Free Republic

If there’s one thing to be learned from the Martini renaissance, it’s that everyone is looking for something different when they order the classic cocktail. There are shot-size Martinis and Martinis made by the bottle (or porrón), extra-dry regional takes and fashionably wet variations. Bartenders’ preferred gins for the drink are equally varied.

EXCERPT ...So just how posh did the Obamas get on their recent trip to the Maine resort town of Mt. Desert Island? Not very posh at all, says disappointed cocktail expert and occasional Atlantic writer Wayne Curtis. Curtis visits the Mt. Desert Island bar Havana, which he says is known for "some of the best drinks and food on the island," about a month after the Obamas had stopped in there for a drink. Curtis says the caipirinha is especially "superb." Naturally, as a cocktail expert, he was "curious" what the Obamas had ordered. So he found out. And it...

WHEN Laura Hunter welcomes up to half a dozen fellow mothers to her suburban New Jersey home for an afternoon children’s play hour, she follows a strict routine. The children are ushered into the playroom or garden and given cups filled with apple or orange juice. Then Hunter gets out her real glasses and pours margaritas for the mums.They have become known as the Mommies Who Drink, after the title of a new book by Brett Paesel, a California writer who urges mothers not to sacrifice their lives to child-rearing. Their cocktail of choice is the “momtini” — a potent...

Baseball with cigars and martinis Monday, April 10, 2006 By Mackenzie Carpenter, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette Now there's a new way to enjoy Pirates baseball, albeit one that may annoy non-smoking advocates and other advocates of healthy living, not to mention political correctness: The Montecristo Club, which opens this week at PNC Park complete with a cigar bar and a martini bar. And while women are certainly welcome, this new upscale venue seems to be all about exclusivity and manliness, in an impress-your-girlfriend kind of way -- if she's into cigar smoke -- or, alternatively, in an-escape-your-wife kind of way, given its...

About 160,000 people die every year from side-effects of global warming (news - web sites) ranging from malaria to malnutrition and the numbers could almost double by 2020, a group of scientists said on Tuesday. The study, by scientists at the World Health Organization (news - web sites) (WHO) and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, said children in developing nations seemed most vulnerable. "We estimate that climate change may already be causing in the region of 160,000 deaths...a year," Professor Andrew Haines of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine told a climate change conference in...