Bloody Mary

I first had one of these on my eighteenth birthday. The date coincided with a school reunion and my old Science teacher offered to buy me a drink after the meal. I had long loved tomato juice - Granny used to buy it for me in green tins - although I had received parental criticism for the amount of Worcester Sauce I was in the habit of adding.

My aunt CeCe used to teach me that a Bloody Mary without the Vodka was a Bloody Shame.

But the drink I came across for the first time today, which inspired these reflections, is something called a Greasy Mary. It comes from a Scotsman, Pat MacLaren, who was commenting on a photograph of a Bloody Mary taken in a bar in San Fransisco that had so many vegetables on top that it looked like a salad. This is what he said:

"Scotsman's dilemma. Lovely booze but it's got all vegetables in it. You should try a Greasy Mary. Basically you get the runoff tray from a George Foreman grill after you have cooked the cheapest Aldi full breakfast for a scout troop. Pour into a glass and mix with equal parts vodka, garnish with a tiny Scotch egg on a stick."