Musings from the God of Cities

i was recently in the dominican republic where i sampled the country's national drink, mama juana. much like jamaicans and irish moss, dominicans consider mama juana to be a panacea that will grant the drinker relief from everything from "dolor estomacal" to "enfermedades venereas". it's also known as "dominican viagra", due to its supposedly embiggening qualities. mama juana is made up of a few basic ingredients: a collection of twigs, bark and roots, rum, and honey. i bought the herb mixture and the rum in the airport in DR, where the countergirl explained how to make mama juana.


she started the process for me by pouring the rum i'd bought into the bottle the herbs came in.

i was to let the mixture sit for a couple of weeks so the herbs could soak up the rum, while the rum leeched the bitter tannins from the herbs. after that, i was to dump out the rum, and fill the bottle with more rum, and some honey. this mixture is then supposed to sit for between 2 to 4 weeks, though the longer the mix macerates, the better. anyways, this is how i prepared my mama juana:


first i poured out the tannin-y rum into a measuring cup. i wanted to make sure the honey would be evenly distributed throughout the herbs, and figured it would be tricky to pour into the bottle, so i decided to mix it up with the rum.


in order to figure out how much honey to put in (the countergirl had put three fingers up to the bottle and said, "dees mosh ownee.") i had to figure out how much rum fit in the bottle, hence the measuring cup.


i then measured out the equivalent of three countergirl fingers worth of 'ownee'


to which i added some (dominican) rum,


and stirred the whole thing up.


finally, i poured the honey and rum back into the bottle


and shook the whole thing up.


for the next few weeks, it's gonna hang out with some of my action figures and occasionally get shaken up some more until it's ready to be drunk. or until i am.