Horse’s Neck Cocktail – Bourbon Time!

Am I too late to post a New Year’s Resolution? It involves this Horse’s Neck Cocktail.

Please don’t hold my resolution tardiness against me — I not resolving to be more timely in 2012 so there! No, I know better than to do something as futile as that. When it comes to resolutions I prefer to be more pragmatic. I’m sensible!

I’ve never been New Year’s Resolution type.  I find the whole exercise much too depressing when I already know I won’t  hang onto them very long. Its a set up for failure. Why do we find the need to make them so challenging?

My attitude began to change a couple of years ago when I learned the secret to resolution success: make easier resolutions.  I no longer make these impossible “lose 20 pounds” resolutions and no more “don’t spend any more than $100 a month on clothes” resolutions for me either.

Why should we resolve to “run a mile on the treadmill every night after work for an entire year “when we can just as easily resolve to “eat one cupcake a week?”

Clearly, a high resolution success rate is all about setting realistic, easy to achieve goals.  If Tony Robbins is right and we have all the personal power to be a successful goal-smashing machines, then I’m quite certain the one key factor affecting our success rate is simply to choose realistic goals.

You’re welcome.  It is so damn obvious I feel sort of foolish that it took me decades to figure it out.

Do you think I should be a motivational speaker?

I’m sure about now you are thinking, “Hey, Sis Boom, so what did you resolve for yourself this New Year?”

Fair enough:

 I hereby resolve to drink more cocktails in 2012.  

There.  See how easy it that is?  I bet you are feeling silly for resolving to save more money.  I’m quite sure I can handle this one.  Feel free to use my resolution if you have not yet thought of anything for yourself.

Yes, I am resolving to practice more mixology in 2012.  What?  Were you assuming I was pledging to consume a higher quantity of alcohol?   Nope.  I’m talking quality, people.   2011 was a lazy year for me when it came to getting creative at the bar and mixing up the drinks.  Unfortunately, more often than not when I felt the desire (um, need) to imbibe I would simply pop the cork off a bottle of chardonnay and call it a night.    What a waste.

It is pretty damn easy to bust out the mixing glass and conjure up a decent cocktail so there is no good excuse for defaulting to a glass of wine every night.   This cocktail, The Horse’s Neck, is as easy it as it gets.  In fact, you have probably been drinking it for years.   Or something close to it.   Sort of.

There is no better marriage between liquor and mixer than there is when bourbon weds a good ginger ale.  Yeah, gin and tonic is god but if you have ever had a bourbon and ginger you know what I am saying.   And if you have experienced this mixture you nearly had a Horse’s Neck for all you have to do to take the ordinary mixed drink and elevate it to cocktail status is add bitters and a distinctive garnish.

The long, winding coil of a garnish is what supposedly gives this cocktail its name.   Originally intended to be a non alcoholic drink akin to a Shirley Temple, someone finally came to their senses around 1910 and poured some bourbon in it.   Perhaps they resolved in 1910 to drink more bourbon?

I hope all your resolutions for 2012 are as easy to achieve.

 Horse’s Neck Cocktail