Friday, October 6, 2017

The Naturalist and the Cherry Shake




Magician and novelist, Andrew Mayne, star of A&E’s Don’t Trust Andrew Mayne, is our guest today on Drinks with Reads. Andrew started his first world tour as an illusionist when he was a teenager and went on to work behind the scenes for Penn & Teller, David Blaine, and David Copperfield. Andrew’s novel Angel Killer is currently in development for television by Twentieth Century Fox and Temple Hill Entertainment. He’s also the host of the Weird Things podcast. Before we see what kind of drink Andrew has pulled out of his hat, let me tell you a bit about the book...

Professor Theo Cray is trained to see patterns where others see chaos. So when mutilated bodies found deep in the Montana woods leave the cops searching blindly for clues, Theo sees something they missed. Something unnatural. Something only he can stop.


As a computational biologist, Theo is more familiar with digital code and microbes than the dark arts of forensic sleuthing. But a field trip to Montana suddenly lands him in the middle of an investigation into the bloody killing of one of his former students. As more details, and bodies, come to light, the local cops determine that the killer is either a grizzly gone rogue…or Theo himself. Racing to stay one step ahead of the police, Theo must use his scientific acumen to uncover the killer. Will he be able to become as cunning as the predator he hunts—before he becomes its prey?




Professor Theo Cray, the scientist turned sleuth in The Naturalist, possesses a brilliant mind but often takes things quite literally. When he hears the word “drink,” his mind immediately goes to water or whatever beer is readily available. 

That said, because Theo spends a lot of late nights in the lab that stretch into long days, he’s developed his own particular drink that’s more meal replacement than recreational. His grad students nicknamed it the Theo Shake. 

At 260 calories, the Theo Shake is a creamy nutritious non-dairy milkshake that happens to taste like a cherry ice cream shake (like the kind his father made for him when he was a boy.)

The Theo Cherry Shake

6 oz (half a bottle) of Soylent Drink (original flavor)
Half a banana (ideally frozen)
1/2 cup of water (or five ice cubes if the banana isn’t frozen
2 or 3 drops of Cherry Kool-Aid liquid drink mix

Blend until smooth.

The Soylent drink provides protein and other nutritious ingredients, while the banana adds to that as well as serving as a thickening agent, giving the shake an ice cream-like texture. Chocolate milk drops can be substituted for the Cherry Kool-Aid drops. Or just leave plain for the banana flavor.


When Theo was asked about the chemical ingredients in the additive drops by one of his students, they were given an extensive lecture about the fungicides in coffee, the naturally occurring arsenic in fruits like apricots and the mercury levels in many “organic” types of seafood and shown an equation on the whiteboard for measuring risk versus reward. 

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