Claudiane Philippe:
Hi, everyone. My name is Claudiane. I am a Brandeis alum, just like many of you. I graduated, finished undergrad in 2013. I graduated with a degree in HSSP and anthropology and then the following year I got a masters degree in global studies. So I'm a two time Brandeis alumni. Since then I've gone on to work in the healthcare field. Right now I work in UX for a telehealth company and I also work on social media as a social media influencer/blogger under the name Nail the Cocktail. If you don't follow me, please go ahead and follow me on Instagram. I do a lot of fun things over there but essentially what I do is I make cocktail recipes, at least during quarantine I've been making cocktail recipes throughout this entire time to spread information about a lot of the different social things that have been going on in the world. Outside of that I also work with a lot of restaurants where I showcase their cocktails. So it's a little bit of everything. If you like cocktails, I'm your girl. If you like manicures, I'm your girl. I always have a fun quirky manicure and today I kind of went with the Brandeis theme so they're bright blue nails.
Claudiane Philippe:
So I'm going to start off just by introducing you guys to the first cocktail that I'm making. I don't know if you guys got the see the list but we're making three cocktails today. One is an easy level and that's a cereal milk cocktail. One is a medium level and that is the strawberry basil tequila soda, which is really good. And then the advanced one is the sage whiskey sour, which takes a little bit of elbow grease but it tastes amazing.
Claudiane Philippe:
We're going to start off with the medium level one just because I want to save the cereal milk cocktail for last because that's our dessert cocktail. So I'm going to start off with the strawberry tequila soda. So what you'll need is a glass, I'm going to use a Collins glass, kind of tall glass like this. And we're just going to build the cocktail into it. So the first thing you need is a few strawberries. I'm using four just because I like the strawberry flavor. And what you're going to do is you need a muddle or the back of a spoon and you're going to be crushing the strawberries into a pulp. And they're going to stick down into the bottom of the glass just like that, if you guys can see. So you're just going to really mush it down, get all of the juices out. It's going to make some weird noises but that's definitely fine. It should.
Claudiane Philippe:
So you're going to have what looks kind of like a mush, kind of like that. The next thing you're going to do is you're going to add some fresh basil right in there, and then you're going to muddle it again. So if anyone knows why muddling is important in mixology, it's usually to get the flavors and the oils out of any vegetables, fruits or herbs that you're using. So right now what we're doing is we're getting all of the juices and the flavor out of the strawberry but we're also breaking off the basil because there's a lot of really good oils in the basil and that's where you can get the basil flavor inside your drink.
Claudiane Philippe:
So as you can see here, we've kind of just got a mush of basil and strawberry. The next thing you're going to od is you're going to take your sugar and you're just going to plop it right in there. That's going to be what sweetens the drink because the drink is already pretty sweet with the strawberries. And then we're going to take some fresh lime juice, I'm going to use about an ounce of lime juice. And you can measure an ounce. So an ounce of lime juice, if you don't have what's called a jigger, which measures an ounce on one side and two ounces on the other side, if you have a shot glass, I'm sure everybody here has a shot glass somewhere inside of their house. If you have a shot glass, one ounce is half of it. So a shot glass is two ounces. So what I'm just going to do is take an ounce of lemon juice just like this and just pour it right in here.
Claudiane Philippe:
And now that we have in all of the good stuff in the glass, just going to take a spoon, whether it's the spoon that you muddled with or just another spoon and mix it all together so that the sugar gets incorporated in there. And this is the basis of your cocktail. So this alone tastes good as is. If you don't drink alcohol you could just put the soda water right in here and you have a very refreshing spritzer. But as I am Nail the Cocktail, it wouldn't be a cocktail if I didn't add tequila. So what I'm going to do is add about 0.75 ounces of tequila, which essentially is just right up until that line there. Just like that.
Claudiane Philippe:
And the good thing about this cocktail is you don't really have to stick to the recipe super strict. If you like a little more cocktail, add a little bit more tequila. If you like a little bit more fruit you can add a little bit more strawberry and what not. So it's really up until how you feel it tastes good. So what we're going to do now is just mix it around, get the tequila mixed in with all the juice and all the sugar and that is what it's supposed to look like at this point. The next step is we're going to take some ice. Going to plop enough ice cubes to fill up to the top. Three or four ice cubes, just like that.
