Photos by Suzanne Husky/Walter Kim

Happy holidays! December has barely begun, but the icicle lights are twinkling from your neighbor's porch, your corner dive has roped the bar mirror with tinsel, and you can't dash into the supermarket for a quart of eggnog without drowning in the Destiny's Child version of "The Little Drummer Boy." Who wouldn't need a drink to get through to New Year's?

These long (and, until the solstice on the 23rd, getting longer) dark nights have one great solace: the hot toddy. Something hot, something sweet, something spiced, something strong: a winter warmer to toast you down to your toes. Such drinks can be made in quantity and set out in a slow-cooker (or crock pot) to stay warm, perfuming your whole house like holiday heaven. Certain ones, like the peppermint hot chocolate and bourbon cider described below, can be made non-alcoholic, with a bottle on the side so guests can spike to taste (or not).

The only drawback? These aren't wild and crazy drinks; a couple rounds of mulled wine and your guests will want only to snuggle up like kittens and take a nice cozy nap in front of the fire. Then again, a little cuddling might be just right at this time of year; why else the velvet pants, silk shirts, and cashmere sweaters, if not for a little negus-fueled petting? If it worked for Mrs. Fezziwig, it can work for you.

Mulled Wine
The reward for freezing through a damp, grey winter in Paris? Hot wine, known as vin chaud, served in small stemmed glasses topped with a slice of orange, aromatically steaming in every corner bar. Whether you call it mulled wine, vin chaud, or gluhwein, it boils down to the same thing: red wine, lightly sweetened and simmered gently with cinnamon, cloves, allspice, and lemon or orange peel, tastingly beautifully of winter.

A few tricks: always use fresh, whole spices (cinnamon sticks, whole allspice berries, whole cloves), since powdered spices can clump up and muddy the drink. (No reason to buy a fancy tin of "mulling spices" either; get them by the inexpensive bagful in the bulk department of your favorite grocery store and combine to taste at home.) Shave off thin curls of citrus peel, colored part only, without the bitter white pith. For the best flavor, make a simple syrup of 1 part water to 1 part sugar (or honey). Bring this to a simmer in a medium pot. When sugar is dissolved, add your spices and peels, and simmer gently for 10-15 minutes. Fill a larger pot with as much decent, robust red wine as you need. (Don't use sour stuff that's been sitting open on the counter for a week, and don't use 2-Buck Chuck; there's not enough sugar and cinnamon in the world to make that taste good.) Add the spice syrup and bring to just under a boil. Let it warm over low heat for 10-15 minutes. Taste for sweetness and balance. Serve topped with thin slices of orange or lemon. Peg each fruit slice with a few cloves.

Negus
A Regency-era drink that crops up in many 18th and 19th century novels, from Jane Austen's Mansfield Park and Charlotte Bronte's Wuthering Heights to Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol. Basically, it's a variation on the mulled wine above, using a strong, sweet, fortified wine, usually port, instead regular red wine. The Beagle, a hot spot in New York City's East Village, makes theirs with Madeira (George Washington's favored tipple), updated with star anise. Typically, this would have been heated by plunging a hot poker into the drink. In a large, heavy pot, combine 1 bottle of ruby port or Madeira with sugar to taste (start with 1 1/2 tablespoons and add from there) and the rind and juice of one lemon, and 3 "stars" of star anise. Heat until steaming (but not boiling). Port packs a punch; you'll probably want to thin this with 1 cup very hot water. Taste for balance. Serve topped with thin slices of lemon.

Candy-Cane Hot Cocoa
Is this a cocktail or a dessert? If anyone goes caroling any more, this is the drink you want warming you up before and after all those choruses of Good King Wenceslas. At this time of year, it's also a fun after-meal alternative. By mid-December, everyone's been hitting the cookie parties pretty hard. Save yourself the time and butter and bring out steaming mugs of this for dessert instead. If you're not happy unless you have a kitchen project in hand, make homemade marshmallows; otherwise, just put out a bowl of fresh whipped cream (use Straus Family Creamery's organic cream in the fat little glass bottle: the best.)

