Now that I have both Beachbum Berry’s Sippin’ Safari as well as a new and fancy-lookin’ camera, I couldn’t resist making my MxMo entry this month a Tiki cocktail. The trick is to find which one I have the ingredients for and to make sure I don’t try to tackle anything that; 1: makes me break my new camera in frustration, 2: convinces me to never attempt another Tiki drink in my life, or 3: isn’t orange. Thus, on page 78 I found a fairly friendly novice-level Tiki drink called the Sleeping Giant.

According to our esteemed expert, Jeff Berry, the Sleeping Giant derives from the name of a hilltop nearby the Coco Palms resort in Kauai where the drink was developed in the 1950s. From the recipe this looks to be an offshoot of the Bahama Mama recipe I use, sans grenadine and Coconut Rum; with which both exclusions I’m just dandy¹.

Sleeping Giant

• 1 1/2 oz orange juice
• 1 1/2 oz unsweetened pineapple juice
• 1 1/2 oz light rum
• 1/2 oz sweet & sour (2:1:1 lemon juice/lime juice/simple syrup)
• 1/4 oz orgeat syrup

Shake well with a generous amount of crushed ice. Pour into a tall glass (I used my Collins glass). Add ice cubes to fill and garnish with a mint sprig and a cocktail cherry.

As expected, this drink is very sweet and easy on the tongue. It’s very light on the alcohol and the only danger comes in how quickly one finds one’s self sucking this down and one’s wife commenting on how one might want to slow down and savor their drinks a little longer if one doesn’t want to be getting the evil eye the rest of the night. Point taken.  It’s very pleasant, but again, to the mainline-sugar syrup-into-my-vein side of the dry-to-sweet spectrum. There isn’t a lot of complexity here but it certainly dredges up a feeling of the tropics and there are worse ways to pass a long sit on the patio under the willow tree while the sun sets. Having one of these after the sun sets would seem a shame though; it has bright orangey sunshine written all over it.

Sleeping Giant Rating: (not really my style any more but a nice drink)

Thanks to Gwen at Intoxicated Zodiac for hosting this month’s MxMo, it was a nice fun theme and my second daughter’s every bit a Leo.

PS: I’m still working with macro focus and depth-of-field and aperature and what-not on the camera but I already notice a huge difference in the flexibility of the camera and the ability to manipulate settings and change the tone of shots. Any quick reference guides or good sites for basic shot composition and/or camera usage are most welcome.

1. tricky structure, that [↩]