Why are cocktails named as such? Who knows and who cares? All that matters is that they taste fabulous, and are an excellent excuse to buy pretty glasses.

Tonight’s cocktails (sorry, nae photos. photographer was bartender):

• Amaretto-Cranberry Kiss, but with white rum substituting the vodka. And a few pomegranate seeds instead of clementine segments as garnish. Honestly, who has time to peel and de-skin/seed a clementine when there’s hoovering to be done and the dog whose hair is the cause of the constant hoovering needs to be walked?
• Blood Orange Champagne Cocktail, really a re-jig of the classic Kir Royal. No blood oranges were to be found, so gave up and used tangerine juice instead. Next time, will try grapefruit juice. Suspect the slight bitterness of grapefruit will complement the sweet cassis component. And isn’t that a classic cocktail combo? The sweet and the bitter…
• Lychee saketini. My own lazy-arse invention. There are many good lychee martini recipes out there, but they all require the purchase of yet another one-drink-only lychee liquor or fanxy-arse lychee extract. My cheap version merely requires a cocktail shaker full of ice, 2 jigs (~2.5oz) of sake, 3 jigs of the syrup from a tin of lychees. Shake-a-shake and strain into 2 martini glasses. Garnish with a lychee or two. No doubt, this would be much improved by fresh lychees and fancy lychee juice. One day when I win the bloody lottery, eh?

For eats:

• Crudites with lemon/pesto/goat cheese dip; does what it says on the tin. Home-made dip beats store-bought hands down, mainly because you can season to liking.
• Elegant Endives, which are perfect finger food. Just don’t over-fill them. And go easy on the blue cheese…
• Candied Espresso Walnuts, which turned out a tad too bitter. Will halve the coffee content next time.
• Pinwheel Cookies, which have been sat in the freezer since Christmas when I realised we already had too many desserts.

Conversation flowed fairly freely. Thank you, Iowa Caucus, for providing about half an hour of entertainment. And the new Transformers cartoon series. And Naruto Shippuden (it really is miles better than the original, isn’t it? Or maybe it’s because I no longer have to wince at the English dubbing. Subtitles all the way…). But science and academia was not far from our minds; always swinging back to work. Really need some non-scientists at my parties.

Playlist:

• Pink Martini – Hang On Little Tomato
• Ojos de Brujo – Bari
• Pink Martini – Hey Eugene
• Sigur Ros – Hvarf – Heim

Pink Martini was liked by most; the mix of different music styles but with a constant latin-type beat makes for good party music. Am currently crazy about Ojos de Brujo, which makes me want to get up and shake my inelegant tush. And Sigur Ros is a good way to end the evening; it chills everyone out. This may be the first party mix that has taken all of 5 min to decide and implement and actually work.

On the whole, a pleasant start to the new year. May there be many more parties in 2008!