You may have noticed a little bit of a chill in the air this Monday (specifically a wind chill of 18 degrees). You might have even car-skated over a thin little layer of ice on your way home from the city's cubicles and retail counters. These elements and some additional factors had me and BFF Jen drinking (once again), but safely at home, out of the elements.

Jen is my next door neighbor as luck would have it, so we planned out an order of post-work, pre-drink errands. She would go home and feed pets and call me with her "Little Black Book of Drink Recipes" (from her days in the service industry) in hand and we'd decide on an alcoholic recipe for the evening. Then I'd stop for food and hooch and we'd meet at my apartment for TiVo'ed stories and the knock-back.

Based on the below freezing temps outside and the fact that I was wearing three layers to survive our arctic-plush offices, we decided for something warm. Not as labor-intensive as a Hot Toddy (I didn't want to do a grocery store run for spices), but not as lazy as spiked hot chocolate. We found our girl: the Irish Maiden.

The recipe called for 1 oz. Irish whiskey, 1 oz. Irish cream, hot coffee, whipped cream and 1/2 oz. creme de menthe. I was fine with throwing down the dough for a small bottle of Jameson and Bailey's for this experiment (I normally only have vodka or wine in the house), but creme de menthe? Everyone knows there is no small bottle of creme de menthe. Once purchased it will sit on top of the refrigerator for years, accumulating dust and contemptuous glares. Even the guy at the liquor store laughed at me when I asked if there was a smaller size.

At least they had one with a pretty blue label.

I finally made it home after hitting 7-11 for coffee (I have no actual coffee maker and the stolen packets from work were ground too finely for my French press...um, I did return them, if you're reading this over in HR) and three other stores in an unsuccessful mission for whipped cream. Oh well.

Thinking my oversized coffee mugs were larger than the fancy Irish coffee glasses such drinks would be served in at a bar/restaurant, we made the logical girl drink decision: We should double the amounts of each ingredient. Yeah. Double.

Not actually that bad an idea for the Jameson. Or the Bailey's really. But without the whipped cream, the biggest mistake made was doubling the menthe.  We dumped a full ounce of that shit in and as my granny would've said, "It took the hair off my tongue." In fact, one whiff from the bottle almost caused me to pass out. It is like peppermint ether.

Ideally, the stuff should be drizzled over the whipped cream for an Irish flair, but no, we weren't thinking. (In our defense we had a certain teen, er, young adult television series distracting us from the task.)

It's my own fault I drank a liquid Altoid, but I still blame the recipe book...and the TiVo.

Once diluted with more coffee, Jameson and Bailey's, we found a good balance and were warm for the first time all day. Whiskey warm...like a St. Bernard found us and gave us a dram of anti-freeze, but in a good way. Our fellow girl drinking neighbor even came down for a shot of Jameson...yes, there were diversions from the recipe once things went horribly awry, but can you blame us? And even though someone was shockingly, critically ill and that one girl ran away on our favorite show, we ended on a good note. A bleary eyed, warm-chested, big effing bottle of shitty creme de menthe on the refrigerator good note. Next time I spike coffee, I'm only using whiskey and Irish creme. I'm taking offers on the creme de menthe. --Merritt Martin