~ You Say Tomato, I Say Sangria ~

Last night we had some dear friends over for dinner.

They were delicious.  Ba Dum Bum.

I am not a wine connoisseur, and I’m not a beer connoisseur, but when it comes to cold, sweet drinks, I’ve TOTALLY got it covered.  I am a master of the way-over-the-top-foofie-chick drink.  My specialty is the chocolate martini, but THAT is for another post, altogether.

To serve with our roast I made “Sangria”. (Please use your fingers to make the quotation mark motion when saying it.  Try it again. “Sangria”.  Good.  Thank you.)

I called it Sangria.  But it was really just cheap wine with some frozen lemonade concentrate and a bunch of fruit thrown in.  I’m sure if I had taken the time to look up the recipe, I would have found that I should have added brandy or sugar syrup, or some other impressively gourmet ingredients, but I live in the real world, where real time is really short….

And sometimes lemonade concentrate is all you need.  Throw in a bunch of perilously old fruit found in the part of your fridgerator that used to have a drawer, and you’ve got yourself a popular Spanish liquid treat.  No worries, friends, the alcohol kills any bacteria.

Our guests last night have traveled to many distant places, lived there, eaten authentic ethnic foods, and know a good Sangria when they drink one.  And they all loved mine.  Oh don’t worry, I didn’t pass it off for anything better than what it was.  I’m not about posturing!     But it gave me two noteworthy theories:

1) That this probably was an authentic Sangria, because ten-to-one the drink was invented out of necessity.  I can envision some poor spaniard, with barely two Pesetas to rub together, looking forlornly at his cheap wine and nearly rotten fruit, …. and coming up with this delicious wine cooler among wine coolers.

and

2) Humble simplicity can be more endearing than elitist gourmet, or, as I like to call it, “Fancy Schmancy”.  If you need to impress someone with the beverages you are serving, you’ve got bigger problems than rotten fruit.

What can you take away from this? If you want a good litmus test to see who your true friends are, serve them some crappy Sangria.  If, at the end of the night, your pitcher is empty of all but orange rinds, you’ve got some keepers.

You can quote me on that.  If you are sure you want to quote me.