Claudiane Philippe:
Then you take some soda water and you're going to top it off. As you can see here it looks like one of those really tropical, refreshing cocktails that you definitely want right now. And then of course, a cocktail always needs a garnish so we're just going to put a little garnish with a little bit of basil, a little bit of strawberry, top it off some more until it reaches the top. Then, if you have fun straws, you can stick a straw in there. You don't need a straw but that is your first cocktail. It is a strawberry tequila soda. That's that. Yay. I see someone lifting their glass, they made it. Yay. Who is that?
Laurel Benoit:
Cheers.
Claudiane Philippe:
Cheers. Let's see. It tastes incredible. I mean I didn't expect anything less. So that is the first cocktail. So that cocktail I really wanted to teach you guys the technique of muddling and how you can use a lot of different stuff in your house. Because a lot of stuff that you wouldn't normally think to put in a drink has a lot of really good oils and flavors in them that once you muddle it out, that's how you get those really cool flavors that you usually get at a bar and at a restaurant that you somehow can't seem to recreate at home.
Claudiane Philippe:
So the next cocktail that I'm going to make for you guys is the hard level cocktail. Don't get intimidated, it's really not that hard, it's just kind of the technique that goes into it. For this cocktail we're going to be using a shaker. I use a tin shaker, mine's gold because I'm a little bit extra and I just really like gold, as you can see surrounding me. But you can get these literally at TJ Maxx, Amazon for literally less than $10. You don't have to be extra and get a gold bar set like I did. But if you want to get a gold bar set, there are plenty online. They're a little more expensive but I think 100% worth it.
Claudiane Philippe:
So the first thing I'm going to do is we're going to take our jigger. Remember, the big side holds two ounces and then the little side holds one ounce. So the first thing we're going to do is we're going to take whiskey. I'm using this Glenlivet whiskey because it's the Caribbean reserve. I'm Caribbean, I'm from Haiti, my family's from Haiti so I like a little bit of Caribbean flavors in my beverage but you can use a typical Irish Whiskey or whatever you have. It all works in this but I just kind of like this because I like the feeling of the fruity undertones that it has. It reminds me of being on a beach somewhere in a resort.
Claudiane Philippe:
So we're going to take an ounce and a half of this. And usually jiggers usually have lines inside of them so if you buy one of these you'll see where the 1.75 line is. What we're going to do is we're going to take it. You're going to put it in the bigger one just like that. And at this point this is where you're going to add a couple cubes of ice and the reason why I add the ice after the main booze is because stuff tends to splash and I don't like to waste alcohol so I usually put the booze in first, then the ice and then I add the additional ingredients.
Claudiane Philippe:
So the next ingredient that we're going to be doing is Triple Sec and we're going to use half an ounce so we're going to go to the side that has one ounce, fill it halfway. Just like that. And then we're going to do one and a half ounces of lime juice. So you go up to the 0.75 line and you just dump it in here. So right now the technique that we're using is called building a cocktail. It's essentially putting ingredient by ingredient by ingredient inside of the tin with your ice cubes so that when it gets time to shake everything's built in there and then all you have to do is just strain it into your glass.
Claudiane Philippe:
So the next thing that we're going to do with this cocktail is one of my favorite ingredients to use in cocktail making, which isn't really typical but it's Vermont Maple Syrup. I always say this is a very bougie cocktail, it's one of those that has really cool ingredients so if you're going to use maple syrup you might as well get the good stuff if you're going to make a good cocktail. So we're going to do half an ounce of Vermont Maple Syrup. And we're just going to build it right into the shaker. And then next ingredient, it's a sage infused simple syrup and this is the next technique I want to teach you guys. Simple syrup is really one of the main ways to sweeten a cocktail and how you make simple syrup is by doing one part white sugar and then one part water. Put it over a flame and just let it boil up but don't let it burn. As soon as it starts to turn slightly golden, that's when you can take it off the flame.
