three best bites: boozy vacation edition

I’m writing this after 10 consecutive days off work and two consecutive trips, which means my body is crying out for a vegetable and my brain is cringing at the idea of signing on to a 9 a.m. meeting. Wish me luck.

strawberry caipirinha: I spent the early days of the pandemic living at my brother’s house in New Orleans, where we had in our possession a bottle of cachaça, a Brazilian rum made from fermented sugar cane juice. I was working, but only loosely; my coworkers and I had no clue how to make a podcast remotely, and it took the good part of a month for us to get ourselves set up to keep reporting and recording. That’s where the cachaça comes into play; one afternoon, as I lay in the backyard reading, my brother walked out with a chilled glass. I’d never had a caipirinha before, and I just about fainted at how refreshing and tart and sweet that first sip was. My brother warned me to sip slowly instead of gulp, and caipirinhas became our afternoon routine in those hot, confusing days.

The caipirinha I had last week, at Copycat Co. in Northeast D.C., came with a lot less anxiety and a tweak: The bartender added fresh strawberries to the muddled lime. Somehow, the berries didn’t make the drink too sweet — though don’t order once expecting something sour — and it was a perfect choice for a 90-degree evening.