Mel's Bar

I named this site after my daughter, Melissa. She worked her way thru grad school as a bar tender and I must admit, makes a great Margarita in addition to some other specialties. I will be populating this site with that recipe as well as my favorite Chesapeake Bloody Mary recipe which incorporates clam juice and horse-radish. Come back here in a week or two to find these and a few more.

Check out some of the Bloody Mary's I have sampled in my travels below. My quest is to find the perfect Bloody Mary - my own recipe comes close, but perfection is almost never achieved, so I continue to search, . . .

If you are like me, you enjoy a good Bloody Mary once in a while. Some like them in the morning, others just have them as a drink of choice anytime. I have sampled Bloody’s around the world, and found that one of the best is made right here in Cedarburg , WI at local pub called “Morton’s.” If you are ever in the area, you owe it to yourself to drop on in and have one – they are located across the street and just a few steps south of our library.

As good as the Morton’s Bloody Mary is, I have a few modifications that make it even better. And by the way, you must have a beer chaser with your Bloody Mary. I arrived in Wisconsin (due to my work) in 1981, and one of the first things I noticed, besides the Friday Night Fish Fry’s (that’s another story), was that when you order a Bloody out here you almost always get a 4 oz chaser of beer to go with it. Try it, you’ll like it. It really compliments the drink.

“So, how does Captain Ken make a Bloody Mary?” You ask. First things first. Here is a list of ingredients you will need:

Captain Ken’s Bloody Mary

Miller Beer (for your chaser—do NOT put in the Bloody Mary) – And since you are making your own, don’t chintz, drink a whole 12 oz bottle with each Bloody
One and a half ounces of Vodka per drink. Use Peppered Vodka for a spicier drink
½ Teaspoon Horseradish
Dash of Celery Salt
Two dashes of Pepper
1/2 Teaspoon of Worcestershire Sauce
One to three drops of Tabasco Sauce (depending on your preference)
6 oz Tomato Juice (V-8 Juice provides a nice change once in a while)
2 oz of Clam Juice
Dash of Old Bay Seasoning (this is what Marylander’s use to season their hard shell crabs)
One quarter of a fresh lemon (to coat the rim of the glass) and 1/2 teaspoon of lemon juice to go into the drink
Rim Coating - mix 1 Tablespoon of Celery Salt, 1/4 Teaspoon Old Bay Seasoning and a pinch of ground black pepper
A Big Glass – this is a lot of beverage

First step is very important (If you don’t do this step first, you won’t be able to do it later): Pour the teaspoon of celery salt, the quarter teaspoon of Bay Seasoning, and the pinch of pepper on a plate and mix. Spread this dry mix out in a donut shape about the diameter of your glass.

Rub the entire rim of your glass with the lemon quarter then turn the glass over and rub the rim in the Celery salt mixture -it will stick to the rim (now you see why this might be difficult if the drink is made up already).

I like to mix the liquid ingredients and the horse radish in the glass before I add the ice cubes. Others add the ice cubes first. I don’t know if it matters, but I can mix the drink better without the cubes in the way. Add the cubes and sprinkle celery salt, Old Bay and pepper on top. Throw in the squeezed 1/4 lemon and add garnish.

The best garnish for your Bloody Mary? That again, is a matter of opinion. I like this one:

My Bloody's are garnished with a stalk of celery plus something I call “a mini-meal on a toothpick,” like they do at Morton’s. The stalk of celery is easy. For the mini-meal, use one large, cooked, peeled shrimp; a slice of Kosher pickle (a long quarter slice); a green olive stuffed with pimento; and a small square of beef jerky (about 1’x1”xi/4”). Push all this stuff on a toothpick and lay it across the top of the glass, with the pickle down in the drink.

Finally, experiment. Bloody Mary’s are great drinks to improvise with. The basic vodka and tomato juice can be spiced up with a lot of different ingredients which you can pick and choose. Vary the proportions to your own taste. And the garnishes can be just as varied.

At the right: A rather weak cousin of Captain Ken's Bloody Mary, served at the Pentwater Yacht Club in Michigan. Note the 12 oz Beer Chaser in foreground.

The section below will be reserved for pictures of Bloody's from around the world. As with most of this site, this is definitely a "work in progress." It is also one of the more enjoyable efforts as you might imagine. I am always sampling Bloody Mary's and when I have my camera, I take a picture of the current sample. Some are excellent, some just good and a few hardly register on the "worth photographing" scale. But I'll try to get as many as I can up here. To get the full sized image, just pass your cursor over a thumbnail picture and click once - after viewing, click on the "Back" arrow at the top left corner of your screen.

Hope you enjoy this page,

Captain Ken

It is a "Caipirinha." This flavorful drink hails from Brazil and goes down so easy that you must really gage yourself, or you will find yourself incapable of walking.

First place prize for the Chief is a two day visit from Captain Ken (yours truly). My wife got second prize - (she forgot the first "i") and that is to spend the rest of her life with me.