Squid Mixes: Gin and Tonic

My wife and I have a routine once we're both home from work.  I pour us drinks while she gets dinner started.  We sit and chat about our day.  It's not a complex or inventive ritual but it is an important one.  There's never any shortage of material for our talks.  We're firmly entrenched in middle age at this point.  Our daughter is a teenager so the parenting landscape is rapidly changing.  We're both invested in demanding careers.  We share dreams of a quieter, simpler life when we grow up.  In those brief moments each evening, we make a transition from the day's chaos to the evening's peace.  Together, we make sense of our world.

Life gets busy.  Sometimes important rituals are forgotten.  At one point in early June of this year, as I sat down for our evening's chat, I realized it had been several weeks since we'd done it.  Between concerts, recitals, music lessons, extra rehearsals, racquetball and numerous other commitments elbowing their way onto the family calendar, there had been precious little time to just sit.  This was not a happy realization for me, a troubling sign of a life out of balance.  As I sought to reduce the stress in my life in the coming year, I decided I needed to make a more deliberate effort to set aside the time for us.  I certainly owe it to my wife and daughter and I need it for myself, too.

Generally speaking, we are beer and wine people but I do enjoy mixing drinks, too.  Gin and tonic was my wife's request after a particular trying recent day.  My recipe is from The New York Bartender's Guide.