What kind of college has no football, no fraternities or sororities, and believes that one person can change the world?  The kind of college my twelfth grade self had her little seventeen-year-old heart set on.  More specifically, Warren Wilson College in Asheville, North Carolina.  In the wave of post-SAT college literature that flooded my mailbox (I must have checked a box:  ”Would you like to receive information from every college on the planet?”), Warren Wilson stood out.   They had a farm, right there at the foot of the Blue Ridge Mountains, where the green and the blue and the fog all merge into one misty cavalcade of beauty.  A farm, which presumably you could work on instead of, say, going to Biology class.

In retrospect, that’s probably what freaked my parents out.  Because no way in hell was I going to Warren Wilson College, a hippie school.  So I didn’t.  I went to a nice little state school, with no football and no fraternities or sororities.  And, incidentally, no shortage of hippies.

So it comes as little surprise to my parents that I’ve spent a portion of my summer volunteering at a farm, or that I’ve taken such pleasure in it.  My favorite farm chore — for reasons I can’t even begin to explain — turns out to be picking raspberries, though I’m also rather fond of weeding.  On my family’s most recent visit, when I returned dirty-kneed from a morning at the farm with red-stained fingers and bramble-scratched arms and a contented smile, I heard my father mutter to my mother, “Maybe we should have let her go to Warren Wilson.”  Maybe. Perhaps in some parallel universe they did, and my parallel self became exactly the sort of left-wing radical they’d always feared she would, throwing herself in front of bulldozers and chasing nuclear submarines around in a rubber dinghy with buckets of blood at the ready.  Or perhaps — as I believe was my dad’s point — she, too turned out to be a quiet sort of hippie, the kind of girl who believes you’re much more likely to save the world with raspberries than with blood.

Yes, these are the things I think about as I wend my way gingerly through the raspberry thicket, cradling soft red berries in my hands and contemplating the nature of fate.  You can see what my parents were up against.

But really, the point here is that the amount of raspberries we’ve had around our house lately is directly proportional to the pleasure I take in picking them.  Which is to say there’s been a lot of raspberries.  A particularly easy and particularly nice way to enjoy an abundance of raspberries — particularly on a hot Sunday afternoon — is with gin.  And champagne.  Need I go on?  I mean, there’s raspberries and gin and champagne.  What more do you need to know, aside from proportions?  Oh, fine.  The raspberries get muddled with a bit of sage and a splash of sweetened lemon juice to create a lovely fusion of tangy sweet earthiness which is then combined with the crispness of gin and the effervescence of champagne.  It’s wonderful.  And dangerous.  And ridiculously pink.  But mostly wonderful.

Raspberry French 75
adapted from Bridget Albert & Mary  Barranco’s Market Fresh Mixology
makes 1

2-4 fresh sage leaves (depending on the size of the leaves and how much you like sage)
5-10 fresh raspberries (same)
1 oz. freshly squeezed lemon juice
½ oz. simple syrup
1½ oz. gin
ice
splash of champagne or sparkling wine

In a mixing glass (a Mason jar works just fine) muddle sage leaves, raspberries, lemon juice, and simple syrup.  Add gin and a few ice cubes and shake well.  Add a splash of champagne and rock gently to combine.  Strain into glass to serve.

If, for some reason, you decide to serve this in a ridiculously large 16 oz. glass, you’ll have to make, like, three of these to fill one glass.  You’ll also have to cancel everything else on your schedule for the rest of the day because we’re talking three shots of gin and at least a glass of champagne.

I suspect this would also be nice with mint instead of sage, especially if you’re not into sage.

My to-do list is kicking my ass.  And not in the normal boy, am I busy way, either; it’s kicking my ass in more of a it’s 10:00 — do you mind if we just have pickles for dinner? way.  My point here is that it’s been a busy week — the sort of week in which last week’s clean laundry languishes unfolded at the foot of the bed and dust bunnies gather in corners to plot their eventual takeover of the living room and minor concerns like eating and sleeping slip to the bottom of the priority list.  After a week like that, a girl really deserves a cocktail.  Or seven.  Preferably in a warm, sandy spot near a large body of water, but the important thing is the cocktail.

Personally, I’m partial to gin, with its cool, refreshing crispness and its evocation of those happily irreverent flappers.  More importantly, it’s possible for me to drink copious amounts of gin and still be nice to people (the same is sadly not true of bourbon). Gin is really quite lovely on a hot, sunny afternoon and, as it turns out, it blends beautifully with the tangy tartness of rhubarb.  So beautifully that you barely notice the gin and may therefore find yourself frowning into your glass and erroneously declaring to the world at large that “this could use a lil’ more gin,” in which case you’re liable to end up knee-walking drunk in the middle of the afternoon.  Which, if you’ve had a week from hell, might not be such a bad thing.

Alternatively, you could be a good girl and just drink one.  Okay, two.

Rhubarb Collins
adapted from Gourmet
(serves 12)

2 lbs. rhubarb, trimmed and cut into ½” pieces
¾ c. sugar
3 c. water
¾ c. freshly squeezed lime juice
1¾ c.  (400 ml) gin
1½ oz. Cointreau or orange liquer
1 liter club soda
lime wedges for garnish

1) Bring rhubarb, sugar, and water to a boil in a large pot.  Stir until sugar dissolves, then reduce the heat to low and simmer, partially covered, until the rhubarb falls apart, about 15 minutes.

2) Remove from the heat and cool for about 15 minutes. Pour the mixture through a fine-mesh sieve set over a large bowl and drain for 15 minutes, then press gently on and discard solids.

3) Cool the syrup to room temperature, then pour it into 1 or 2 pitchers or jars and chill uncovered until cold, about 2 hours.  (I chilled mine in the freezer for about an hour)

4) Stir in the lime juice, gin and Cointreau.  

5) Fill glasses with ice and add the rhubarb-gin mixture, stopping about 1 inch from the rim of the glass. Top off with club soda. Run a wedge of lime around the rim of each glass, then squeeze lime into the drink.