Finally, to close out the week of the cocktail, reader recipes. The drink being prepared by readers Andrew H. and Mike A., and enjoyed by reader Sarah A., is the delicious office equipment-themed libation Three-Hole Punch. Due to the fact that nobody ever wrote the recipe down, specifics of this concoction will have to remain a trade secret, but Mike and I have managed to reconstruct the basic formula. First you make freshly-squeezed lemonade, substituting Grenadine for at least part of the sugar (and use Rose's grenadine, since my research this week has uncovered the fact that they are one of the few manufacturers that still use pomegranates, which are the traditional basis of grenadine). Then add equal parts gin, vodka, and triple sec, with around 3 parts lemonade to one part liquor mixture. The next recipe is my own creation (or slight variation), the Scootosa. This close cousin of the Mimosa is made with tangerine juice (Odwalla or some other fairly fresh tangerine juice, or you could squeeze your own; note that tangerine juice is seasonal, making this a wintertime drink) and champagne, with a maraschino cherry optional, but desirable. I've never actually had a Scootosa with a cherry, but I do have a great desire to try it with one someday - you tend to get a thick layer of tangerine pulp floating on the top of the drink, which a cherry would settle down into as though it were a citrusy beanbag chair. By the way, I also discovered this week that mimosas are sometimes made with cointreau or triple sec in addition to champagne and orange juice - who knew? As long as we're on the subject, here are a bunch of other champagne cocktails, including the delicious Kir Royale. Finally, reader Andrea B. has two signature cocktails to her name, the wintertime Brakeberry and its summertime cohort the Ginesca. A Brakeberry is a vodka tonic with a splash or two of cranberry juice, and though you'd think that this combination would already have a name, it hasn't turned up in a week's worth of looking at cocktail recipes, so it appears to be an original. The Ginesca, meanwhile, is gin and Fresca, a light and flavorful combination which is equally, though not as suprisingly, absent from existing collections of drink recipes. And a theoretical relative of this drink, which has not yet been tested in a real-world environment, would be the Guirt (I trust you can deduce that recipe on your own). This concludes our weeklong exploration of mixed drinks, be sure to tune in next week when our subject will be fish and fishing (and again, suggestions for future weekly topics would be super great). Oh, and this is one big egg. [Special note for anyone happening upon this standalone post: there are a whole week's worth of cocktail recipes and factoids to be found in the March 2005 archives between the 21st and 26th! You'll find the links to the archives if you click on Jeffy over to your left and head back to the main page. Or, now that I think about it, you could just click here.]