One of the reasons I love food so much is the way it brings people together. You can share a meal with complete strangers and in the end feel like family. It's a commonality that connects us all.

I've been thinking a lot about the intro to this recipe. I could tell you a nostalgic story about my family and keep this place clean from current events and politics for fear of alienating some of my readers, but ultimately that's not what I want my blog to be. I want to talk to you like real people who live in the real world. I want to tell you about my struggles, and I want you to tell me about yours. I can't blog about the food that's supposed to bring us together while the world we live in falls apart. So here goes:

I don't want to live in a world where people are murdered while driving home or selling CDs because they are unfairly judged by the color of their skin. Or a world where the officers who risk their lives to protect us are gunned down in retaliation because of the uniform they wear. Or a world where families celebrating a national holiday are mowed down by a terrorist in a goddamn truck.

I wish we as a human race could have more empathy for each other. That sounds so childish to say, and I understand we will never live in a peaceful utopia where hunger, poverty, and racism don't exist, but is it really so naive to ask for an end to the senseless violence? What can we do? What more can we do than post some heartfelt words on Facebook that will be all but forgotten in a week? My answer is I simply don't know. But I will try my best to figure it out.

The great thing about most food recipes is they're easy to name. A simple description of its constituent parts: arctic char rice bowl, mozzarella pluot salad, bacon cinnamon rolls. But drinks, drinks are a different story. The name "honeydew cucumber gin cocktail" just doesn't roll off the tongue. It doesn't sound as graceful as an Old Fashioned, or Aviation, or Manhattan. I think for drinks, a name is almost as important as the way it tastes.

I don't really believe in throwing out a series of random words until something sticks. Memories are a much stronger place to pull names from. Even if it evokes no particular feelings for anyone else besides myself and and a few others. For us, it's important enough.

Eons ago, when we were studying abroad in London, we stayed in these cookie cutter private dorms by Kings Cross. The closest bar was a place called The Long Hope, right across the intersection. It was an average bar, nothing about it particularly stood out, but it was a place that forever engrained itself into our memories, a symbol of the summer we spent abroad in a city that made a profound impact on the rest of our lives. So this drink is named after that bar, a summery drink to commemorate a bygone summer from years ago.