Pumpkin isn't the only orange

All the little shops near my place are stocked with Halloween goodness. Many of them are clothing shops, and they're all decked out in orange and black. With such holiday thematics in mind, I had a few friends over for orange drinks last night. I didn't really feel the need to puree pumpkin, so I reverted to another solid southern fruit: the peach.

With the help of Scottie B.'s mixology expertise, I made bellinitinis. Vodka, peach schnapps, and peach nectar. They are, in a word, incredible. They are also rather sweet--I cut the sweet in this batch with more vodka, which worked for taste but made them as potent as real martinis, which resulted in me slumped on my sofa near midnight laughing my butt off at Vicar of Dibley while my friends teetered off to see "a band" nearby. [In my defense, I've been known to laugh at this show sober, but midnight after a few tinis and I was roaring.]

The sweetness causes not just a fruity bit of enjoyment, it creates a bit of a "remembrance of things past" moment. Every woman who tasted the first batch--before I had learned to add about 1/2 the schnapps the recipe called for--had a flashback to high school. You know, when we all drank schnapps because that's the kind of booze we could tolerate. It will not do to fix a drink that makes people feel like they're drinking out of a paper bag behind the bleachers, so I've been tweaking ever since. I might have to break down and add champagne, but popping a cork is such a death knell to any sense of sobriety. It won't keep, you see, so one must finish the bottle! Perhaps a tiny bottle . . . hmmm . . .

In other excellent news, we "fell back" this morning, and I've never been more glad. Thank you, government, for manipulating time!