Now, however much watery Swiss Miss out of the foil packet may inspire nostalgia for ice-rinks past, do not use cocoa mix to make this. You know what you need to make really delicious hot cocoa? Three things: milk, unsweetened cocoa powder, and sugar. You put these things in a pot. You heat them up. You whisk them around a little until they're smooth and steaming, and there! You did it.

If you want a very rich drink, you can make hot chocolate from (what else?) milk, cream, and chopped chocolate. But honestly, drinking this kind of chocolate can be like scarfing a whole handful of melted truffles. Delicious, yes, but packing a wallop. What you want for a party is a session drink, something you can sip by the mugful without going into cocoa-butter overload.

So, to make good hot cocoa, start with good, unsweetened cocoa powder; I like Droste, Valhrona, or Guittard. (Yes, Hershey's and Nestle's are cheaper and always available, but they're also bland as dust.) Whole milk makes the tastiest cocoa, but if you're using 1% or 2%, you can boost the flavor by using light-brown sugar instead of white. (Skim milk makes a flat-tasting, watery cocoa.) You can add a little grated semi-sweet or bittersweet chocolate for richness, a splash of vanilla extract for extra flavor. If you must use a mix, Ghirardelli's sweet ground chocolate and cocoa is good, if a little oversweet for a grown-up beverage like this. And of course, those who don't imbibe can drink it straight; making it from scratch makes it good enough to drink with nothing more than a marshmallow or cool dollop of cream on top.

How to do it: In a large saucepan over medium heat, whisk together 1 cup water with 1 1/2 cups unsweetened cocoa powder and 1 1/4 cups sugar. Whisk vigorously until mixture boils and comes together into a hot-fudgey syrup. Whisk in 1 gallon regular milk. Heat until steaming (don't boil) and taste for sweetness, adding more sugar as necessary. Remove from heat. Add 2 teaspoons of vanilla extract. For non-alcoholic cocoa, add 1 tablespoon peppermint extract, or to taste. For spiked cocoa, add a few gluggs of peppermint schnapps, or just put out the bottle and let guests spike to taste. Pour into mugs and hang a mini-candy cane off the rim. Top with marshmallows or fresh whipped cream.

Bourbon Cider

Do you really need a recipe? Hot or cold apple cider, spiked with good bourbon. If you're serving it cold, add a dash of cinnamon to a saucerful of sugar. Run a halved orange around the rim of each glass, then dunk the rim in cinnamon sugar. Shake the cider and bourbon together (or just pour in and stir) and pour into the rimmed glass.

For mulled bourbon cider, warm up your cider until hot but not boiling. Add a handful of cinnamon sticks and a few peel-on, thin slices of orange. Do not let the cider boil! Pour into mugs and top up with bourbon to taste, putting a cinnamon stick in each mug. For best results, use fresh, refrigerated cider (I love the cider made by Rainbow Orchard in Camino, available at many local farmers' markets), not apple juice or jarred cider.

Wakeup Eggnog

Not every holiday cocktail needs to be warm. What this drink lacks in heat, it more than makes up for in richness. This is the cashmere of holiday drinks: lush, lavish, and posh. Now, egg nog, like fruitcake, has a bad reputation, mostly because the cheap stuff you find in the supermarket is just awful, full of fake flavorings and gunky thickeners. Read the ingredients and you will, rightfully, recoil. You have two options for good nog: make it yourself--not so hard if you've ever made custard--using this eggnog recipe, or Anna Thomas's eggnog recipe, a favorite of erotica writer and cultural critic Susie Bright. Or, buy a few quarts of the pale, lovely, elegant eggnog made by Straus Family Creamery. The ingredients are what you'd use at home: milk, cream, eggs, sugar, nutmeg, all organic, and nothing else.