Claudiane Philippe:
And then simple syrup is a really great way to flavor cocktails so what I do is once I take it off the flame, whatever flavor profile I want in it, I just throw that stuff into the syrupy sugar mix and just let it seep. And then it literally sucks out the oils and the flavor from it. So as you can see, my simple syrup went from being lightish, clear white to this great green because all the sage is just releasing all of it's oils into it. Another simple syrup that I really like to make is jalapeno simple syrup. So I just take pieces of jalapeno and put it in the same mixture. So you can literally make any flavor of simple syrup, which means you can literally have any kind of creative cocktail in your arsenal.
Claudiane Philippe:
So we're going to do, here, like a half an ounce of this sage simple syrup, which is homemade. And this is where you're going to get that really, really complex flavor in the cocktail. If you've ever found that you've gone to a cocktail bar and you order a drink and you're like, "Wow, this tastes really good. I can tell there's this in it and this in it." But then you go home and there's no way to recreate it, these are the tricks that they're using. They're using infusing different spirits and infusing all of the simple syrups and anything they use to sweeten it. That's where all the flavor's coming from when you don't usually see those exact ingredients mixed up in your drink.
Claudiane Philippe:
And then the next thing we're going to do is a weird ingredient but at this point you can either use egg whites or what I like to use is chickpea water. It's the stuff that comes in the can of garbanzo beans. So this is something that I recommend to people who are vegetarian or vegan. It literally does the same exact thing that egg whites do, because I know some people can be weird about, "I don't want raw eggs in my cocktails." I personally love a good egg white cocktail but this literally does the same thing, doesn't change the flavor profile at all. So what I do is I do about a tablespoon of the chickpea water, which is about an ounce, give or take. And then we throw it in there. At this point we have built the entire cocktail and now is the fun part, where you shake.
Claudiane Philippe:
With cocktails like this you want to shake for probably about a minute because you want to get that chickpea water to foam up, or you want to get the egg whites to foam up and that's what creates that really cool thin white layer on top of the glass. So you're doing it like an arm workout. I want you guys to see the tin has literally gotten condensation up until this point. That's kind of what you want to see because you know when it's high, because I started the cocktail right around here, but the foam is now up to here, which means the garbanzo bean water or the egg white is creating a foam and that's the thing to look for.
Claudiane Philippe:
When you hear it start to get a little quiet, when it gets quiet that means there's foam in there and that's exactly what you're looking for. Sometimes it gets stuck. But for this cocktail I like to take a really pretty coup glass, or honestly, you're at home during quarantine, you can literally use whatever you have. But just for the sake of being fancy and because I put on a nice shirt for you guys, I'm going to use a nice little cocktail glas.s and I don't know if you can see but there's a layer of foam in there, it just looks like white foam, right? So what happens when you pour it, and I want to strain it so the ice doesn't get in there, it looks like ... Just put that in front of me back here. It just looks like foamy, wonderful goodness.
Claudiane Philippe:
Perfect. I still got it. That's good. So now that we're done with building a cocktail I'm just going to garnish it by taking a sage leaf. And I usually use either my fingers but if I'm making this drink for other people, I'll use a little bar tweezer type of tool and just lay it very carefully on top of the foam. So now it looks super fancy, super pretty. Literally looks like you paid like $20 at a really overpriced bar for it. But you did this at home. And as you can see, I don't know if you guys can see really clearly here, but you can see there's a layer of white foam and the cocktail is kind of orangey-yellow down below. And over time you'll get the foam to go a little bit smaller and then the cocktail will rise up a little bit. But I can't wait that long, I'm usually the type of person who starts drinking it now. But the longer it sits the thinner the white foam gets and the more Instagrammy it gets.
Claudiane Philippe:
So that is cocktail number two. The Whiskey Sage Sour. And the final cocktail, which I know a lot of people are super excited for is the cereal milk cocktail. I created this cocktail because I kind of ... I'm not even going to lie to you guys, I was watching cartoons one Saturday morning and I had cereal laying around. I literally had cereal and almond milk and I don't like the taste of plain, unsweetened almond milk and that's what I had and I was like I need some sugar in this. But I was like I'm also an adult now so I can't just eat little kid cereal. So I was like let me put it in a glass and let me put in some booze and I made this cocktail. So this is kind of how it came about.
