Gin and Tonics in Geneva

This is the first tale of two dinners. Both of which happened at the new patio table of Marc’s mother Marian in the French part of Switzerland in a tiny village called Bussigny in her lovely little garden.

On Thursday we had flown from Barcelona to Geneva to be picked up around 10pm by Corinne and Marian. Marian lives in a most charming house way out in the country (about a 40 min drive) with upper level views of far reaching country side (complete with castle) And yes, the sound of cowbells in the neighboring fields – so Swiss(and yet so French!).
The next day we were off to the local Migros to buy the weekend groceries. 2 dinners were on the agenda. Friday night would be a simple spaghetti and Saturday night a wonderful filet of beef had already been purchased which we would prepare on the grill.

Corinne, Marc and I spent a long time in that Mirgos – every decision seemed to be a major one but I knew I wanted at least one bottle of end of summer Rose!

Marc’s brother Urs showed up on his motorcycle from Zurich with a large supply of sausages and left no time in firing up the grill. Lots of jars of mustards and sauces (Curry Ketchup anyone?) appeared on the table along with Burli – crusty Swiss mini breads especially eaten with sausages! Were we saving room for spaghetti? This would be a long night and a long dinner so the answer was yes! White wine and beer made room for red wine but wait, what about the gin and tonics we wanted to make? So inspired by our Barcelona bar experience when at Migros we purchased several different bottles of tonic to try and duplicate the G&T we had tasted a few days ago with Gisela. Barcelona is doing to G&T’s what the states do to Martini’s – all kinds of different flavored gins with different tonics. We were just going for a version of what they called the limon version. It took a lot of mixology to get the perfect concoction but apparently we did as Marian took a long sip, looked up at the night sky and proclaimed the drink “heaven”!!! We had ourselves quite a chuckle over that one! We sipped into the wee hours knowing that hell, we were on vacation and could sleep and do whatever we wanted! What a COZY feeling! (and btw, even with all this crazy combinations there was not one hangover the next morning!).