Fortifying Myself

My calendar's recipe for today, in honor of Indian Independence Day or some such holiday, is a cocktail with pineapple juice, brandy (I used E&J), cointreau, and a dash of regular bitters ('regular' being easier to spell than their Agn-something name).

I'm not sure what makes this 'Indian' other than it doesn't have gin as an ingredient, associated with the subcontinent's former occupiers. I like pineapple in cocktails on occasion, but I always feel like I should have a little paper umbrella to stir it with. This was ok, nothing special; the pineapple overwhelms everything else. I pulled out my little statute of Ganesha to up the Indianness.

Since my bottle of E&G was about empty and I needed a good excuse to stop by the liquor mart, I tried this again, but using some pomegranate lemonade I got at Target yesterday. I liked this one better, but it didn't blow me away either. Brandy seems like a logical spiker for lemonade; maybe another brand works better?