Super Bowl Drinks

It's only Super Bowl Sunday. One of the best days, in my opinion. A day when the TV is overrun with pointless yet captivating sports punditry, copious amounts of cheese-flavoured, cheese-covered or cheese-filled foodstuffs are at constantly at the ready, and day-time drinking is not only accepted, but almost forcibly encouraged. It's like the end-of-year party, the big blowout after 20 weeks of football Sundays, reminding us all that from now on the weekends might actually have to be productive. I - for one - cannot wait until September. In the meantime, I made some cocktails today.

I wanted to make some drinks that represented the teams playing - Baltimore Ravens and San Francisco 49ers. My first thought was to go with flavours from those particular cities, but I hit a bit of a brick wall with Baltimore - no matter how hard I tried I just couldn't turn crab into something that a normal human would want to drink - and so I decided to go with their respective primary team colours, purple and red.

I blitzed up some blueberries with a spoonful of sugar, a squeeze of fresh orange juice and a dash of water, then strained the mix into a bowl to remove the pips and nasty stuff. Pour into a tupperware or small jug.

Every good cocktail needs a name, and this one will go by 'Purple Drank'. If you know what that mean, good on you. If not, why not have a little google and find out? Not that I'm suggesting that my cocktail will have any long-lasting effects...but I'm glad I've got tomorrow booked off. REAL Purple Drank calls for Jolly Ranchers, and we can buy them here in the UK. To keep the gimmick legit I bought a packet of Glacier Fruits and left a couple purples to dissolve in the juice mixture. Mix two parts juice to one part vodka and one part rum. Shake it up and enjoy.

Representing the San Fran contingent, a mixture of pomegranate seeds, fresh squeezed pomegranate juice, the squeeze of a lime and a double shot of vodka. You might call this a vodka and pomegranate juice, I'm calling it the 'Mr. Alex Smith'. That's all for now. Go start tailgating, perhaps make some mozzarella sticks or a couple of burgers ready for the game. Whatever you do, make sure you do it with drink in hand. After all, next weekend will be different.

Ingredients

Purple Drank

handful of blueberries

granulated sugar

fresh orange juice

purple boiled sweets

1 x vodka

1 x rum

i also may or may not have added a dash of food colouring...

Mr. Alex Smith

pomegranate, juice and seeds

lime juice

2 x vodka