"You Just Seem Older Than Yesterday. And You're Waiting For Tomorrow To Call."

When I was a lad going out for dinner nearly always meant the Swiss Chalet.  At that time the restaurant actually had a chalet style roof and the waitresses wore "Swiss" costumes blouses & dresses. The menu choices were chicken, or ribs, or chicken and ribs.  In addition to whatever was on the children's menu and the bottomless pop (served in half-pint glasses) there was always the "Kiddie Cocktail." This was a de facto Shirley Temple, they just didn't call it that.  I didn't care.  I didn't know who she was.  I just enjoyed the sweet syurpy goodness.  Eventually I outgrew the children's menu and it's Kiddie Cocktail and moved on to other drinks.  By then I did know who Shirley Temple was. (I first recall knowing of Shirley Temple while watching a televised performance of a modern adaption of A Comedy Of Errors which included the line, "Surely, not in the temple!" My parents had to explain it to me...)

The drink pictured above isn't a Shirley Temple. I'll get to what it is.  Recently I was searching for recipes in which to use my "homemade" grenadine. One recipe that kept cropping up was the Roy Rogers. While I did eventually grow to know of Shirley Temple I don't think I knew of Roy Rogers until I was in my teenage years and even then, to me, he was just a name.  His namesake drink is an even more recent discovery. I don't know why, I guess western kitsch just wasn't that prevalent in my up bringing.

Anyway, most recipes call for a small amount of grenadine.  Perfectly fine if you're using grocery store stuff that tastes like snow cone syrup.  But with this stuff I think we need to up the ante.

Roy Rogers
1oz home made grenadine
4 oz Mexican Coca-Cola


Stir with ice. Garnish with a cherry. Pull the trigger.

I can't believe it took me so long to make grenadine.  It's easy. Easier and possibly less fun than making Falernum. But still...