Speaking Frozen Daiquiri

My recent Louisiana daiquiri drive-thru experience has daiquiris on my mind.

They (daiquiris) make a strange subject -- perhaps -- for a blog entry, but it just so happens that I came home from my road trip through The South and got the bug to clean my office.

This bug doesn't come along very often, so when it makes an appearance, I've learned to heed it.

On this cleaning spree I decided to go through my book shelves. They are full and this is a problem as all the books I'm continuing to acquire are stacked in piles on the floor.

One of the books I pulled from my shelves during my cleaning is Islands in the Stream by Ernest Hemingway.

I bought and read the book after traveling to Havana, for it is partially set in the city.

I also bought the book because I'd been told the main character spends a lot of time drinking daiquiris at El Floridita, the Havana bar where daiquiris are said to have originated and where Ernest Hemingway is said to have spent a lot of time.

Like many tourists in Havana, I spent an evening while I was there drinking daiquiris at El Floridita in homage to Hemingway.

It's been a few years now since I read the book. I remember a main character that struggled with being a good artist and a good dad. And - as I'd been told - I remember a main character that passed ample time drinking daiquiris.

Turns out, I underlined Hemingway's every mentioned of daiquiris while I was reading the book.

For example, I underlined this:

He was drinking another frozen daiquiri with no sugar in it and as he lifted it, heavy and the glass frost-rimmed, he looked at the clear part below the frapped top and it reminded him of the sea. The frapped part of the drink was like the wake of a ship and the clear part was the way the water looked when the bow cut it when you were in shallow water over marl bottom. That was almost the exact color.

And, among many other words, this:

All I know how to speak now is frozen daiquiri. Tu hablas frozen daiquiri tu?


Photos:

Big Easy Daiquiris in New Orleans.
Drinking an original daiquiri at El Floridita in Havana.