Feel the Wuv and Let your Loved One Keep Your Heart Warm (with a Cup of Tea)

Courtesy of Michele at Inspired Crochet

I needed to make a quick and inexpensive gift for my honey in time for Valentine's Day, since we won't be together (he lives too far away for me to visit with him this weekend). We have a tradition of inexpensive gifts for the holiday, as we think it's gotten a bit too commercial.

Very often I make gifts for my sweetheart. He loves getting little somethings in the mail that were made by my own hand. So, after counting my pennies and realizing money was tight this year, I looked through a bag of some scrap worsted weight yarn and found a relatively long piece of red acrylic yarn that was left over from earlier projects. I don't remember the brand name; I don't even think it had one. If I remember properly, it was some yarn I picked up one night in the Garment District when I was going to a lecture and was bored out of my mind. The shop had tons of anonymous Chinese-made yarn in the back and I bought a giant bag of it. I think I still have a few skeins left somewhere.

At any rate, I also had a ball of thin red yarn that had paillettes woven into it, and I'd been wanting to use it for a while. It's some of the first yarn I ever bought, back when I had no idea of what I was doing. I wanted to mix it with some other yarn but I never got around to it, and it proved too difficult for me to work with it well at the time. Looking at the two yarns made me think of hearts and a desire for a quick crochet project was born.

Hot Toddy: The best winter drink ever

Every winter you can find numerous articles on what to drink during the holidays. The best ones tend to fall into two camps: egg nog and hot toddy. Now, don't get me wrong. I love egg nog. In fact, I'm convinced that the old Joy of Cooking recipe for egg nog (which calls for enough alcohol to get 5 shipsful of pirates drunk) is one of the best, if not one of the most lethal, ever devised. That said, we're left with the hot drinks, and that brings us into Toddy Territory.

A hot toddy is a warm beverage with alcohol, fruit juice and spices added, often with a bit of sugar to take off the edge. My favorite version is the Hot Buttered Rum, which was supposedly a favorite among the Pilgrims, and was said to make a man see double and feel single. The key ingredients are dark rum, boiling water, cinnamon, nutmeg, and cane sugar. The boiling water heightens the spice flavors and makes the rum hit your system faster, while the butter just makes the whole thing go down easy. Of course one can do a regular toddy, which has a similar makeup but substitutes lemon juice and whole cloves for the butter and nutmeg. I'm rather fond of orange flavoring so that's what I'm going to use here.

Hot Buttered Rum (makes 1)

1 jigger of dark rum (you can use that rum with the pirate on it if you want, but why bother when you can use a good Jamaican or Barbados one?)

1/2 tablespoon white sugar

1/2 cup nearly boiling water

1 cinnamon stick

1 teaspoon butter

a generous pinch of freshly grated nutmeg

Combine the rum and sugar in a heat-resistant mug, and add the water and cinnamon. float the butter on top and let it melt. Then add the nutmeg as a finisher. Reflect on how the Pilgrims were not as prudish as you thought they were.

Hot Toddy (makes 1)

1 jigger of dark Barbados rum

1/2 tablespoon light brown or white sugar

1 cinnamon stick

1/4 orange slice, stuck with 4 whole cloves

1 teaspoon fresh orange juice

1/2 cup almost boiling water

Pour the rum into a heat resistant mug and add the sugar; stir until the sugar is dissolved. Add the other ingredients and stir again. let it sit for a moment so the oils from the orange slice are released, then drink up.