Tag Archives: Hemingway

What we’re drinking — Hemingway Daiquiri

Sure, Labor Day is the symbolic end of summer… but really, it ain’t over yet and you owe it to yourself to wring out every last drop of summer fun. So there’s still time for warm weather cocktails to go along with your end-of-season cookouts and outdoor entertainments even if the days are getting noticeably shorter. One of the archetypal summer cocktails and certainly one of my favorites is the Hemingway Daiquiri.

As the well-worn legend has it, Papa Hemingway was famous for downing epic quantities of this brisk rum-based drink during his time in Cuba when he would hold court at the El Floridita Bar in Havana. If you want a double-sized version of the drink, which Hemingway usually did, it’s therefore called a Papa Doble.

Hemingway_Daiquiri

There are, of course, variations to the recipe but in my opinion the best way to make this particular daiquiri is with simple syrup rather than sugar because then it’s easy to blend and you won’t have the problem of the undisssolved sugar collecting on the bottom of the glass or staying in your cocktail shaker and leaving the majority of the drink too bitter. Like all daiquiris this is a white rum-based cocktail, so leave the Mount Gay for another occasion. I prefer something of premium quality like 10 Cane or Cacao Prieto over plain old Bacardi because, after all, to make a really good drink you should use really good rum. And if you don’t have proper Mareschino liqueur handy, I feel that readily available Kirschwasser, another type of cherry-flavored clear brandy, is an acceptable substitute. Continue reading →

What we’re reading — The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway

If at this point in your life you have still not read The Sun Also Rises there’s no need to berate yourself. The great thing about great books you have not yet read is that you are in for a treat when you finally do get around to them. After all, if we had already consumed every iconic novel we might be awfully accomplished but it would also take away that magical frisson that comes from the first-time discovery of something really special.

Of course, if you have read Hemingway’s first full-length novel before you’ll know that it’s well worth revisiting, as we here at MFL do nearly annually (especially in Spring/early Summer). With his revolutionarily sparse prose and frank descriptions of human weakness, sexuality and folly, as well as the beauty and honor aspired to and attained by doing something skillful honestly and well, The Sun Also Rises ushered in a new era of American fiction and spawned a million imitators. Memorably capturing the post-World War I zeitgeist in expatriate France & Spain, where the strong American dollar in the 1920s could enable even struggling artists and writers to live very well, the novel follows wounded veteran and journalist Jake Barnes, embodiment of the so-called Lost Generation, as he consorts with the upper class dilettantes and salt of the earth residents who made Paris and Pamplona such fascinating milieus. Continue reading →