I normally start off each post with where I found the recipe, but I cannot find where I found this recipe! There are a ton of rum punch recipes online to choose from.

Rum Punch, or Planter’s Punch, is known as “The orginal tiki drink”. Tiki cocktail culture took hold in California in the 1930s, inspired by the sentimental appeal of an idealized South Pacific. Rum Punch has been around longer than Tiki culture – a 1908 New York Times article writes the recipe in verse, “Two of sour, one and a half of sweet, three of strong and four of weak”. ⁣
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Today I discovered one of the reasons I might be enjoying this project right now. Being at home and in quarantine means doing the same thing day after day, and I seem to be losing the concept of time. (Not just me, I hear it’s hard for most of us to keep track of what day it is!) On the NPR podcast Short Wave, neuroscientist Dean Buonomano said that doing the same thing every day makes it hard for the brain to keep track of time. But if we break up the sameness by doing something novel each day, it can help us to feel more normal. While I’m not posting a new drink each day, working on a different drink “project” for each post is something different. Buonomano says “memory thrives on novelty”.⁣
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Back to the punch. There are a ton of rum punch recipes out there. This one has rum, grapefruit juice, lime juice, grenadine, and soda. I don’t think I actually taste the rum…maybe next time I’ll follow the NYT recipe and add “three of strong” instead of two. 😁 It is a very tasty drink. 🍹⁣
(Originally posted May 20, 2020)