Today’s Dining & Wine section is all about the drink, primarily summer drinks (and it includes the kick-ass graphic I reproduce here).

While we were on vacation, Bryan made mojitos from scratch, using fresh mint and homemade simple syrup. I’d tried restaurant mojitos and mojitos from a mix, but this was the first one I really enjoyed — it was minty and refreshing without being cloyingly sweet. The article has a lot of good tips in it (and a few recipes) for nice things to drink when the weather’s hot, and since we’re without AC for the foreseeable future, I’m probably going to want a bunch of these in my Friday evening repertoire. I especially like the rickey recipe for its simplicity, and am intrigued by the idea of using fresh chilies in summer drinks.

Here’s hoping that the weather does warm up a bit and the sun comes out, because we’ve got several jalapeno plants (and one habanero) that would probably do a bit better if they thought it was actually summer. A few of them may well turn up at cocktail hour later on this season.