The link below (I hope it never goes away) gives me the moral and intellectual support for my world-wide search of the perfect martini.

The Greatness of Gin. Please read the article, order a referenced book or two and let me know what you think.

The six o’clock cocktail hour is a serious thing, he insists, a special hinge in the day, and it would be a waste to be wasted then: “This is the violet hour, the hour of hush and wonder, when the affections glow and valor is reborn, when the shadows deepen along the edge of the forest and we believe that, if we watch carefully, at any moment we may see the unicorn. But it would not be a martini if we should see him.”

It seems sometimes that production problems plague everything. I am leery of anything made in China but I have no choice but to accept their products.

But now Brazil leaps into my spotlight. Olives. To be more exact, Martini Olives – you know those little green things stuffed with a bit of pimento. In the last few years we have gone from jars of perfect olives to jars containing, along with the good, many deformed, ripped, squashed, torn and crunched olives. Some have a bit of pimento hanging from them, some not and last night I found one drilled through the side!

What is happening to the world when we can’t even take an olive, remove the seed and stuff some pimento into it correctly?

Why when I purchase a jar of olives must I be subjected to maimed, ripped, torn olives along with bits and pieces of olive residue and floating pimentos? There should be a warning label – Warning: Opening this jar may subject you to the results of horrible  (though unexpected ) results of olive torture.

Almost enough to make me switch to Cosmo’s. Or cry like Nancy Kerrigan, whose career had just been ruined, “Whyyyyyyyyy, whyyyyyyyy.”