Pink penguin martini

Michelle

Mar 30, 20194 min read

Updated: Oct 20, 2024

Inspired by: Where’d You Go Bernadette?

The pink penguin martini is a refreshingly sweet and tangy pink lemonade martini perfect for a Friday night chill out. This drink is inspired by the book Where’d You Go, Bernadette by Maria Semple. The recipe for the pink penguin martini comes after the book discussion.

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Come for the recipes, stay for the book discussion:

Most people who read this book will say that it is about the main character Bernadette. She is a wife, mother and incredibly intelligent accomplished woman with a past career in architecture. To me, this book is about a family and how each individual’s lives, goals and achievements are intertwined. It is about relationships, our roles and how central these are to our overall happiness and well-being.

Like many families in the greater Seattle area, Bernadette and her husband are transplants from somewhere else (Los Angeles to be specific). While Bernadette struggles with many things that make Seattle so very Pacific Northwest, her husband thrives in his career at Microsoft. In fact, he achieves rock-star-like status within the high-tech industry known for his ground-breaking work and TED talks. The story is told through the perspective of many characters through a series of emails, letters and faxes including Bernadette herself. Bernadette’s description of her annoyances to everything Seattle is hilariously funny and relatable to anyone from this area. For a sampling: her annoyances range from the dreary winters to a prevalence of too polite Canadians, to whether you’re a Subaru family vs a Mercedes family, to the Seattle freeze. (The Seattle freeze refers to a phenomenon many newcomers experience where it can be quite difficult to break into a circle of friends).

Her daughter Bea is also killing it at school. She’s extremely bright, witty and musically talented. Her family is also wealthy. You would think that Bernadette should be incredibly happy with her life, since her family appears to be thriving. But she struggles. She struggles with depression. She struggles with being different than the other neighborhood moms. She struggles with neighbors thinking she’s crazy (when in fact they are perhaps even more crazy). She is quirky and stuck in a rut. She has hired a virtual assistant from India to help her with even the smallest of every day affairs because she increasingly hates to leave her house. She seems to be starving for a true friend, confiding intimate details of her life with her random virtual assistant. There is a sense throughout the story that Bernadette misses something from the past. Before moving to Seattle, Bernadette was an award winning, revolutionary Architect in Los Angeles.

After a great deal of comical chaos and tension between Bernadette, her husband and her Queen Anne neighbors, she disappears two days before Christmas. Their family’s world is in chaos. Where’d she go? In their pursuit of solving this mystery, her husband Elgie and daughter Bea embark on a cruise to Antarctica. They are chasing Bernadette’s last known trail. During this time, they fear the worst for Bernadette and do some soul searching themselves. They discover another world full of life, naturalists and penguins. Father and daughter are faced with a major life change. They rediscover who they are, what they want out of life and most importantly, who they want to share their time with on their journey through it. It is a wonderful story of a family’s ups and downs. Life is full of unexpected twists and turns. There are times when you are in a rut. There are times when petty little things with neighbors get on your nerves (when they shouldn’t). And there are times when it seems all too perfect. Sometimes friendship, support and inspiration appear from where you least expect it.

As a wife and mother, I can relate to some of Bernadette’s story. Sometimes I’d like to disappear. The daily selfless grind mothers experience can be incredibly exhausting. The work we do is the bedrock of society. Yet there is a sense it all goes unnoticed. It’s certainly not glamorous. I would not say that I am unhappy. In fact, the opposite. But life today is very different than my past where I had a successful career. There are times when I miss the days of power suits, high-heels and jetting off to client meetings. That being said, I also would not trade my rock-star mom status anytime soon.

The Pink Penguin Martini:

In Where’d You Go, Bernadette, the pink penguin martini is a pink lemonade martini enjoyed on-board the cruise by visiting scientists from Palmer Station in Antarctica. This tangy refreshing cocktail is an important clue to father and daughter solving their family’s mystery. This is my take on the drink as there is no real description in the book about how it is made. If you like pink lemonade, I think you’ll enjoy this cocktail. It’s time to chill. Think pink.

Shaken, not stirred

People don’t go to Antarctica, they are called to Antarctica Bernadette Fox

Have you read Where’d You Go, Bernadette? I’d love to hear your thoughts on this book. What did you think of Bernadette’s quirky ways? What do you think comes next for this family? Have you ever had a pink lemonade martini?