Happy Black Friday everyone! I hope you had a fabulous Thanksgiving (I know I did) and are hopefully now sitting comfortably in your pajamas eating leftover turkey sandwiches and not torturing yourself by wading through masses of humans and possibly getting trampled or otherwise horrendously injured all in the name of savings.
It is certainly The Gourmet Gourmand tradition to not become a fiending-consumerist-deal-junkie the day after gorging on turkey and stuffing.
No! The Gourmet Gourmand tradition is to do all one’s Christmas shopping online and avoid humanity (aka all malls) during the pre-Christmas season.
Introverts FTW.
The other new tradition may be to sip on an amazing cocktail and congratulate oneself on avoidance of crowds and a successful meal well created and consumed 24 hours previously. The following visual is of an activity that may or may not be presently occurring- Sarah, half-eaten turkey sandwich in one hand, spiced rum daquiri glass in the other hand, balancing a computer in lap, while lying on the couch in pajamas surrounded by 3 meowing cats.
I’m just going to throw this out there because I know you’re already thinking it- Thank goodness Dave agreed to marry me.
And speaking of Dave, he is the inventor of this fabulous cocktail. Although, no offense to Dave, “inventor” might be a little overstating the matter as a daquiri is very established as a classic cocktail that uses a combination of rum, lime, and simple syrup. What makes this cocktail unique is the use of spiced rum which gives this a decidedly holiday vibe and is certainly the most appropriate beverage to consume this most cheerful of solitary black Fridays. 
The spiced rum that we used is from a local distillery called Malahat Spirits. We went to a rum tasting at their distillery (which was really fun, incidentally, and if you’re in the area definitely worth checking out especially if you’re burned out on microbreweries) with a few friends of ours and I was instantly sold on their spiced rum variety. It smells just like butterscotch and tastes like Christmas. If you can get your hands on their product, I’d highly recommend it- I believe they are distributing throughout California, but unfortunately not outside the state as of now. If you can’t get your hands on specialty rum I’m sure a regular spiced rum would do the trick and also be decidedly delicious.
The other addition that makes this daquiri so special is the addition of orange. The recipe calls for triple sec, but you could substitute with any orange flavored liqueur that you have. Additionally the cocktail is garnished with orange peel after expressing the oils over the cocktail glass (a great and lovely trick to kick your cocktails up a notch; worth trying this technique if you don’t already do this).
Basically this has become my go to party cocktail for the holiday season and I know you will also love it. 
Now let’s celebrate by drinking the day away while simultaneously buying out the sale section at Anthropologie.com. Ready, set, go!
