P365 - Day 130 hot toddy

Today I wasn't feeling much better than I was yesterday.

A couple of people suggested a hot toddy (or three) as a remedy for my cold, or at least to make me feel better temporarily. Or possibly taste so bad that I momentarily forget how unhealthy I feel.

I'd never had one before, and all I knew that hot toddy was a warm drink (of course) made from whisky, honey and lemon. Similar to the honey and lemon drinks I'd been having. Obviously it would be good for me, but we didn't have any whisky.

So could I use rum instead? I wondered.

I did a little online searching and discovered that a hot toddy could be made from any dark spirit - rum, whisky, brandy, bourbon . . . I picked a recipe from the BBC website (that has to be authoritative doesn't it?) and after Juniordwarf went to bed, proceeded to make it.

The recipe is from here and in Step 1 it says:

Give this recipe to somebody else. If you have a partner, flatmate, parent, sibling or responsible offspring present - get them to go to the kitchen while you curl up under a blanket - you're poorly, remember?

Well Slabs wasn't here, so that wasn't an option. I had to do it myself. So here is how to make a hot toddy in photos.

Step 1: Get your recipe. The link for this one is above.

Step 2: Assemble your ingredients. You need 50 ml of your spirit of choice, 50 ml of boiling water, lemon juice, honey and cloves. I had also seen recipes with cinnamon, so I included that as well.

Please note: until tonight, I had never drunk any of the above rum. I bought it for cooking purposes and it has been in my cupboard for well over six years.

Also, since my 1/4 cup measuring cup is 60 ml that's the quantity I used, rather than measure out 3.5 tablespoons, or whatever 50 ml is.

Step 3: (This is where I varied the recipe. It mentions later down the track microwaving the alcohol so that it's hot. Call me weird, but I just can't bring myself to microwave alcohol. So I put it into a pot to heat on the stove)  Add 1/2 teaspoon of honey (I used a full teaspoon) to the alcohol and mix it in. I started to gently heat it at this point.

Step 4: Add boiling water.

Step 5: Stir until it is all mixed together and 'piping hot'.

The recipe suggests that a glass is not the best thing to use for a hot toddy because it doesn't retain the heat, and says a pottery mug is better, but not much - it actually suggests an insulated mug with a lid. I have a lovely pottery wine glass from Bendigo Pottery that I thought would be ideal, so I filled it with boiling water to warm it up while the drink was heating.

Also while it was heating, I juiced half a lemon.

Step 6: Once it is hot enough, pour it into the glass (obviously after tipping out the hot water).

Step 7: Add the lemon juice.  I wasn't sure how much lemon juice I'd need, because the recipe said 'to taste' and I'd been using half a lemon in my lemon and honey drinks. I ended up using about half of that. Add cloves (I used two) and cinnamon (I just used a couple of bits of a broken stick - they sank to the bottom).

Step 8: You are supposed to sip it very slowly to allow it to 'soothe your throat, clear your nose and relax your aching muscles'.

I don't think it did any of those things, and it tasted just ghastly. I wonder if it would be any better with whisky?