Maureen Petrosky

I was greeted in the kitchen by a giant honeydew sitting on the counter emitting a deliciously sweet aroma, which immediately made me think, we need to eat or drink this now! I took to the challenge and in my own cocktail quickfire, I reached for the glowing green bottle of Midori on the bar. Typically I use Midori, a melon flavored liqueur, for all sorts of fun Halloween drinks. But, today I was craving a classic, the Melon Ball.

It's sexy, smooth, and perfect for happy hour tonight.

Sweet and buzzy.

Scotch may not be your usual drink, but stir it with some sweet red vermouth and a dash of bitters, and you may just find you like it.

It's the ultimate summer pitcher cocktail.

A true three-ingredient delight.

There are lots of ways to heat up your drinks, from fresh cracked peppercorns to wasabi and my personal fave — freshly grated horseradish. Add the endless array of fresh peppers (habañeros, serranos, thai bird chilies, etc.) and the even wider variety of hot sauces out there, and you’re choices are endless. Flavored and infused spirits are in the spice game, too, from vodka to tequila.

Sangria isn’t just for summer. Thanksgiving is the perfect holiday to stir up a big seasonally-inspired pitcher — perfect for kicking off the holiday season. Since we’re celebrating, I decided to add a little class to the pitcher this week with a bit of VS Cognac and some bubbly wine. The cognac that I chose perfectly compliments the apples with its notes of caramel and vanilla, and it makes your cider into a cocktail suited for the adults at your gathering.

Throughout the summer, our CSA membership has pushed my culinary prowess to extremes. Finding ways to continually interpret items such as spinach, Swiss chard and summer squash into new and exciting versions has been trying to say the least. Canning and preserving have eased the plethora of said veggies, and incorporating herbs and berries into Happy Hour has been advantageous — not to mention delicious. Here’s the latest: sparkling watermelon sangria. Here’s the story.

When I entertain, I make drinks that can do double duty as delicious offerings and gorgeous centerpieces. Whether placed on my bar or in the center of the dinner table, this seasonal cranberry sangria is perfect for your next holiday gathering. Cranberry sangria is typically made with red wine, but I’ve been on a white cranberry juice kick lately.

Sparkling rosé wine is my choice over and over in the spring and summer, for both casual sipping and for sangrias. This week I chose a demi-sec rosé champagne. Demi-sec translates to “half dry,” which is another way of saying “semi-sweet,” so expect a little inherent sweetness here. That touch of sweetness also makes rosé perfect for an icy pitcher drink. When making sangria, you need four things: wine, a spirit, usually sugar, and fruit.

In my book, summer calls for a spritz, and while this sangria is hot pink and bubbly, don’t be fooled — it’s anything but delicate. It’s loaded with fresh cherries straight from the farmers market, spiked with cherry liqueur, and finished with cherry bitters. This sangria is as pretty on the palate as it is in the pitcher. A dry rosé wine, not a blush or white Zinfandel, is the base here.

Hosting an Oscar party means adding a little luxe to your usual gathering. Portable appetizers and easy snacks along with big batch drinks allow even the host to stay tuned to the show. Here are my Oscar party tips: Skip any food that requires a knife and fork and stick to one or two bite appetizers. The red carpet kicks off early in the day so no need for a full meal.

A traditional mimosa is an ounce or two (depending who is pouring!) of fresh-squeezed orange juice topped with chilly Brut Champagne. Today, we’re replacing those navel oranges with the brilliantly-hued juice from blood oranges. This makes a striking and delicious pitcher drink to serve at brunch. And, as we know, nothing makes brunch better than a fabulous cocktail.

The 10-minute happy hour can be as simple or as sophisticated as you like. For me, the fastest and most delicious way to enjoy happy hour is to use what I have on hand — not to go searching for something I don’t. This week blueberries and lavender were at my fingertips, thus resulting in a gorgeous pitcher perfect for the centerpiece of my weekend party, and a fairly impressive happy hour requiring little effort.

As our wardrobes change from flip flops to socks, fall cocktails typically turn golden brown (just like the leaves!) and pick up some warm spicy notes to keep us toasty. This pretty pitcher drink is a serious sip that captures all of the above. It’s a great choice for any fall gathering and it was a perfect match for the menu we planned for The Kitchn’s Thanksgiving Dinner Outdoors! Sangria and fruity Champagne pours aren’t the only cocktails that can be served in a pitcher!

If you’re like me and have friends who celebrate Christmas, friends who celebrate Hanukkah and ambitious friends who celebrate both, this is the perfect cocktail to serve no matter what holiday is on hand. Campari is always a fave of mine in the aperitif category — that’s the before-dinner drinks.

Every Valentine’s Day, my husband and I celebrate with a bottle of Brachetto d’Acqui, an intoxicating, purply-red sweet sparkling wine from Italy that goes perfectly with a box of chocolates. This year we decided to switch it up and and enjoy our bubbly as an aperitif well before dessert. For that to be a success we needed something on the drier side.

So many desserts, so little time!  This week I have wanted every sweet that’s been posted from the Lemon Blueberry Yogurt Cake to all the desserts made with ricotta and mascarpone.  In turn, I have my own instant boozy dessert — one that works just as well for when I’m hanging solo as it does at the end of a dinner party.  My hard and fast Rum Raisin Ice Cream only calls for three simple ingredients.

After many years waiting tables and working in restaurants my only brush with bitters was as the staff cure all for hangovers. After a late night we’d all belly up to bar for our daily drink of bitters and soda. It cured everything from a headache to indigestion. Then it was only Angostura but now with the cocktail craze comes the bitters boom, and yes a book dedicated solely to this aromatic flavoring agent.