Claudiane Philippe:
So the first thing you want to do is you want to grab a glass. I'm using a rocks glass, it's kind of a short, stout glass. It usually takes about three to four ice cubes. A lot of people will drink Whiskey meat in this or whiskey on the rocks, which is why it's called a rocks glass. So a glass that kind of fits right in the palm of your hand just like this. So the first thing we're going to do is we're going to grab our Baileys. And I know a lot of people got the ingredients for this one so if you've got the ingredients for this one, this is your time to shine. I would love if you put on your video, that would be lovely. I would appreciate that, but no pressure. No pressure. I'm here for it though.
Claudiane Philippe:
Okay, yes, I see a couple of videos coming on. I love that for you guys. I see the glass. Okay, awesome. So the first thing we're going to do, we're going to grab out jigger. This is our best friend, helps us measure. You don't have to be a scientist because I know a lot of you have science degrees and science degrees from Brandeis are very difficult. I don't miss chemistry lab at all. So what we're going to do is we're going to grab our Baileys or any kind of cream liqueur you have and you're going to do one ounce of it. So the small side. And you want to fill it right to the top.
Claudiane Philippe:
So you're going to have about that much of Baileys. Then the next thing we're going to do, is grab some vodka and we're going to take the same amount. So do one ounce of vodka right into the glass. So this is kind of what it looks like right now. You can swirl it up a bit. And the next thing we're going to do is we're going to take two ounces of milk. Or an ounce, depending on how you're feeling. But that's what it's going to look like. And this is a really easy cocktail, no tool. Just swirl. You can do this in a shaker but honestly, you're going to be eating with cereal, what's the point of the extra step, right? So just swirl it in the glass, get it kind of mixed up here then I throw in about two ice cubes just so that it gets chilled. And again, just swirl it like that.
Claudiane Philippe:
And then my favorite part ... Well, actually my second favorite part is you're going to get some chocolate syrup. Get the cheap stuff because the sweeter, the cheaper, the better it tastes when it comes to this. It's not what I said about the Vermont Maple Syrup earlier. This stuff, you want it to kind of feel like you're getting a cavity with this cocktail. So what happens here is we're just going to wait for it to pour. That's how you know I use this often because it definitely is usually quicker than this but you're just going to stream it onto the side and you're going to stream a good amount of this, until you see a little brown layer at the bottom of the cocktail glass, that's when you know you have enough in this. I am not claiming that this cocktail is low calorie, I am not claiming that this cocktail is healthy. The same way you order dessert and almost regret it is exactly how you're going to feel about this cocktail.
Claudiane Philippe:
As you can see, the chocolate's kind of settling but if you give it some time it'll all settle to the bottom of the glass. And then, my favorite part. I have some Cocoa Puffs cereal. So you take the cereal, any cereal of your choice. And you literally just top it on top. And then try to get it in a little mound. And then you literally can throw a straw in there and sip on it and then once it gets lower, you grab a spoon and you sip on it. But that, my friends, is the cereal milk cocktail. I did the chocolate cereal milk cocktail with Cocoa Puffs. If you want to use caramel cereal and do Cinnamon Toast Crunch, that's another cocktail I've done before. What I usually do is I actually use Golden Grahams with caramel syrup. Life changing. Literally it will change your life. But this is my favorite cocktail.
Claudiane Philippe:
And the cool thing about this is depending on what level of ... How fun you want to get, as it starts to go down and you want more milk for your cereal, you can either add more almond milk or, if you're like me, you can add more Baileys. So it's like the drink that keeps on giving, honestly. This is my favorite drink so I'm going to take a sip of this but I want to cheers all of you first. So cheers to ... Look at everyone's cocktails. Oh my gosh. This is awesome. Cheers to all of you, Brandeis alum. Cheers. Oh my God, that's so good. Not to toot my own horn but that's so good. This is really delicious.
Claudiane Philippe:
Oh, I want to show you guys what happened with the sage one. Remember I said if you give it some time you can see that color distinction? So the foam starts to rise to the top and then you get that really pretty foam that you usually see with a nice shaken cocktail. But this is how they do it. And if you follow my Instagram you know my signature pose was to hold a cocktail up to the screen with my nails just like that. So there's the signature Nail the Cocktail shot. But honestly, I'm really here for this one. This is my favorite one. So yeah.
