When Ed and I packed up our New York apartment, we filled up a couple of cartons with our liquor and most of it is still sitting in the garage. We hadn’t been using it much because Ed stopped drinking a lot years ago and we weren’t giving dinner parties. (Parenthetical: I’Id be cleaning out a cabinet and find something that I couldn’t identify. So I’d ask Ed, “What’s this for?” and he’d say, for instance, “That’s a butler’s crumb scraper for clearing crumbs from the tablecloth” and then he would add, “FROM WHEN I HAD A LIFE.” So Miss Chopped Liver here didn’t make a big deal out of this response BECAUSE I AM A SAINT.

Ed now only orders the occasional Pina Colada if we are eating out. I think of it as starting with dessert. I usually have white wine. And since Ed’s guardian duties have escalated, we haven’t had any dinner parties here. They’d be downscale, anyway, as the locals think flip flops are a fashion statement.

When we lunched with my former boss from the New York Times, who had retired to Sarasota, I would order a martini. We’d drive over to meet him at Danny Ryan’s and the waiter would ask, “What will the lady have,” and I’d point to Rob Roy, and say, “I’ll have what he’s having,” because I knew he would order a martini. Ed would order a diet coke and I’d tell the waiter, “Can’t take him anywhere.” Since Rob Roy died, I haven’t been having any martinis. I mean being alone at the party isn’t any fun.

But lately, I have been making myself a margarita before dinner, at least a couple of times a week. I use a wonderful hinkty little thing, a silver cocktail mixer, with a perforated insert, (a relic of Edward’s upscale life that he had to abandon when his socially-connected wife died and he got me, small Greek, with intellectual friends, but nary an earl or a duke or even a Hollywood producer -- his late wife knew Elizabeth Taylor and Mike Todd -– in the mix). I fill it with ice, pour in 3 jiggers of margarita mix, and one jigger of tequila (the bottle is so cute, it has a sombrero cap) shake it, and pour out a straight-up drink into a wine glass, with the rim moistened with lime juice, and swirled in a saucer filled with sea salt. I feel so elegant as I enjoy my cocktail interlude while making dinner. Now if it was a martini I was making, dinner might be sketchy.

Note to self: Buy margarita glasses.

xx, Teal

P.S. Will be happy to offer libation of your choice if you are ever in SW Florida.