Whichever recipe you choose, make it with half the amount of rum, bourbon, or whiskey called for, substituting a coffee liqueur like Kahlua for the other half. (Or just put out the Kahlua bottle alongside the bowl and let guests add to taste.) It's the perfect holiday pick-me-up; while the milk, cream, and alcohol relaxes you, the caffeine and sugar perk you up. This is the kind of brunch drink that seems like a great idea at the time, but be warned: it can flatten your guests for the rest of the day. But if you ever needed an excuse for an all-day Christmas movie-marathon ("Herbie doesn't like to make toys!"), a generous supply of this eggnog will supply it. Cheers!

Are you ready for the rainy season? After that brief, long-delayed idyll of sundress weather, it seems the dark and damp of our wet Mediterranean winter has set in. In his story "A Christmas Memory" Truman Capote called this fruitcake weather--the blustery late-autumn days when the holiday cakes were due to be mixed and baked, anointed with brandy and set on the shelf to mellow and age. If you're a fruitcake maker, or if this is the year when you're finally going to give Laurie Colwin’s infamous Black Cake a go, now's the time to start searching out your dried figs and candied orange peels, your burnt-sugar essence, rum and sweet kosher wine.

But among a certain sector of forage-minded do-it-yourselfers, this is the week to stockpile not nutmeg and sugarplums but onions and horseradish, honey and ginger. It's fire cider time, time to get prepared for winter's onslaught of colds, coughs, and flus, brought on by drafty Victorians, rainy bicycle trips, and sneezers on Muni, not to mention the petri dishes that are small children.

Last year, when all my mom friends were ankle-deep in squashed tissues and empty C-Monster bottles, with sticky glasses ringed with the dregs of tangerine Emergen-C scattered over every nightstand and tabletop, I heard about the wonders of fire cider on (where else?) Facebook.

Given that most of my friends online are a) teachers in constant contact with tiny grubby hands and small, constantly running noses; b) artists with flexible schedules, an enthusiasm for alchemical activities, and, often, day jobs at places like Rainbow Grocery; and c) writer/cooks procrastinating, er, continually browsing for interesting stuff on the Net like hungry giraffes among the treetops, it's only surprising that a recipe for fire cider didn't come my way earlier. But last year, there it was, courtesy of a post by my friend Sara Seinberg, a writer, excellent cook, Rainbow collective member, recent San Francisco marathon runner, and all-around curious and glamorous person. She'd found her recipe on The Urban Field Guide, written by herbalist-blogger Kristen Dilley.

I was instantly charmed by everything about it—its witchy, Harry Potter-ish name, its overload of everything fiery and naturally anti-bacterial, and especially, its supposed, nearly magical ability to fire-breathe the winter blues (and sniffles) back up into the clouds. Until I got to the fine print, the uh-oh last step of the recipe, where you put the jar on a dark shelf (or bury it in the backyard) for 6 to 8 weeks before using. Everyone I knew was sick now, not 8 weeks from now. So I shelved my plans for fire cider that winter; Robitussin and chicken soup would have to do.

But with the first rains beginning, I'm inspired to get started ahead of the colds and coughs this time. You'll need to go to a well-stocked grocery like Rainbow or Berkeley Bowl to find the potent roots you need.

Search out fresh horseradish roots if you can (they look like particularly knobbly, gnarly parsnips, thick and twisted, often still muddy). Because fresh horseradish quickly loses its bite when exposed to air, the jarred stuff usually contains salt, sugar, and other additives. The fumes coming off freshly grated horseradish will be enough to keep your sinuses clear for quite a while.

If you can find fresh turmeric root, peel and grate it like ginger, using about 1/3 to 1/2 cup of grated root. While many people think of turmeric as a cheap saffron substitute for saffron, or the stuff that makes curry powder gold, ayurvedic practitioners have valued it for ages, revering it for its purifying, antiseptic and immune-boosting qualities. Cayenne, horseradish, ginger: all of these are warming down to your toes.

