“Punch” the drink, not “punch” the physical violence. That wouldn’t be a very good Mother’s Day. But “punch” the drink makes for a very nice Mother’s Day (or any other time you are having company for brunch or lunch). This extremely quaffable libation is not expensive, it is delicious, and it’ll keep both your minimal-drinker friends (and mothers) happy and your wino-in-training friends (and mothers) happy. It works well for a brunch or a lunch, which is perfect since you don’t hear a lot about Mother’s Day dinners (probably because Mom’s usually back on duty by dinnertime). The fruit juice seems to eliminate the headache that can come with drinking early in the day, and you can feel slightly virtuous because it is, after all, fruit juice. And you can feel stylish, too, because punch seems to be turning up more and more as a cost-effective, but still delicious, way to get a large group of people liquored up (and of course I mean that in the most genteel way).
Confession: this is not a picture of my actual punch (even though it looks just like it). I didn’t happen to have any photos of punch lying around, and making a batch of punch just for a photo shoot seemed rather wasteful. And if I had made it I’d have felt compelled to drink it, and…well, no good could have come of that situation. I mean, it’s Tuesday. Morning. So I cribbed this picture off the internet. Mea culpa.
Here’s an interesting tidbit: the word “punch” is from the Indian (or Urdu? I can’t remember) word for “five,” and a traditional punch always had five ingredients (and now you can see why a “punch” in the nose is called that–Good Lord, more physical violence!).
On to the task at hand.
First of all, a day or two before you are serving the punch, make an ice block. I like to slice up a lemon and/or an orange (it looks prettiest with both, but use whatever you have), and then place the fruit in a small container ( a square 4-cup Gladware is perfect for the size of my punch bowl). Put lots of fruit in–you want it to look like a block of frozen fruit, not like an iceberg adrift in your punch bowl. Then fill the container with water. Place it in the freezer. After about two hours, push the fruit down into the slushy water (but if the water isn’t “thick” enough yet, come back in a little while) so that there is fruit throughout the block of ice, not just floating at the top. Freeze at least overnight.
Brunch/Lunch Punch
1 (6 oz.) can frozen lemonade concentrate
32 oz. pineapple-orange juice (I buy a half-gallon of Dole, in the carton, and just use half)
1 bottle well-chilled dry California white wine
1 bottle well-chilled brut California sparkling wine
Mix lemonade concentrate and pineapple-orange juice in punch bowl. Add bottle of white wine. I usually use an inexpensive (but certainly not rot-gut) sauvignon blanc. (I specified California because hey–we live less than an hour away from one of the world’s greatest wine producing regions, and if that’s not being a locavore, I don’t know what is). Add ice block. Gently pour bottle of sparkling wine down the side (the inside–do I have to say that?) of the punch bowl (helps minimize carbonation loss) and serve immediately.
Feel free to top up the punch bowl with more champagne and/or more pineapple-orange juice as it gets drunk. I can’t tell you exactly how much this will serve, due to whether you use those funny little cups that come with the punch bowl, or some heftier, more, uh, thirst-quenching-size glasses. At my house recently, seven people (with large glasses, not the little cups) were kept amply hydrated for the afternoon with these amounts.
The Vacaville Housewife 