Ducking Mandarins

My cocktail of the day calendar prescribed a champagne cocktail for yesterday. Who drinks champagne on a weeknight? And I wasn't in the mood. So I pulled out my shiny new bottle of Absolut Mandarin (drinking my way through it as fast as I can so I can try Absolut Pear) and mixed up a couple drinks, not in quick succession.

The first was a recipe from the Absolut site called a Mandolito. It sounds like something that Sarah Jessica et al. will be drinking in the upcoming Triple Sec and the City movie. Absolut, lemon juice, simple syrup, float blue curacao.

Not bad, though too much lemon juice. That turns it into sort of a spiked lemonade, which may be the point.

I didn't see any other recipes on line that turned me on, or that I had all the ingredients for, so I stirred together (not wanting to mess with the shaker again) some Absolut, a big splash of Limoncello, and a couple dashes of orange bitters to cut the sweetness. And I even drank it on the rocks, though as I got towards the bottom I remembered why I don't like drinks on the rocks. Now they're saying you don't need 8 glasses of water a day anyway.

That was even better, though I'm not sure the bitters worked with it. Hey, it was an experiment. And I fell asleep as soon as I hit the pillow.