating hangovers and strange bedfellows in the light of day. (Come on Moms and Dads, we’ve all woken up next to someone who looks like Beaker from the Muppets thinking, “All I remember is a Bunsen Burner, drinking shots from a Petri Dish and some weird little bald guy without eyes in a lab coat.) Read More... Posted Jan 25 2008, 04:00 PM by makeitadouble with | with no comments Filed under: hitting the bottle

• Hitting The Bottle: S.H.U.T.U.P.

  Our oldest son suffers from BRS (or what is more commonly called Broken Record Syndrome). If we were better parents we would have caught it sooner; all the early indicators were there, but we missed them. The constant uttering of the same statement, the continuous repetition of same phrase, the reiterating of the same question ad nauseum until I developed a facial tic in my right eye that made me wink uncontrollably (I wasn’t flirting with you Mrs. Esposito, please stop calling the house); all the signs pointed to BRS. Did you know that whereas every single child in the history of the world has suffered from BRS, most parents can't identify a single symptom? This is why I developed a catchy acronym that will help parents to get their kids to S.H.U.T.U.P. Recognizing when your child has BRS and getting them to S.H.U.T.U.P. can significantly increase the chances of you, the child's parents, retaining your sanity. Learning to recognize BRS is important and easy, just say S.H.U.T.U.P. Read More... Posted Jan 18 2008, 04:30 PM by makeitadouble with | with 1 comment(s) Filed under: hitting the bottle

• Hitting The Bottle: Baby Aspirin

  When I was a kid I would go to practically any length to get my grubby little hands on candy, anything I could fashion into candy, anything that looked like candy or anything that tasted like candy. During the late 70’s when money was tight and candy was scarce my brother and I had to be resourceful when it came to getting our daily sugar fix. This ingenuity manifested itself in many practices from licking an index finger and sticking it into the sugar bowl, eating handfuls of rainbow sprinkle (or Rainbow Jimmies for you New Englanders) and our favorite pastime was filling a coffee cup with powdered Swiss Miss then adding a splash of hot water to create a chocolaty paste that was then eaten by the spoonful. However, some days we felt especially adventurous and turned our attention to the medicine cabinet to ride the saccharin snake. Read More... Posted Jan 11 2008, 04:30 PM by makeitadouble with | with no comments Filed under: hitting the bottle

• Hitting The Bottle: The Brave Nip-Bull

  When our boys were breastfeeding my wife used a pump to keep up with their voracious appetites and to stockpile in case of natural disaster (i.e. Her booby juice suddenly and inexplicably drying up like a luscious succulent c-cup melon left poolside for too long in the mid-day sun…..huh? Where am I?) Our freezer was packed with hundreds of Nipsicles; gallons of mothers milk frozen in suspended animation waiting to be thawed for use in a bottle or oatmeal. Anyone who’s ever prepared a bottle for a baby knows this but for those who do not, whenever you defrost one of the bags for a bottle and heat up the contents you have to test the temperature to make sure it’s not too hot or too cold, but just right. This can be done by sprinkling a few drops of milk on the inside of your wrist or the back of your hand, which was my method. Now you’ve got breast milk on you hand, what do you do? WHAT DO YOU DO? Read More... Posted Jan 04 2008, 04:30 PM by makeitadouble with | with 8 comment(s) Filed under: hitting the bottle

• Hitting the Bottle: "It's All Relative"

  I hesitate to offer this recipe not just because I have finally forsaken alcohol, but because my relatives often read this blog. Still, considering that after a few days in a cramped apartment they were probably as tired of me as I was of them, they're probably in need of a stiff weekender, too. So sit back and bask in a once-again empty house and enjoy the kind of drink that hits you like a perfect -- some would say too perfect, kind of nauseating, really -- autumnal breeze in the dead of winter: the "It's All Relative." You'll need:   Read More... Posted Dec 28 2007, 03:03 PM by Mike Adamick (Cry It Out!) with | with no comments Filed under: hitting the bottle

• Hitting The Bottle: The 3T Onesie

  Last year at this time I was *ahem* between jobs and I had to go back into bartending just to pay the bills. When you’re 23, hot and single, bartending is a great lifestyle; like Cocktail only without the Scientology. However, when you’re 35, hot and married with 2 kids bartending is just another shitty job that pulls you away from my family sometimes until 3:00 or 4:00 in the morning. The bar I was working was a 70 year old jazz club that was being run into the ground by an incompetent owner, but still had a few dozen regulars that kept the place afloat. On slow nights, which were every night, I’d take recommendations from the stool jockeys and use my free reign of the inventory to concoct mixed drinks from the most discordant ingredients I could find behind the bar. Read More... Posted Dec 14 2007, 04:00 PM by makeitadouble with | with no comments Filed under: hitting the bottle

• Hitting the Bottle: "The Lunchbox"

