Mimosa Floats — A Toast to Eight Hundred Kitchens

January 2024. The cookbook publishes. PUBLISHES. "From Brenda's Kitchen: Soul Food for the Long Haul" by Tamika Washington is in bookstores. In BOOKSTORES. On shelves. Next to cookbooks by Ina Garten and Dorie Greenspan and the titans of the genre. My book. Mama's book. Our book. On shelves. I walked into the Barnes & Noble on Peachtree and I saw it — spine out, cover facing the aisle — and I stood in the cookbook section of a bookstore and I held my mother's recipes in a published book and I said, out loud, in a Barnes & Noble, "We did it, Mama." A woman in the self-help section looked at me. I did not explain. I did not need to explain. The book explains itself. Pull up a chair. Set the table. Let's eat.

The first week of sales: 800 copies. Not a bestseller. Not a failure. Eight hundred people in eight hundred kitchens holding Mama's recipes and reading my stories and maybe, probably, definitely, some of them will cook the fried chicken and some of them will taste it and some of them will close their eyes and think of their own mothers and their own kitchens and their own cans of spice and the book will have done what the book was always supposed to do: connect. The book connects kitchens. The book connects women. The book connects the living to the dead through recipes that travel across time and distance and the particular immortality of a well-seasoned cast iron skillet.

When your mama’s recipes are sitting spine-out on a Barnes & Noble shelf and eight hundred strangers are seasoning cast iron in her honor, you don’t just pop a bottle — you make it an occasion. These Mimosa Floats are what I mixed up the night the first sales numbers came in, because some victories deserve champagne AND ice cream. Pull up a chair, set the table, raise a glass — let’s eat.

Mimosa Floats

Prep Time: 5 minutes | Cook Time: 0 minutes | Total Time: 5 minutes | Servings: 4

Ingredients

• 1 bottle (750 ml) chilled champagne or sparkling wine
• 2 cups fresh-squeezed orange juice, chilled
• 1 pint vanilla ice cream or orange sherbet
• Fresh orange slices, for garnish

Instructions

1. Chill your glasses. Place four champagne flutes or tall glasses in the freezer for at least 10 minutes before serving.
2. Scoop the ice cream. Place one generous scoop of vanilla ice cream or orange sherbet into each chilled glass.
3. Pour the orange juice. Add about 1/2 cup of chilled orange juice to each glass, pouring slowly over the ice cream.
4. Top with champagne. Slowly pour chilled champagne over the ice cream and orange juice, filling each glass. Pour gently to avoid overflow from fizzing.
5. Garnish and serve. Add a fresh orange slice to the rim of each glass and serve immediately with a straw and a long spoon.

Nutrition (per serving)

Calories: 280 | Protein: 3g | Fat: 7g | Carbs: 32g | Fiber: 0g | Sodium: 55mg