I had a full and busy day at work today, the last Saturday before Christmas and a nice sunny day to boot and people turned out for their Christmas nautical shopping. The store had a very good day and I was anything but bored. There was even a carload of folks that came down from Bathurst NB for their first visit to the store and bouts everything from the needful to make up a lazy jack system to a tiller pilot autohelm. Someone is having a very boaty Christmas.

Poor Barb has the cold now and still she went out and did the Christmas grocery shopping, everything except the booze. That's my job. Speaking of which here are a couple of holiday drink recipes for you to try:

London Fog

I the murky past when I was playing competitive rugby I had a lot of friends from the UK both as players against me and on the same team. They introduced me to this drink which in their version involved gin, and tonic or soda water. I didn't like the taste of the gin so I modified the recipe as indicated below.

1 pint of vodka
1 pint of vanilla ice cream
1 pint of 7up or ginger ale

Dump everything into a blender and carefully mulch it all up. Pour into glasses and serve. It's a kind of Christmas milkshake. It is particularly useful to give a small tot of it to the kid if they get too worked up opening the presents. They'll nod off in no time.



Nelleke's Wassail Bowl

I can't remember where I got the original version of this recipe but in my youth I would give this at Christmas time to young ladies of my acquaintance that I wanted to get to know better.

1 - 1 ½ gal of hard cider (emphasise the hard cider. Sweet cider just won't be the same)
1 pint of brandy
½ pint of Grand Marnier
1 orange thinly sliced
2 lemons thinly sliced
A bunch of cloves
A couple of cinnamon sticks broken up but not too much
1 cup of brown sugar

Put everything into a large pot on the top of the stove and heat slowly, stirring occasionally until the sugar dissolves and the drink is at about the same temperature as a cup of hot coffee. Ladle into your breakfast coffee mug and enjoy. Careful as it will go down very, almost too, easily.