6 Articles I Barely Shared On Social Media

As both a deeply private person and a writer trying to build her portfolio, I've written a lot of pieces that I didn't share when they came out. Though I was proud of many of them, they weren't immediately available online and I forgot or the topics were personal enough that I could risk offending someone or there was some sort of error (from me or the editor) that overshadowed the awesomeness of the piece. Thanks to the marvels of modern technology, most of those errors have been fixed after the fact, but it was far enough after publication that I forgot to publicize the piece. Yikes. Anyhow, here's a short and strange look into my portfolio.

1. When "My $5,000 Wedding Budget" was published on Debt.com, we had gone a few hundred dollars over budget. I also don't like to admit that wedding planning triggered panic attacks, or that I think the modern obsession with weddings can turn the celebration into a pageant and that icks me out.
2. I profiled winemaker Randall Grahm for VinePair, and forgot to send the article to him for several weeks. He's an odd but interesting bird, and I got to learn about viticulture. Wine is cool.
3. This article on the geeky side of clarification in cocktails for Tales of the Cocktail came out a couple weeks after the third death in our family in ten weeks. Big, huge, sloppy thanks to the editors for their flexibility and generosity. I was too shellshocked to do anything other than read over it and file it away for later.
4. Sometimes I write about agriculture. FarmLife magazine is super cool, but the full issues don't go online for a bit. My first feature for them focused on a pair of brothers farming up in Quebec.
5. For the first few months of the year, my main coping mechanism was compartmentalization. Though many of y'all may not believe it, I wrote an article about the history of the Cosmopolitan for mental_floss.
6. People get real snarky about recommendations for starting a home bar. Really, people get snarky over booze recommendations in general because they're based on opinion. There's no hard and fast rules, guys, mmkay? Drink what you like. Here's my take for mental_floss.

This post topic was inspired by the suggestion to blog about 5 things you know. This month, I'm attempting to blog my way forward by writing every day as part of Blog Like Crazy.

Content and Context: Cocktail Syrups

Hi, my name is Clair, and I'm a nerd. For more than a year now, I've been writing a column for mentalfloss.com on cocktail chemistry. This setup combines my love of science with my passion for classic cocktails, and helps me to find new ways to communicate complex topics in food science.

Recently, I've been thinking a lot about flavored syrups: grenadine is used in a surprising number of classic shaken whiskey drinks, and other flavored syrups can class up a simple drink in a hurry. There are many, many ways to make syrups, but they all have their pros and cons. Check it out: How To Make Flavored Cocktail Syrups.