Recipe for My Current Signature Cocktail, the “D and D,” an Irrefutably Magical Beverage

When I lived in the United States, among my colleagues and students I was infamous for always having a can of Mt. Dew in my hand. No, “infamous” is the wrong word. The habit, though broadly known, was neither admired nor reviled. I was commonly pitied. Yes, I was commonly pitied for the quantity of Mt. Dew I drank on a daily basis, often consuming four or five cans while at school, then a handful more when I got home. The amount of sugar and caffeine coursing through my blood showed up on tests which made my doctors say things like, “We’re going to have to keep an eye on that,” and, when I would confess to my dentist, she would shake her head, but no particular physiological conditions had risen to the level where I was ordered to stop. 

I started my Mt. Dew habit in college when one of my best friends, Troy Miller, showed me there was no specific rule stating a person couldn’t fill multiple glasses of soda in the cafeteria while sliding a tray down the line and loading a plate with the evening’s salad, roll, jello, and whatever entre was on offer. As a teen, I’d never acquired a taste for coffee, but I had discovered a love of caffeine, so I satisfied that with colas of different kinds, working my way past Coke and Pepsi to Jolt. But they didn’t have Jolt on tap in the cafeteria. Troy showed me that Mt. Dew, being slightly less carbonated than Pepsi, could be consumed more quickly in a single mealtime, but once I’d developed the habit, I began filling my dorm mini-fridge with cans of it. 

Writers are creatures of habit, and habits, unconsidered, become superstitions. As I downed can after can of Mt. Dew, I began to associate my written production with the beverage. It was my writing fuel. The logical leap is as easy to trace as it is easy to refute: I wrote a lot while drinking Mt. Dew, and therefore I could not write without it. Why risk testing this hypothesis when it was working?

And then we moved here to Spain and discovered Mt. Dew is not available anywhere. Because it’s unhealthy or something. My wife was very sympathetic and tried to find me Mt. Dew somewhere in Barcelona, but I told her this would be a healthy change. Lots of stores do carry Diet Mt. Dew, and I can’t imagine that’s so much better for a person’s health that it doesn’t deserve a similar nationwide ban, but I hate the bitter aspartame aftertaste, so diet drinks won’t work for me. Coke and Pepsi reminded me why Troy got me to switch to Mt. Dew in the first place: They burn when chugged. Also, we’re near-broke, so I’m balancing the need to keep writing to make money against the need to save money. The hypothesis suddenly required testing. How could I get my sugary, highly caffeinated writer fuel at a discount?

And hence, the D and D. Here’s how to make one:

First, you’ll need a large glass. That’s important, and we didn’t have any when we first moved here. But we decided to splurge one evening and go to the Hard Rock Cafe for dinner, and they sell collectible glasses (for an upcharge) when you buy a large cocktail, so we tricked ourselves into believing we were being responsible by purchasing glasses we needed at home. (Remember that part because it will be a theme.) But you don’t need a Hard Rock Cafe glass in particular, just something twice as large as your average  glass. 

Next, take a tray of ice, and dump the entire thing into it. Fill the whole tray and put it back in the freezer. Do not leave a half-empty ice tray in the freezer for your roommates to find because, if your roommate is me, and I am making something requiring lots of ice and find three trays with an ice cube each, I will be very annoyed. 

Next, crack open a can of Monster Energy. The original one with the green M. I don’t know why the corporations which make Monster and Mt. Dew have both chosen green for the labels of their beverages. I do know why they have chosen not to advertise the actual color of their beverages. Both look distinctly like urine, Mt. Dew a less realistic neon version, and Monster a deeply unhealthy darker one that screams of a kidney infection. But then why both bright green? I’m sure it was focus-grouped and people thought it looked energetic and “extreme.” Neither beverage has ever made me into a skateboarder or bungie-jumper, but I guess really bright green labels do that for some people. 

Before pouring in the Monster, open a container of juice. I use a flavor called “Frutos Rojos.” Yeah, “Red Fruits.” Which fruits? Who knows? From the taste, I think it leans heavily on cranberries and strawberries, but I can’t be sure. Once, when the local bodega didn’t have any Frutos Rojos, I experimented with Frutos Tropicales. It tasted mostly like the pineapple advertised on the picture, and that turned out to be a bad mix, but feel free to find the juice that works for you. 

Now hold both containers up over the glass full of ice like a mad scientist in one of the Saturday morning cartoons we watched as kids. (Yes, young people, we used to have to watch certain shows at specific times. This was only shortly after shows were created with shadow-puppets on our cave walls.) Fill about a quarter of the glass from one of the containers, then a quarter from the other, and so on. This does not change the flavor significantly. It’s just more fun. 

With a large enough glass, you will only use half of the Monster and a quarter of the container of Frutos Rojos. If sipped slowly, and if you can find a two-for-one deal on Monsters at your grocery store, this cocktail costs far less than the three cans of soda I would have consumed in the same period of time. But the quantity of caffeine in a Monster and the amount of sugar in fruit-juice-of-indeterminant-origin probably contains as much stimulants as three cans of cola. I have not done the math on this. My writing output per-hour has remained steady. Must be the sugar and caffeine, right? 

If sipped slowly, the ice will melt before it is gone. At the end, it will taste significantly watered down. This is not a bad thing! In fact, it’s a key part of the benefit of a D and D. The name does not stand for “Dungeons & Dragons.” Hence the lack of an ampersand. It stands for “Dilute and Delude.” By diluting the beverage with enough ice, one can successfully delude oneself into believing one is drinking a healthy amount of water while also saving money. The little shot of nearly pure water at the end reinforces this fiction. 

In addition to the benefit of the illusory hydration, since switching to drinking D and Ds, I’ve lost a noticeable amount of weight, and I can delude myself into believing this is a consequence of the cocktail and not the fact that we have no car and are walking all over the city every day. 

See? 

This drink is magic.