Along with diverse artists like Leonard Cohen (who made his own drink), Tom Thompson, Brian Adams, and Avril Levigne, not to mention rightfully boastful researchers, Canada has produced a unique and unusual drink. Although born in Montenegro, Mr. Walter Chell was an employee of the throroughly Canadian Calgary Inn in Calgary, Alberta when he invented what he dubbed the "Bloody Caesar" in 1969. Some say he was inspired by the vongole sauce of the Inn's Italian restaurant when he hand mashed cooked clams, added tomato juice, Worcestershire sauce, hot sauce, a slice of lime, vodka, and a stick of celery as a garnish. The rest was history!

Rim a glass with a combination of salt (usually celery salt) and ground black pepper.¹ This is done by moistening the rim with a clean, wet sponge and then dipping the wet rim in the combination. The rim can be moistened with a lime or lemon slice if preferred. Now add vodka², ice, and a stick of celery. Add hot sauce to the drink to taste, most people use Worcestershire sauce and Tabasco, some add horseradish, even wasabi. Squeeze in a slice of lime. Top with cold Clamato juice which is the essence of clams or the nectar produced when they are steamed and tomato juice which by some accounts is a fruit juice. Seafood and fruit? It gets even better! So let's review. Fruit juice with hot spices and seafood, in a container rimmed with still more hot spices and artery clogging salt. But wait! Years of refinement have made this drink even more mind boggling! Some establishments add a cold cooked shrimp as a garnish, even more seafood with the fruit! Many add hot spicy pickled green beans or pickled asparagus! Now we have vegetables!³ A suitably toney establishment may add a lime slice, celery, spicy pickled green beans, and a cold cooked "jumbo" shrimp. Some even add a cooked or smoked clam in memory of the original recipe.⁴ Needless to say the food items may be eaten at any point during the drinks consumption. It's a spicey hot, mind numbing, artery clogging, bizarre mixture that tends to blow socks off the uninitated.⁵ Not for the faint of heart, so it is with no wonder that many have dubbed this the "National Drink of Canada".

The Favourite Recipe.

Rim a glass with salt and pepper as mentioned earlier here. In the West of Canada it's generally a very large glass whereas in the East it is usually much smaller. This is strange since although the East considers itself to be more civilized and refined, they are definitely more in need of a stiff drink.

Add ice.⁶

A dash or five of hot sauce, Habanero if you dare or just Tobasco if you must.
Worcestershire sauce to taste.

Salt and pepper.

A quarter teaspoon of hot horseradish.

Add one or two ounces of premium vodka depending on your geographical position and top with Clamato or equivalent.

No celery, just several pickled beans.⁷

Drink.

Repeat.

For the purist, only a mouth burning, eye watering spicy hot and crispy, pickled, long green bean is necessary as a garnish along with the lime wedge and salt/pepper ring. So now the recipe for the green bean, which is often prepared in the late summer in preparation for the winter "drinking" season.⁸

Hot Pickled Green Beans:

Prepare pickling vinegar with more hot spices than you think are needed, some sugar, a little salt to taste, and still more spices, bring to boil and then reduce the heat slightly.
Wash and blanch entire clean green beans without removing the tops and tails, then quench with ice water.

Prepare and heat large (half litre) canning jars and boil the tops to soften the seal.

Peel garlic cloves and split hot peppers lengthwise, Don't touch your eyes or face with your now semi-lethal fingers!

Pack the beans into the jars and slide the peppers and raw garlic in interesting patterns against the glass.

Pour the eye-stinging, cough inducing vinegar mixture over the beans and close immediately. Only finger tight! When the tops "ping" and pop inwards you know the seal is good. Although the vinegar, salt, and ridiculously large amounts of hot spice will kill any form of harmful life, discard any non "ping"ing bottles, or else heat them until they lose some of their crunch and start again.

The beans will be ready in a month or more, but it is adviseable to not leave them for much more than a year. If you do and forget them, leave them in a time capsule for future archeologists to puzzle over. ⁹

Clamato

Consider if you will the non-alcoholic drink Clamato. Here as chronicled by numerous Canadian comedians is a spectacularly bizarre combination of flavours.¹⁰Clamato is a rare and wonderous drink, usually found only in Canada or places where Canadians frequent. It can however be found in many places in the United States because of it's adoption by the Hispanic community there. If you are unlucky enough to live in a place where you are unable to aquire this nectar of the gods, a combination of one third clam nectar and two thirds tomato juice will have to suffice. Poor devils.

How does Canada produce all it's musicians, comedians, stars, and researchers? Could the "Bloody" Caesar be the reason? Only Caesar swilling, Red Needle gulping, Caribou slurping Canadians know for sure.