“No Flutes for Me!”

I used to have cocktail parties during the Christmas holidays – one a year. I did it for only about 4 years, but they were fun while they lasted. One year I hung a string of little red Christmas lights around my breakfast bar -- all over the shelves that hung above the bar -- so it looked like a festive bar in a club, or so I thought. Actually, it looked like IHop with decorations. Anyway, it looked good to me. I decided to serve only champagne cocktails. I don’t know if I had any other liquor on hand that night, but I had plenty of champagne. I had learned how to make them from my son-in-law, Mark, so I was ready to break out on my own. But champagne cocktails take a little work to put together. It’s not like you throw a shot of booze in a glass, drop in an ice cube and away you go. No, you have to make preparations. So I bought a bunch of champagne flutes which I never again used after that night. In fact, most of them I gave to some relief agency that was looking for blankets and coats for the homeless in the cold, winter weather but got champagne flutes from me instead. Maybe that’s why I can’t get anyone to pick up stuff here anymore. It just keeps piling up and no one ever comes to get it. And I never see any homeless people on the street drinking from my champagne flutes . . . but I digress.

So I was all ready for the party. I had plenty of hors d’oeuvres, champagne and flutes. What could be better than that? Well, as people arrived, I made each one a champagne cocktail, but it took me quite a while to do it. I had to put some sort of sugar cube in the flute along with bitters (what is that anyway?) and stir it. Then I’d add the champagne and twist a lemon peel over it and drop in the glass -- or something like that. Anyway, it took me a long time to do all that, and people kept coming and waiting for their cocktails. I spent the entire evening trying to keep up with everything. I think at one point I ended up sitting in the kitchen sink by the bar. But that might have been another party which was actually a very fun party. Yes, that one was a good party. The evening eventually ended and I decided I should have hired a bartender to do everything, but I couldn’t afford a bartender. And I couldn’t afford to have parties anymore, so that was the last of my holiday festivities.

It was just recently I came across this picture from a bunch that Teri bought at a flea market in Manhattan. I don’t know who the woman was, but she obviously knew the right way to have a party. You sit down and get comfortable with friends, no fuss or muss and no clean-up afterwards. You drink champagne straight out of the bottle! She looks like she’s enjoying herself, and why not? You know what she’s thinking? “No flutes for me!”