Leaf it to Me

Last night, I met some friends at Applebee’s for dinner and drinks. My drink of choice for the evening was the Mucho Mary. Depending on the restaurant or bar, Bloody Mary’s usually come with an interesting assortment of edibles impaled on tiny spears and stuck into your bloody (adj. British slang) Bloody Mary.

My favorite Bloody Mary toothpick treat is the hot string bean which is often served in your New Orleans variety Bloody Mary. The Bloody Mary at Ralph & Kacoo’s in New Orleans is so thick and delicious that it’s actually crunchy with tiny bits of onion and celery swimming among your vodka, tomato juice and Tabasco sauce. The Bloody Mary at Pat O’Brien’s is also outstanding with lots of skewered olives, cucumbers and celery.

My Applebee’s Mucho Mary had some unusual things on its little toothpicks. It had the obligatory stuffed olive along with chunks of apple which were surprisingly good soaked with spicy tomato juice. There was also a leaf. Since everything I’ve ever had stuck in my Bloody Mary in the past was edible, the leaf presented a dilemma. It looked like a tiny palm tree leaf but the tip of it looked sort of like a leek or green onion. If it was onion-ish, I definitely wanted to eat it. If it was just your garden variety (excuse the pun) leaf, I didn’t want to eat it.

So, I did what any good little Cajun girl would do. I bit it. It wasn’t onion-ish. In fact, it had no flavor at all. This leads me to believe it was either (a) a decorative garnish or (b) plastic. The moral of this story is, if you don’t want a Cajun girl to bite something, don’t stick it in her Bloody Mary.