  It's Friday evening, your spouse just got home from work and holy crap you need a drink. But the liquor cabinet is almost dry and there's a foot of snow on the ground. You don't want to go to the store in a blizzard just to buy booze, so what do you do? You improvise! You fixed that broken strap on the diaper bag with a safety pin; you slapped that leaky diaper back together with duct tape, didn't you? Don't tell me you can't get creative with the sauce too. I learned how to make this drink in college under similar circumstances. My friends and I had taken a road trip to a formal dance. We had plenty of beer and our dates brought some amaretto, but we forgot the mixer. So in the grand tradition of bored, desperate college students, we experimented with a concoction someone had heard secondhand from their uncle: The Lunchbox: Read More... Posted Dec 07 2007, 04:43 PM by Matt Wood with | with 6 comment(s) Filed under: hitting the bottle

• Hitting the Bottle: Separation Anxiety

  There I was in the gym this morning, saddled on some electrical gazelle and tuned into the mini-TV in front of me -- a mini-TV that was playing the "Gilmore Girls" (the episode when Rory kisses Dean for the first time!) -- and all I could think about was my daughter I had dropped off in the gym's day care, all alone with a stack of toys and strangers to watch over her. And then I remembered I had an entire hour to do whatever the hell I wanted, and so I forgot about her and turned up the volume on the TV. It was the perfect morning. Read More... Posted Nov 16 2007, 05:55 PM by Mike Adamick (Cry It Out!) with | with no comments Filed under: hitting the bottle

• Hitting the Bottle: Use Your Words!

  What do you do after a long week when your child suddenly abandons language skills and demands attention with grunts and points and generalized alien-like speaking skills? You turn to Papa. The Papa. This Hitting the Bottle special is adopted from one of Hemingway's favorites -- the Wild Daquiri. And it seems fitting after a week of politely asking a little one to "use her words, please" to partake in a drink concocted by a guy who could hold his own. With words, I mean.   Read More... Posted Nov 09 2007, 05:59 PM by Mike Adamick (Cry It Out!) with | with 2 comment(s) Filed under: hitting the bottle

• Hitting the Bottle: The I Wanna Be a Firefighter

  In honor of the men and women who have managed to beat back the fires, rescue homes and many lives during the raging infernos that burned down here in Southern California this week – and also in honor of an impending evening of out-of-control children dressed up like rescue workers (or sluts) in less than a week – we bring you this fire hot and blazing spicy drink: The I Wanna Be a Firefighter. Read More... Posted Oct 26 2007, 04:15 PM by Madeline Holler with | with 1 comment(s) Filed under: Madeline Holler, hitting the bottle, halloween costumes, wildfires

• Hitting the Bottle: The Flu Shot

  Remember getting ripped on Melon Balls at really great college parties? I don’t, and it has nothing to do with blacking out. I just never went for novelty booze and trendy drinks, probably because they were usually too sweet, too expensive, and too much fuss. I’ve always been a cheap, lazy drunk. But I love a good revival (not the Baptist kind) and it looks like Jell-O shots are making a comeback, this time dressed up as haute breuvage or, I suppose, haute cuisine since technically you're eating them.     Read More... Posted Oct 12 2007, 03:25 PM by Madeline Holler with | with 4 comment(s) Filed under: hitting the bottle, Jell-O, Redi-Whip

• Hitting the Bottle: The Cry Baby

  Ok just because I've given up alcohol, doesn't mean you people should.  It's Friday afternoon, and (almost) time to relax.  Nothing better than a pitcher of Sangria-like refreshment to start the weekend off right. So raise your glasses and toast to the weekend: Hopefully now with less laundry, more nice dinners, and fewer tears... The Cry Baby By the pitcher: Mix 3 oz. (9cl) Monin Red Sangria Mix 8 oz. (24cl) orange juice 750 ml bottle of dry red wine shot of vermouth Add fruit and ice and serve. What makes this a "Cry Baby" and not just Sangria?  The extra dash of liquor, baby!  Drink this whole pitcher, and watch mama cry...   Posted Oct 05 2007, 05:32 PM by Rachael Brownell (Redsy) with | with 2 comment(s) Filed under: hitting the bottle, crybaby

• Hitting the Bottle: The Terrible Two

  Any parent will tell you the term Terrible Twos is a misnomer. For most kids, it starts at 18 months -- the screaming, the tantrums, the testing the boundaries and trips to the tattoo parlor and tongue piercer. "Why did we even teach her sign language," my wife said about our nearly 18-month-old daughter the other night, "If she's just going to grunt and point for everything anyway?"   Read More... Posted Sep 28 2007, 03:56 PM by Mike Adamick (Cry It Out!) with | with 5 comment(s) Filed under: hitting the bottle

• Hitting the Bottle: Dad's Night Out

  A friend and I went out for drinks a week or so ago, and because this was dad's night out, I was pretty disappointed to find my delicious sounding drink arrive in a brunch-style wine glass and topped with juice and egg white foam. This was not manly. I needed manly. I needed something strong, straight and, what's the word? Ginormous. Read More... Posted Sep 14 2007, 05:01 PM by Mike Adamick (Cry It Out!) with | with 4 comment(s) Filed under: hitting the bottle