COVID-19: When life gives you lemons

Adam McDowell offers Moose Milk's help in making the most of this crisis

So here we are, living in the strangest days the world has seen in … well, in my lifetime at any rate. And just when you thought things couldn’t get any more surreal, it’s entirely possible the government will shut down the liquor and beer stores without warning.

Don’t say we didn’t warn you. 

I don’t think people are making a run on liquor stores yet, and if delivery services are available where you live, that’s probably your most sensible bet for stocking up. 

I don’t know about you, but I like a drink in a crisis — a blackout, a storm, an election gone wrong. This isn’t about quelling worry. Quite the opposite, actually: I find fraught situations stimulating. They energize me; they make me chatty and curious. 

Scene: I’m 14 years old in Broward County, Florida, summer 1992. I am with my family in a school gym preparing to sleep on a cot, because our condo is in the path of Hurricane Andrew, the worst storm the U.S. has seen to that point. That technically makes me an evacuee, and yet I’m not at all worried for myself. I’m fascinated with — transfixed by —  the CNN updates broadcasting on the TV that someone has brought in, absorbing it as if it’s all happening to someone else. 

To this day, my brain compartmentalizes all the bad stuff in a place that makes it seem separate from myself, even when (as with Hurricane Andrew, SARS, climate change, and COVID-19) it is actually affecting me IRL. Maybe that’s the psychology that got me through 14 years of working in journalism. 

A few days ago, whilst in that excited, crisis-giddy state of mind, I wrote a different Moose Milk for you. Upon giving it a sober second reading the next morning, it seemed sorta flippant about this thing we’re going through. I came to understand, thanks to social media posts and a couple of phone calls, the depth of other people’s worry — about their health, the survival of their loved ones, their financial future, and perhaps most of all, the dread of social isolation. 

I may not share this sense of worry, but out of respect for people I care about, I decided to shelve what I’d written. Maybe you’ll see my first draft in another form, when we’ve had a chance to absorb all this. But in the meantime it doesn’t feel right to post.

(There was definitely more plague talk.)

I have something else to offer, though. 

I definitely over-shopped on Sunday (better safe than sorry, in terms of food supply). As part of that, I bought too much citrus. Shortly I’m going to make an oleo-saccharum with my sour surplus (short version: you mash citrus peels in sugar so the sugar extracts the essential oils), to which I can add gin and the juice of the lemons. That can serve as a base for Limmer’s Punch — a refreshing beverage which I imagine I will be very grateful to have when the beer supply runs out … which it will [shudder]. 

In other words, life gave me lemons. So I’m making lemonade.

Next, for all the isolated people out there who might have long hours of time to pass by themselves or in small groups in the eerie days/weeks(/months?) ahead, facing a dwindling alcohol supply — we at Moose Milk want to help you. 

We know that many people have booze that they simply don’t know how to use — those orphans of the bar cart, awaiting their destiny. If ever there were a time to call those orphan bottles into service, it is now.

So: If you have booze lying around and you would like ideas on how to consume it now that you are (like most of us) shut in for an indeterminate amount of time, please comment below or @ me or Christine on Twitter (@a_mcdo and @sismondo, respectively).

Show or tell us what you got. Maybe send a picture of your bar cart.

We’ll use the resources and expertise at our disposal to try to help you figure out how best to consume and enjoy it. (Say, a cocktail recipe you can make with the ingredients you have on hand.) 

In other words, show us your lemons, and we’ll help you make lemonade. We may not be able to congregate over a drink face-to-face, but we’re all in this together.

Meantime, if you do go out for an emergency grocery run, screw toilet paper, get citrus fruit — limes, lemons, oranges. Always helps when you’re making cocktails. Good luck!