Saved By Dr. McGuillicuddy

During the holidays we had a couple of friends over, and one of them surprised us with a bottle of bubbly Bellini. We all enjoyed Bellinis at a local trendy restaurant whose name eludes me at the moment.

This restaurant serves their Bellinis in a mixture of crushed ice avec les petites plastic animals sitting on top. I saved a bunch of the neon-ish quadrupeds and brought them home. I'm sure Dollarama sells one hundred of them for a dollar, but who wants a hundred little plastic animals? And for a dollar? I tell you there are at least two other things I'd rather spend one dollar on.

Anyway, we decided to experiment with the bottle of Bellini. We loaded up the blender with ice cubes and a Gremlin, and pushed one of the many buttons which are essentially labelled the same.

Grind, chop, puree, crush, slightly crush, destroy. They all do the same thing. I don't know why there are 24 different settings.

Our first attempt was a failure. When the Bellini mixed with the crushed ice, it tasted watered-down. So we poured liquid Bellini and a few ice cubes directly into the blender and mixed them together.

The result? Failure. Again. For the second time, it was too watery. To get the proper ratio, we put a few ice cubes into the Martini glasses, along with the right amount of Bellini. Then we dumped the glasses into the blender and tried again.

Failure. That blasted H20 had overpowered the Bellini juice for a third and final time. We could have experimented more, but the bottle was not one of those magical bottomless kinds. Luckily we were able to salvage our Bellinis with a simple process: By adding a very, very healthy dose of the doctor's Peach Shnapps.