Claudiane Philippe:
Let's see. Did anyone make the cocktail and enjoy it? Or did not enjoy it? I'm up for criticism. I know you're wrong but I'm up for criticism. I like that because a lot of you guys made different ones. I saw a couple sage ones, which I'm very impressed that you guys went for the hard one. It wasn't that hard though. Right? But we all just saved an Uber ride home and a like $40 bar tab tonight because we made our own drinks. That's what it's all about. Does anyone on here follow Nail the Cocktail? Or had known about Nail the Cocktail before this? Yay. I love that. Love that for you guys.
Claudiane Philippe:
Feel free to follow Nail the Cocktail. I post all throughout quarantine. I've been posting my own recipes just because restaurants have been closed. But normally, what I used to do is, like I said, I would go out to different restaurants and feature their cocktails to let you guys know what's out there at any given time. But right now I'm doing a mixture of the both, just because I've enjoyed creating cocktails all day long every day during quarantine. And then I get off work and I'm like, "All right, what's the next cocktail?" So I have a ton of recipes that you guys can go scroll through. Oh thank you. I appreciate that.
Claudiane Philippe:
You guys can scroll through, see all the recipes. When you see a picture, you just slide all the way to the last photo and it gives you all the ingredients in them. So it's like your own little cocktail recipe book on Instagram is kind of how I think about it. Your welcome. Does anyone have questions for me? I like questions. No? Wow. I feel like Brandeis students had a lot of questions when I was in class.
Peri Meyers:
I actually have a question.
Claudiane Philippe:
Yay. What is it?
Peri Meyers:
So I'm not sure if this is too advanced or not really something you can talk about or whatever, but I've heard a little bit about people making their own bitters at home and I don't know if you know about that? It looks difficult, definitely a lot more-
Claudiane Philippe:
I've attempted to make my own bitters and it failed. So what I do is the easy way up, it's still a little bit advanced, I just take the regular Angostura Bitters, which is the typical bitters that you have anywhere. And what I do is the same way that I infuse my simple syrup, I'll infuse the Angostura Bitters. So I'll put chili peppers into the Angostura Bitter and then I'll get chili pepper bitters. So it's kind of the easy way out of it, rather than making your bitters from scratch because that is a whole process.
Peri Meyers:
Yeah, it's quickly home brewing, I guess.
Claudiane Philippe:
Yeah. I think the easy way to do it is just get some good Angosturas and just take a couple dashes of it and then just infuse it. Put whatever spices or herbs or whatever and let it sit for 72 hours just so it can get all the flavor, then strain out the other stuff, the stuff you want to discard and then you have your flavored bitters.
Peri Meyers:
Thank you.
Claudiane Philippe:
Absolutely. Is there something ... I can't see the chat. What's your favorite alcoholic drink that doesn't taste like alcohol? Honestly, I love everything. But I like really fruity drinks. So I could do a pina colada all day long and I don't taste the alcohol in pina coladas, but if you've ever seen a pina colada get made, a real one, it's like 50% alcohol. So those are really good. I also really like this one that I made, not to toot my own horn, this one tastes really good but it literally just tastes like candy and cereal. But those are, I think pina colada is my favorite non-alcoholic, alcohol tasting drink.
Claudiane Philippe:
Let's see here. What was the first drink you shared with your friends? When I turned 21? I remember this, I was at Brandeis. When I turned 21, my first alcoholic drink was a My Tai. That was the first drink that I got with an ID and that was my first drink and I'm sticking to that story.
Claudiane Philippe:
Okay, I answered that. Do you have any favorite coffee based drinks? Yes. So my favorite coffee based drink to make is I make an espresso martini but I use something called Borghetti, which is essentially the more fancy version of Kahlua. Kahlua is kind of like you go into a store and you grab it just like you grab Baileys but Borghetti is a little bit more on the expensive side. The same way like if you buy Triple Sec versus buying Cointreau, they're both the same thing but Cointreau has a higher price tag versus regular Triple Sec that you can get. But an espresso martini with Borghetti is absolutely delicious.
