LIFE LIST UPDATE – No. 153: Drink a Mimosa

For whatever reason, I’d lived over 37 years on this earth without every having drank a Mimosa. I’d heard about this cocktail all my life, and added it to my “life list” a couple of years ago after hearing my wife say that she’d “sampled” one during a bookclub meeting. This past Saturday, I took the time to properly prepare one for myself and officially scratched it off my “life list.”

A Mimosa is a cocktail made from one part champagne and one part chilled orange juice. I procured the ingredients for my Mimosa during a quick, inexpensive shopping trip Saturday afternoon. First, I bought a $5.99 bottle of Andre Extra Dry California Champagne from Lee’s Quick Stop in Repton and a $4.99 gallon of Dairy Fresh orange juice from Excel Supermarket. Grand total = $10.98 before taxes.

I read somewhere that Mimosas are usually served in tall champagne flutes and are usually served at weddings, but Alabama was playing Ole Miss on Saturday, so I enjoyed my Mimosas from a large, plastic 2012 SEC Championship Game cup that was more than suitable for the job. I used a measuring cup to pour in one cup of champagne and one cup of orange juice and stirred the concoction with an ordinary metal kitchen spoon. I added chipped ice as well and the result was delicious.

I didn’t find the drink sharp tasting and you could taste only a hint of alcohol. Plus, the orange juice gave it a refreshing, sweet taste that made it go down easy. A couple of hours later, I did sense a slight headache but that may have been more from being outside in the sun all morning than from the Mimosas. Using the one cup to one cup ratio, I managed to make three Mimosas, but I did have quite a bit of orange juice left over when the bottle of champagne turned up empty.

As you might have guessed my way of making a Mimosa isn’t the only way to make them. There are several recipes out there for them, and all of them involve some sort of chilled citrus fruit juice, usually either orange juice or grapefruit juice. If you really want to get fancy, you can also add a garnish. Standard garnish for a Mimosa, according to the International Bartenders Association, is cherries, grenadine or strawberries.

In the end, how many of you have ever tried a Mimosa? What did you think about it? How do you make yours? Let us know in the comments section below.

(Also, before I close this think out, I want to point out that the above article is about an alcoholic beverage, and as such, it should be enjoyed responsibly and with a heavy, healthy dose of common sense. If you have to drink, only do so in moderation and never drink and drive. Drink responsibly and don’t even touch the stuff if you’re not legally old enough to buy it.)

2013 LIFE LIST ITEM “CONFIRMED KILLS” TO DATE:
1. Ate a funnel cake
2. Ate a peach from Chilton County, Alabama
3. Ate at Big Daddy’s Grill in Fairhope
4. Ate at Callaghan’s Irish Social Club in Mobile
5. Ate catfish at the Stage Coach Café in Stockton
6. Ate octopus
7. Attended a Beulah Campground service
8. Drank a fresh lemonade at Toomer’s Drugs in Auburn
9. Drank a Mimosa
10. Drank Cognac
11. Drank goat’s milk
12. Hiked the Grand Canyon
13. Joined the H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society
14. Joined the Sons of Confederate Veterans
15. Made an origami animal
16. Listened to Pink Floyd’s “The Wall” without interruption
17. Listened to The Beatles’ “White Album” without interruption
18. Planted a vegetable garden
19. Ran the Alligator Trot 5K in Florala
20. Ran the Battle of Mobile Bay 5K on Dauphin Island
21. Ran through the Bankhead Tunnel in Mobile
22. Read all the Hellboy graphic novels
23. Read “And Then There Were None” by Agatha Christie
24. Read “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” by Roald Dahl
25. Read MLK’s “I Have a Dream” speech
26. Read “Rammer Jammer Yellow Hammer” by Warren St. John
27. Read “Savage Wilderness” by Barry Ralph
28. Read the entire Bible
29. Read “Who Goes There?” by John W. Campbell Jr.
30. Saw the Ginkgo tree in Evergreen
31. Started a fire without matches
32. Took the downtown Selma walking tour
33. Tried 100 different types of beer

34. Visited Ellicott’s Stone

35. Visited Packer’s Bend

36. Visited the Grand Canyon

37. Visited the grave of Lewis Lavon Peacock

38. Visited the Hank Williams Statue in Montgomery

39. Watched “A Streetcar Named Desire”

40. Watched “Brazil” (1985)

41. Watched “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958)

42. Watched “Dracula” (1931)

43. Watched “Easy Rider” (1969)

44. Watched “Nosferatu” (1922)

45. Watched “This Is Spinal Tap”

(AUTHOR’S NOTE: The whole point of these life list updates is NOT to draw attention to myself or to anything that I’ve done. Instead, I hope to encourage others to accomplish their own bucket list goals. I’m just a regular guy, and if I can do these things, so can you.)