Fire Cider
This is potent stuff. If you have gastric issues, like irritable bowel syndrome or ulcers, or are taking blood thinners, do not take fire cider. Otherwise, you can sip it in shots, 1-2 tablespoons at a time, up to three times a day. Yes, you'll have dragon breath, but that in and of itself may keep you healthy, keeping the coughers and sneezers on the other side of the bus.

Makes: 2 cups

Ingredients:
1 small onion, peeled and chopped
5 cloves garlic, peeled and minced
3/4 cup peeled, grated fresh horseradish
1/2 cup peeled, grated fresh ginger
1 tsp ground turmeric
1 1/2 tsp cayenne pepper
½ cup honey, preferably raw and local
Apple cider vinegar to cover, approximately 2 cups

Preparation:
1. Get out a clean quart-sized glass jar. Fill with onion, garlic, ginger, horseradish, turmeric, and cayenne. Drizzle in honey.

2. Add cider vinegar to cover. Top lid with a square of waxed paper, then fasten lid on tightly.

3. Put away into a cool, dark place, and let sit undisturbed for 6 to 8 weeks.

4. Strain cider through cheesecloth, squeezing the solids firmly to get all the liquid out. Decant liquid into a clean jar and store in a cool, dark place. Fire cider will last up to 6 months.

Yay! It's hot!

At least, it's hot by San Francisco standards, and when I wake up and find the cats have made neat little piles of their fur next to the garbage can, I'm thinking it's hot.

Last May, we took our first trip to Mendocino. After breakfast at the most amazing bed and breakfast in the area and a hike along the coastal cliffs, we drove inland along the Redwooded Rt. 128 to the Philo Apple Farm.

When we arrived, marveling over the 15° temperature change from the coast, the place was silent. We probably would have thought it was deserted if we hadn't caught sight of a cooking class being held in the main house, but instead we just found the stillness -- broken only by two farm cats wandering out to roll in the dirt at our feet and mew for pets -- peaceful. Pleasantly left to our own devices, we walked around the farm and examined the kitchen garden and the tiny cabins. We enjoyed the seven chickens being chased into a rose bush by a single rooster, we decided not to look in said rose bush to see what was going on, and we bought some cider. Hard cider.

The Philo Apple Farm is known for many things applelicious. At their old fashioned farm stand, which adorably operates on the honor system, they sell vinegar and syrup, chutney and juice, jam and jellies. When in season, they've even got apples. However, what got our attention was the open crate of unlabeled bottles on the loading dock. While the pristinely labeled and primly shelved bottles of hard cider were going for $8.50, this hard cider was selling for $6.00 a bottle.

"Torn labels, moldy labels, no labels!" the cardboard sign above announced, "Still the same good stuff!"

Something about the layer of dust coating the dark green glass made this clutch of cider seem more authentic, more farmhouse-y, more like what you would find in Normandy. So we went for it. We didn't need to pay $2.50 extra per bottle for all that window dressing! We shared one bottle that night in our little cabin and heartily agreed with the sign: "good stuff!" (However, I have to admit that the guarantee, "if you are not completely satisfied, blah, blah," now has me saying, "If you don't like the way I'm driving, blah, blah!" or "I'M out of order? YOU'RE out of order! This whole COURTROOM is blah, blah!")

Thursday, just as the heat of the day was melting into the blue of night, just as the sunburn I acquired planting at Land's End started to flare with comic book stars, we turned off all the lights and cooled off with two icy glasses of cloudy Apple Farm cider by the glow of the Democratic National Convention.

The Philo Apple Farm cider may have had a few more particulates than it did three months ago, but it was just as bracing and refreshing as that first May bottle. Even better, it was the perfect nightcap to a hot, sweaty San Francisco day.

Visit the Philo Apple Farm for cider, chickens, apples, or blah, blah.

The Apple Farm
Bates and Schmitt
18501 Greenwood Rd
Philo, CA 95466