Tequila Musing

We hike the sloping peaks, marvel at a history rebuilt from the destruction of time, greed and savagery, laze by the pool, take naps at odd hours, eat too much, and sing at night.

We can’t believe we’re here and that the world can slip by without us. But we let it. Sometimes we try to connect, pace the three foot surface of the rose garden that allows a minimal service with the outside world, so colleagues and children register our voices in sound bites reserved for the world of the technologically disenfranchised.

Then we retreat for the evening to the screened verandah, clasping small swimming pools of margaritas in blue-rimmed Mexican glasses and laughing our way through to dinner, which is cooked and cleaned up by someone else. A rare gift, indeed.

My family is a family of critics and a family of cooks, so we dissect each meal as if it were a science project, and then we laugh at ourselves for doing it. We trade recipes off the cuff and discuss the merits of sauce versus no sauce, rare versus medium rare, beef versus buffalo. Some go for salad over shrimp. Carrots over buffalo. Excess over discretion.

All of us agree that the margaritas are wonderful. By the last evening, we have squeezed the last drop of tequila from the resort. The manager holds up the last empty bottle and shakes his head in disbelief.

“You surprised me on that one,” he says.

Well, they were good. A fine balance of lime and tequila, sweet orange and salt. Even my sister-in-law, who is nothing if not circumspect in her alcohol intake, indulged in one every evening. Some of the less circumspect, larger people indulged in more than one. And we all talked about margaritas we have known.

Like anything else with that much life in them, margaritas have personalities, and I have found of late, that most I have met, rely heavily on the cosmetic approach of a chemically-based mix. Or at least that’s the language they speak when I drink them. So I don’t drink them all that often. But these were better. They spoke a simple language I could understand: lime juice, orange liqueur, tequila.

They put me in mind of my great aunt’s lime tree in Progresso Lakes down near the border. Many years ago, I accepted an invitation to join a hunting party at the start of white wing season. My prowess with a shotgun was underwhelming, but I do remember my aunt, a beautiful woman in her seventies, showing me her key lime tree, its boughs aching with the weight of the small, yellowish fruit, hardly the size of a ping pong ball.

We gathered a basket full, and she proceeded to show me how to make a real margarita, not too sweet, laced with Mexican Controy and solidly embraced by the edgy magic of tequila. In the interest of authenticity and with the admonition of discretion, I will share it with you.

Mix together: 1/3 part freshly squeezed key lime juice

1/3 part Controy (you can substitute Cointreau, Triple Sec or Grand Marnier)

1/3 part tequila

Pour over lightly crushed ice in a glass with a salted rim.

Simple, but delicious and very, very potent. Drink with discretion. Drink with circumspection. Drink with pleasure.

In later years, a killing freeze took the bounty of that lime tree and not too long after that, my great aunt moved to Idaho to live with her daughter. I don’t know if the two events were connected, but before she left Texas, she left me with another tequila recipe to substitute for the real margarita in case I couldn’t find any key limes to squeeze. You’ll notice, she didn’t opt for the chemical mix, and she didn’t go so far as to call this a margarita. She loved it nonetheless, and I saw her feed it to a whole busload of retired National Girl Scout Council representatives on the banks of the Blanco River. I will just say that they loved it.

Ethie Mary Malone Ewers’ Border Buttermilk

Fill Blender with: 1 can frozen limeade

Limeade can filled with tequila

Limeade can filled with ice cubes

Turn on blender until mixture is slushy.

Again, drink wisely, with care, with pleasure.

Enjoy!