Up FIRST: it’s AKA Founder’s Day ! 🙌🏾🙌🏾…so you know we gotta CHEERS to that! 🥂🍾 🩷💚 (Yes, cosmically — Queen Coretta Scott King is an AKA Sorority Sister along with other amazing Ancestors connected to this phenomenal organization’s lasting legacy…)
Happy Heavenly 96th Birthday MLK! (b. January 15th 1929)
— although it is observed on the 3rd Monday in January each year as the annual Federal Holiday date that honors him (= Monday January 19th in 2026)….
Which means January 15th–19th provides an extra-long weekend full of opportunities for intentional toasts, thoughtful menus, pairings, and culturally relevant celebration! 🎉 🥂✨
📸 Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King and Mrs. Coretta Scott King sitting down to family dinner with their children… [👆🏽 CLICK onto PHOTO for the original post with more context and backstory]
⬆️ 🎨 👩🏽🎨 and here’s my jazzed up version turning that family dinner scene into a full-on “birthday partay”!…
TFG’s CUSTOM COCKTAIL CONNECTION:
Those who know me well know that I’ve long been creating custom cocktails for celebratory moments like these. Delicious drinks intentionally designed to deliver historically-informed, ancestrally-inspired, and culturally-rooted consumable content—where celebration, remembrance, appreciation, and JOY come together in a glass…
Where celebration, remembrance, appreciation and JOY come together in a glass — meant to be raised up high to honor amazing ancestors — and each other — with the option to also respectfully pour out a libation…
You’ll find featured in the photo sections of this post are my all-natural, ultra aesthetic pink and green drinks I designed for delightful AKA events including Founder’s Day (est. Jan 15th 1908), as well as a trio of MLK-inspired cocktails I created using deep research in tandem with creative culinary expression to yield fab, flavor-forward results…grounded in the fun fact I found out: that Dr. King had a really good palate, along with a genuine appreciation for good-tasting, high-quality food and drink…(Sharp eyes will catch a few stills from All the Way (2016) — perhaps my fave MLK portrayal (by Anthony Mackie! 😍), which isn’t drenched in respectability politics and allows Dr. King to be fully human — including pouring himself a ‘drank’!)
LUCKY YOU(s): I’m making this MLK cocktail collection 👉 available to select on-premise partners (i.e., restaurants, bars) as a way to add an extra layer of excitement and enjoyable conversation throughout MLK weekend—starting right here in Brooklyn with the January 15th Grand Opening of The Vaux Social —under the ownership of culinary power couple Leticia “Leti” Skai Young 🩷💚 and Chef Ray Young, also known for their now-legendary Lolo’s Seafood Shack in Harlem, which luckily for us all has since been relocated and re-imagined as Lolo’s On The Water at Pier 57 in Chelsea…and YES that pink & green heart you just saw indicates that Leti is in fact not only one of my amazing Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority Sisters but also we hail from the exact same (Philadelphia City) chapter of Gamma Epsilon based at U Penn — Wow what a cosmically TIMELY Grand Opening on such a special date, giving us even more reason to gather, toast, and celebrate with intention!
🥂 So Much More to Celebrate—And Sip!—Ahead…
Consider all this ⬆️ a prelude to the slammin’, seasonal, TFG DRINKS custom-cocktail creations and collections that cometh — as soon as NEXT MONTH with a comprehensive Black History Month (BHM) series featuring lovely libations to honor a cosmic multitude of highly-accomplished, February-born Ancestors (launching with Langston Hughes on Feb 1st with my delicious twist on a super simple yet scrumptious CENTURY-old recipe he gives in a letter he wrote back in 1926!) …+ other key Feb dates like Chef Supreme James Hemings (b.1765) manumission from Jefferson on Feb 5th which gives us a great reason to raise a glass to FREEDOM…
I'll be culminating Q1 with wonderful ‘Women’s History Month’ drink designs inspired by ages-old wisdom so good it was once confused with witchcraft! … Then segue to delish sippers conceived for celebrating Spring’s Vernal Equinox …
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Bars and Restaurant Buyers interested in featuring any of these timely, seasonal creative cocktail collections are more than welcome to 👉reach out 👈…
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in the meantime THIS LINK takes you back to the whole month calendar aerial view to explore more food & drink ‘holidays’ [unfolding in real time]
PS. Whether you’re having a DRY JANUARY or NOT you WON’T WANNA MISS the next two TFG posts (Jan 16th & 17th) that shed light on the DRYEST TIME in American History — aka the PROHIBITION Era (1920-1933) — which started just as my Speak Easy-owning Great Grandmother Gertrude (b. 1900) was coming of age as a young adult …and you might be surprised by the myriad reasons why I don’t advise subscribing to such random extremes (as doing “Dry January”) and instead advocate for raising awareness that there’s a much better way to DRINK whether your beverages have booze in them or not!….