Crappy drink or complete abomination?

I've spent the past week working on other projects, so Gastronomy has languished.

However, I was shaken into action (too much?).

Wandering through the grocery store the other day I came across the most horrible of sights: a sixer of mojitos.

Not since discovering premade rum and coke in a can have I seen such a grotesque intersection of American ingenuity and laziness. The Captain Morgan rum and cola can got a pass because soda already comes in can, so the addition of rum wasn't that big of a deal or that far of a stretch.

But the mojito is different. Not only is the mojito a classic summer beverage, but it's a four-ingredient cocktail that's dead simple to make.

Apparently, though, the fine folks at Captain Morgan decided combining rum, mint, sugar and lime is too complicated for the gap-mouthed American public. So they did it for us.

You know, it's not even the crappy drink that makes me angry. It's the fact that I know thousands upon thousands of Americans will buy it. And why not? We already buy gallons of margarita mixers and vats of premade bloody mary mix, why wouldn't we buy the whole cocktail premade?

After all, we're the country that invented fast food and microwave dinners. We've cut so many culinary corners that we're in danger of forgetting what we were working with in the first place.

Don't misunderstand me, I'm not suggesting that you gotta slave over every meal you cook and every cocktail you mix. But when something is already simple, why screw with it?

Case in point: the other night a few "friends" picked up a six pack of Bud Light with lime knowing the mere sight of it would send me into a frothing rant (note to friends: you can't complain about the rants if you instigate them). As if on cue, I started ranting as soon as I spotted the "beer."

Trying the beer didn't help. Now, I like a slice of lime in my Mexican beer as much as the next guy, but this crap tasted like a chemistry accident. Suffice it to say that Bud Lite with lime won't cure scurvy.

So please people, stop supporting these ideas. Just because something is easy doesn't mean it's good.

A real mojito

2 tbs. simple syrup

4 sprigs of fresh mint

1 lime halved

3 oz. of rum

Drop three sprigs of mint into the bottom of a glass, squeeze half the lime and muddle until the mint is throughly bruised. Add the simple syrup, rum, juice from the other half of the lime and fill the glass half full of ice. Mix the ingredients throughly. Place the final mint sprig in the glass and top off with ice.

Salud!