Claudiane Philippe:
How did you get into cocktail making? Honestly, I used to be a bartender. So when I was at Brandeis I worked for the catering department and I worked as a bartender there. Literally I used to bartend at the Stye, at the faculty club, just pouring beer and wine and making signature drinks for different people's events. And I think the first real event that I made real cocktails at was Robert Craft had a trustee event there and I was mixing drinks for Robert Craft and I was like, "Okay, I've got to be good at this." And he liked one of my cocktails despite the fact that he only ever gets one type of alcohol. And then after I graduated, when I was in grad school I worked for a temp agency bartending throughout Massachusetts and I kind of just ... The art of mixology has just stuck with me but then after I went on to work for the healthcare industry, a couple of coworkers and I would love to go out for drinks but where we were working at in the city didn't have many cool bars. So I was like, I think we need to go explore outside downtown and stuff and so we started going around to different bars and that's how Nail the Cocktail started. I didn't see anyone else doing an Instagram account exploring bars so that's how I got into it.
Claudiane Philippe:
Do you do your nails to match the cocktails? No I do my nails to match my mood, to be really honest. I love funky colors and I think it's kind of funny because I've always worked in government or corporate settings where the whole funky nail thing is not professional. But I always show up to interviews with the craziest nails I can possibly show up to because I know that they're always going to be a topic of conversation and they're always going to remember me. And literally every time I've been hired someone's been like, "Oh my God, I love your nails," during the interview. I'm like, I know, I know. But I just do them really funky colors because they stick out in photos and I usually always wear all black so this is the one place in my life where colors come in.
Claudiane Philippe:
Do you do any corporate Zoom events? My company would love this. Yes, I do. This is actually my third one. This is definitely the one I've had the most fun on. Don't tell any of my other clients but this is definitely the one I've had the most fun on because this is just talking to friends versus actually being professional. Not that I'm not being professional for you guys but ... Definitely, yeah. Reach out, I would totally love to do this for any company. Especially because a lot of companies are now corporate, not corporate, remote. So a lot of them are looking for things to do.
Claudiane Philippe:
What's a low calorie cocktail? My favorite-Actually, this one here, if you replace the sugar with stevia or something or a zero calorie sweetener, that's actually a really good low calorie cocktail. But I'm very basic. Despite the fact that I make all these crazy cocktails, when I go out to a bar, I'm a vodka soda or gin and tonic kind of girl. Which is completely the polar opposite of cereal milk cocktail. But I like a good vodka soda. I also like Negronis, I don't really think those are low calorie but they're also really strong so that may be why.
Claudiane Philippe:
Did I miss any questions? I can't tell, those are going really fast. Have you done any pop up events at bars and restaurants? Yes I have. So back when the world was open, before March, I actually used to host weekend brunches at different restaurants. So I hosted a weekend brunch at a restaurant that used to be called Town. I've hosted a Beyonce brunch at Citrus and Salt in Back Bay in Boston. I don't know if any of you guys know that restaurant. But I usually do some very now and then, I don't do them too often because it's just a lot of work. But they are fun. I get to meet a lot of people that follow me on Instagram that I have no idea who they are and they have no idea who I am so it's kind of a cool little experience.
Claudiane Philippe:
Do you sell cocktail kits? I would buy. I personally don't sell cocktail kits just because the process of creating them and selling them, that's a whole full time job. I don't but I have collaborated with different charitable groups to sell cocktail kits for a charity over COVID. So the recent one I did, we donated 100% of the proceeds to The Trevor Project to support LGBTQ youth. And then the one before that, we did two charities that supported the Black Lives Matter movement. So I've been doing a lot of that during quarantine just to give back and use this platform that I have. Citrus and Salt is phenomenal. Their tacos are amazing. I agree with you 1000%. You've probably seen me there because I literally used to be there every single week of my life.
