I was inspired to start gardening because of a particular experience with a bloody mary. In fact, much of what I grow is just so I can have something that comes even near to that experience. The story follows. I'd say about 50% of my garden is focused on creating things for a bloody mary. Some day I'll get to posting the recipes for the more complex garnishes.
The Bloody (proportions are for a single drink)
-4 fist sized tomatoes fresh from the garden, juiced (off season go with a good brand juice like Knudsen's, V8 is garbage)
-1/2 bell pepper fresh from the garden, juiced
-squeeze of fresh lime juice
-2 shots (or more)of vodka: don't cheap out here, if you are willing to go far enough to juice your own tomatoes, spend the extra few bucks on some good vodka. I prefer Chopin which is a potato vodka
additions added to taste
-celery salt (I prefer old bay)
-worcestershire sauce
-prepared horseradish
-fresh ground pepper (please don't use crappy peppercorns, try finding tellicherry peppercorns, they will change your life)
-splash or two of your favorite hot sauce, or better yet, a slice or two off of a fresh hot pepper right along with your tomatoes
-splash or two of pickle juice
Garnishes: (3 categories) Many of which can be grown at home as well
1)The ones I love:
-Louisiana Crawfish, boiled in Penzey's crab boil
-Roasted jalepeno stuffed with blue cheese (I use milder false alarm peppers for my wife's)
-Pickles (I make my own fresno-garlic-dill pickles for these)
-Spicy pickled carrots (see littlechef's firecrackers recipe
http://www.aerogardengrowers.com/index.php/topic,1787.msg20288.html#new)
-sugar cane cut into swizzle sticks
-LARGE green olives stuffed with various things; blue cheese, garlic, jalapeno, pimento, almonds (if you want the blue cheese ones stuff them yourself because the jarred ones are disgusting)
2)The ones I respect
-pickled shrimp
-pickled green beans
-pickled mushrooms
-pickled anything else...
3)The ones I detest
-celery stalk (seriously if you want a celery stalk in your bloody, go buy some Mrs T's from kroger and don't bother with this recipe)
-cocktail olives (you know the little tiny ones they give you at airport bars)
I was in Dominical Costa Rica, a quaint surfing town on the Atlantic Coast. I woke up with a vicious hangover and immediately stumbled out of my cabina to the closest place for a cure, and found this little shack called San Clemente that seemed like it would have my medicine for me. I got the attention of the bar tender and asked for a bloody mary. He got a disgruntled look on his face and begrudgingly walked out the back door. I was wondering if I had offended him or something. My Spanish is shoddy at best, and with my hangover there's a lot of possibly offensive mistakes that could have gone in to my request for a bloody mary. A few minutes later the guy returned with a basket full of tomatoes and peppers, slammed them into a juicer and began mixing away. I didn't pay much attention to what he was doing, but was just hoping that it was intended to fill my order. Another few minutes passed and he handed me my drink and said, "fifty cents please". I handed him a dollar and then found a dark shaded corner of the shack to collapse in for some recovery time. The first sip of that bloody mary is probably the closest thing to a religious experience I can claim in my life. I rank it right up there with my wedding day, birth, and losing my virginity. The fresh tomato and peppers were just dancing on my tongue. If I wasn't feeling so awful to begin with, I probably would have gotten up and started jumping for joy! In my state of being, the only reasonable action I could muster was to think that I'd better order another one quickly because this one wasn't going to last very long and it took the guy a good 10-15 minutes to make the first one. I stumbled back up to the bar and asked for another. This time watched as the guy went out back and went to the side of the building so I could see what it was that he was doing. He went and hand picked the tomatoes and peppers from the garden behind the place, being careful to pick only those that were perfectly ripened. As he came in, I watched intently as he began to juice them. He used four fist sized tomatoes for a single drink, 1, anaheim looking pepper, 1/2 of a yellow bell pepper, and about 1/8 of a small yellow onion. The only other things he put into it were a squeeze of fresh lime juice, celery salt, vodka, and some hot sauce that they bottled themselves. The only garnish was a sugar cane swizzle stick that really soaks up the flavor and is wonderful to chew on full of yummy bloody mary goodness. It wasn't long until the bartenders at this joint got to know me and would without fail gravitate away from wherever I came up to the bar because of the extra required work to fill my drink order. I began tipping them $2-3 a pop and solved this problem. I still think even with the excessive tip, that it was an incredible deal for such a divine drink.
