Officially, the high in Manhattan (Kansas) yesterday was 96 degrees F; but the official temperature is taken at the airport outside of town, and is always lower than what you’ll find recorded on any thermometer in town. According to ours, it was 101. Downtown, we experience heat reflected off streets and buildings and generated by equipment. In fact, different neighborhoods, even different properties can seem to have their own miniature climate zones. The back yard of the house on the corner near us, for example, is always a few degrees warmer than ours because it receives more reflected heat from the brick of Seven Dolors Church.

With the hot summer temperatures – though not as hot as they are likely to get later in the summer – one of our return guests surprised us yesterday with a bottle of Cuban Havana Club rum. When someone shows up at your door with such a gift, and it is so very hot, what can you do but make Havanas, sit on the front porch, and relax?

Havana

recipe from The Art of The Bar: Cocktails Inspired by the Classics, by Jeff Hollinger & Rob Schwartz

1 1/2 oz. Gosling’s rum

3/4 oz. Cointreau

1/2 oz. fresh lime juice

Splash fresh orange juice

Dash of Orange bitters

Edible Flower for garnish

Line the rim of a cocktail glass with sugar. Combine ingredients in an ice-filled cocktail shaker, shake, and then strain into cocktail glass. Garnish with flower.

(As you can tell from my photos, I was too tired yesterday to strain the cocktails, but I enjoy the pulp from the fresh fruit anyway … and it was so hot, we really wanted ice. And obviously, we substituted rums.)