Claudiane Philippe:
Any brunch cocktail recommendations? So sick of Mimosas and Bloody Marys. I am sick to Mimosas and Bloody Marys too, the basic ones. But there are a lot of places that are doing really suped up ones, creative ones. I recently saw a chili pepper and basil Bloody Maria, which was really good. There are people who do flights of Mimosas in the cute little things where they have like four or five of them with all different flavors. But I think a good brunch cocktail is just plain champagne. But then again I am bougie so don't listen to me because I will steer you in the wrong direction. But honestly, I think whatever your favorite flavor profile is, there's no such thing as a brunch cocktail. I think everything I make here is a brunch cocktail. I think vodka on the rocks is a brunch cocktail. I think whiskey neat is a brunch cocktail. I'm not going to be like I have to have a Mimosa because it's brunch. But if you're looking for something really, really brunchy, I think espresso martinis are brunch cocktails, to be honest with you. And we can debate that all day long. But I really do feel like they belong at brunches because they're just like cereal milk with coffee at the same time.
Claudiane Philippe:
Did I miss any questions? I'm just going to scroll up really quickly. Low cal, answered that one. The Stye, love the Stye. Mozzarella sticks for life. Let's be friends. Send me a message on Instagram. I'd love to follow you guys back, as you can tell I have a lot of followers who I can't really sort through. So if you saw me on here, just send me a message that just says Brandeis and I'll follow you right back.
Claudiane Philippe:
But I think I got most of the questions. If you're ever in the Dorchester area, I am a lot, swing by Reign Drink Lab, I have been there, owned by Deis alums, very true. Wait, are you one of them? I've been there before.
Raghu Krishnan:
Yeah, I'm one of the owners at Reign Drink Lab.
Claudiane Philippe:
Yeah, I've been there. I think I follow you on Instagram. Small world.
Raghu Krishnan:
That's great. We would love to have you for a pop up event if you're available.
Claudiane Philippe:
Absolutely. 100%, I'm down. Especially now that I know that you're Brandeis alum, I'm super down.
Raghu Krishnan:
That's great.
Claudiane Philippe:
That was funny. I was reading it and I was like oh my God, oh my God, yes, yes. I was like wait, who are you? Show yourself. Yes, Dorchester in the halls. Any more questions? This is fun. I don't really get to hear myself talk this much because I don't really see many people during quarantine so I feel like I'm having a little party in my living room right now.
Claudiane Philippe:
What's an unusual cocktail you enjoy? I like spicy herby cocktails. So this is going to sound really gross, but if you take celery and basil and just muddle them together and you get that celery basil juice, I like to take that with vodka and then muddle that with jalapenos and just drink it just like that. That sounds very disgusting but if you like Bloody Marys and if you like really stiff drinks, it just tastes really refreshing but spicy and herby at the same time.
Claudiane Philippe:
Do you grow your own herbs for drinks? Yes. I do grow my own herbs. So I actually have a couple more of these planters. This is my last empty space, I have like nine slots. But right now I'm growing basil, thyme, I just grew chives, green onions. I have this leek that needs to be cut, it's pretty long. Most of the regular stuff, chives, parsley, all of it.
Claudiane Philippe:
I love your plants. Which one is your favorite? That's like asking someone to pick their favorite child. You don't do that. But my favorite plant might be this bird of paradise right here. It was the first giant plant I ever got. I also like this plant that's right here, it's called a fatonia. It's very dramatic so when it needs water it literally just flops over and it looks dead but as soon as you put water, in the course of 15 minutes it just rises. So it's a really dramatic plant so I really like that one. But I have almost 50 plants. You literally can't ask me what my favorite is.
Claudiane Philippe:
Let's see. I think that was all, if not most of the questions. Anyone wants to slide in and ask another one? This was fun. I wish I did Nail the Cocktail at Brandeis. That would've been really fun. I thought of this idea a little too late. Well not too late, better late than never but imagine if this was at Brandeis.
Ben Niles:
Claudiane, as a staffer on the alumni relations office, I think we're going to set you up in the middle of our office as soon as we get back on campus. This was absolutely fantastic. I raised my fake glass to you here. Really well done, I'm sure everyone had a good time. If it's all right, we're going to break up into some breakout rooms so y'all can just hang out with whoever ends up in your rooms. Claudiane is going to float around, I think, to the various rooms, as will I, and you'll see, hopefully some other folks you know and all that. Thank you all so much for coming and if you want to switch rooms come back into the main room and we can try to figure out, we'll get you into another room. But again, I raise a glass to you Claudiane, this was fantastic.
Claudiane Philippe:
Cheers.