There’re so many elements of happy hour, besides the drinks, that I adore; the cocktail couture (you know — all the gorgeous glassware and suave shaker sets) the toasts, and of course the snacks, both on the bar and in the glass! True, Bloody Marys are known for hosting a delicious array of garnishes but I’ve found gin, and in particular this week, a brand spanking new batch from Michigan, to be just as ideal in transporting all sorts of amazing nibbles.

It’s that time of year again when we get to throw costume parties, eat copious amounts of store-bought snack size candy, and dress inappropriately — all in the name of Halloween. Halloween happy hours can be as serious or sweet as you like them. A few years back, as a guest on NBC’s TODAY show, I had the chance to sip and shake with the authentic George Lucas-endorsed Yoda, Chewbacca and C-3PO, which for sci-fi nerds is about as serious as Halloween can get.

In my household we firmly believe a hot toddy will make you feel better than any cold or flu medicine you can buy. I’ve experimented with many versions and varieties and this simple soothing concoction always does the trick. It’s also excellent alongside all sorts of holiday treats from cookies to cakes making it your perfect pick me up for this week’s 10-Minute Happy Hour.You may wonder what is Rye Whiskey anyway?

Once a year, usually late December or early January, we receive a case of the sweetest pink grapefruits delivered to our doorstep. At first we love them. For breakfast, in salads, in cake and juiced. Then our citrus enthusiasm slowly begins to wane. There’s no avoiding the mound of softball- sized fruits each time I step into the kitchen. As with anything abundant in our culinary arsenal over to the bar they went. I decided it was time for them to have a go at the shaker.

It’s that time of year again for little girls in green sashes to storm your grocery stores and go door to door to sell, sell, sell all sorts of wickedly tempting cookies. I have a ridiculous soft spot for Girl Scout cookies, almost every flavor. I’m not kidding. The first Girl Scout to hit me up, and without hesitation, I place an order.

In my quest for the perfect Passover cocktail to share with you for today’s 10-Minute Happy Hour, my first instinct was to phone a friend. Since she converted to Judaism as an adult, I thought she would forgive my ignorance and be able to give me the inside scoop on what a kosher cocktail might look like. Her hard and fast answer was, “We don’t really drink cocktails. We just drink wine and champagne.”  Hmmm, I thought, that’s a start.

A friend of mine recently dined at Tashan, this killer upscale Indian spot in Philadelphia, and she said I must go and order a particular whiskey cocktail. She described it as an Indian Old-Fashioned. So I ventured downtown only to find that the cocktail my friend thought she was describing was something else entirely. What she thought was a whiskey cocktail was in fact made with an aged tequila, a trace of blood orange liqueur and a hint of bitters.

Everyone has their take on what a nightcap should be. Some even say it should always be brown — that’s right, they say your G&T is better off as an aperitif than your last sip of the evening. (That being said, a nightcap is much different than last call!) For this week’s happy hour, a simple combination of two delicious ingredients will have you pouring the perfect nightcap in no time. For me the perfect nightcap requires little effort with much reward.

Sloe gin is not gin at all. This plum-colored and plum-flavored spirit is sweet to sip, but plays nicely with citrus. Add some lemon and some spritz, and we have a lovely drink perfect for brunch. Sloe gin comes from little fruits called sloes, a relative of larger plums. On their own, they are tart and unpleasant but our friends across the pond discovered how to turn them into a lovely spirit. It’s not so popular these days, but at one time, it was consumed as a morning sip.

In a time when snow in the southern states isn’t unheard of and power outages have become the norm, the arrival of spring has been suspect. So today when something woke me up and it wasn’t a snow plow, a generator, or even a chainsaw, I blinked my eyes open and thought, Sunshine? Birds chirping? Could it really be spring? Bursting with excitement like a child on Christmas morning, I bound from my bed and threw open the curtains. What was this bright light that seared my eyes?

It’s the most wonderful time of the year to put on a pot of hot cocktails and call up some friends for some holiday cheer. This week for our 10-Minute Happy Hour, the classic Buttered Rum cocktail gets nutty with a little browned butter. Butter in your cocktail is a bit odd, but even I can admit that this drink — like anything with a little butter — is delicious.

If you’ve ever tasted an ice-cold glass of limoncello on a hot summer day, you know how amazing this Italian liqueur can be. Mixed into a sangria with fresh fruit, it’s quite possibly even better. This sangria is all of summer captured in one delicious pitcher.

Every summer since I can remember, we drive the back roads to the beach. While the highways are much faster, we’d miss out on one of the best parts of the trip if we took them: pit stops at farm stands. Sampling from the trays to pick the best plums and juiciest peaches is as much a part of our family tradition as our yearly week at the beach together. And now, so is this stone fruit sangria.

Farmers markets offer so much more than just fresh fruits and veggies. These days you can find everything from local cheeses to honey, and this sangria recipe was inspired by all of the above. On a recent trip to my local market, I stopped for chats with a cheesemaker, a farmer, and an apiarist (beekeeper), and left with a bag full of cucumbers, a log of fresh goat cheese, and a jar of local honey.

It’s the time of year when farmers market stands are bursting with gorgeous berries and their sweet smells fill the air. Don’t resist. Go ahead grab a pint of each! If you can keep yourself from eating them all before you get home, make yourself a pitcher of this sangria — the first in a series this month of sangrias inspired by the farmers market. Blueberries, raspberries, and blackberries have this sangria screaming summer!