New Working Theory

Pimento olives are like the filling of an oreo cookie. If you want to, you can throw out the drink and just eat the olives.

Now, here's my recipie for a Vodka Martini:

1. Take a Martini glass and fill it 3/4th full of a decent vodka. Ignore the marketing and go for something that will treat you kindly the next day*. My suggestion is Ketel One.

2. Add a good splash of dry vermouth. Nominally 1/5th vermouth vs 4/5th vodka, but adjust according to your taste. However, enough with the super-dry macho bullshit. You are not Frank Sinatra. You do not have pieces of men like me in your stool. Get over it.

3. Put in a tumbler with ice. Ikea may sell cheap furniture, but they really excell at cheap but good glassware. I bought a Boston Shaker from them for $3. A Boston Shaker is the kind where a glass cup fits into a slightly larger metal cup. This seems more useful than the shakers that have a little lid (henceforth, asymmetric shakers. Aka, imperfect shaker furniture. Hands to Work, Hearts to God, but now we're extinct because we didn't believe in procreation. Aka, Japan, Korea, and Italy, whose birthrates hover around 1. Because, honestly, children are an imposition on your Martini drinking. Although, do they drink Martinis in Japan?)

4. Shake 10-20 times, depending on how large the ice cubes are (less shaking for smaller cubes because of their larger surface are per weight). The point is to chill the drink and melt a little water into it. Without this step, you might as well do straight vodka shots. Apparently you can mess gin up by shaking it, in which case you should stir. I don't care for gin, even with juice, so whatever.

5. Strain back into your glass and add an odd number of pimento olives. Also, jump over the basepath when you walk back to the dugout. I like mine dirty. To strain with a Boston Shaker, you cant the glass slightly, forming a thin gap which you can pour the drink, but not the slightly diminished ice cubes.

6. Imbibe. It has been said that you can only form a perfect Martini in a glass that has already been used, but I think this is mainly an excuse to make more than one drink. If you space things out properly and maintain, two should be fine for an evening. This is less about getting drunk, and more about not going through a bottle of vodka a day. Cause that adds up.

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*Yes, I am old, because when I was younger this didn't really matter that much. Now it does and I have grey hair. But I don't care about the hair, and perhaps even relish it as a sign of distinguished adulthood. Also I weigh less now than than I did when I was 20. Seems like a fair trade.