Work Travel and the Perfect Dirty Martini

Cocktail hour on mom's front deck.  5:10 and 80 degrees!

I was in Montana for a week of work. I have the best job.  I go to a different college or university every day, do my presentation about teaching and living in Alaska, this amazing state of mine, and I get to stay with my mom.  She rides with me and we visit on the way to each school, I give my presentation and we head home.  We have favorite places we stop to eat (and wow, can we eat!) but in the evening we are home and have cocktail hour.

When I am home I have the drink of the week, that means ONE adult beverage a week, usually on a Friday or Saturday evening.  But at mom's we have cocktail hour every night (o.k. it was only 4 of the 7 nights I was there) and we would have a Dirty Martini.  My mom's husband Dick makes the best dirty martini around.  I have tried to copy it before, but this trip he told me the secret, and I will share that secret with you (if you already knew it, don't burst my bubble, I'm riding pretty high here right now).

Olives in vermouth...yes you heard it, you buy them in the grocery store, right on the shelf with all the other olives.  Why hadn't I noticed them before?  Crap, they have probably been next to the regular graham crackers when all I could find were the honey kind!

So I sent a picture of the elusive olives to my husband and posted on Facebook that he needed to learn how to make these perfect martinis...I came home to this:

I sure got lucky with this guy.

The Perfect Dirty Martini
Dick's way
2 oz. cold vodka
3 ice cubes
3 olives on a swizzle stick, use the kind brined in vermouth like the picture above
2-3 tablespoons of olive juice, depending on taste (I like 3)
stir
Enjoy.  Makes 1 drink

1 year ago:    Colonial Bread
2 years ago:  Stuffed Pork Loin and the "Good Try"
3 years ago:  Carrot Cake with Cinnamon Cream Cheese Frosting

September 28, 2015  Sunrise 7:51 am  Sunset 7:30 pm  Temp.  H 45/ L 32°F