but still a permanent idiot
Juice of one grapefruit (about 3 oz)
2 oz applejack
1 tsp maraschino liquor
1 tsp black currant syrup
several slices of very fresh ginger
two or three drops of peach bitters
Shake hard, strain, and serve up. Would be better if muddled before shaken. Garnish w/maraschino cherries.
1. Find a small wire bottle brush. Any stiff-bristled brush will do, but the bottle brush is ideal for getting into all the nooks.
2. Be ready to find bugs. Don’t squeal.
3. Pill bugs are harmless.
4. Some centipedes are not.
5. After a thorough brushing on the outside, cut it into slices about 1/4 – 1/2 inch thick. Be ready for angry things to crawl out without dropping your mushroom on the floor.
6. Put the slices in a bowl of cold water and agitate to remove most of the remaining dirt. As you remove the slices from the water one by one, use your bottle brush to clean the last bits.
7. Move your freshly-cleaned slices onto a cooling rack or other grated surface (got a colander?) and set them in front of a fan for about a half hour or however long it takes to dry the surface water. You could use a paper towel if you prefer, but it’s unlikely you’ll remove enough moisture from the heavily-ridged edges.
8. Put your clean, dry cauliflower mushrooms in a paper bag and store in the fridge until you’re ready to use. Now that they’re no longer infested with dirt and bugs, they’ll keep longer and they’ll be ready to use whenever you want them.
Recipe:
5 ml (1 tsp) Luxardo Maraschino
1.75 oz St. George Agua Azul reposado
15 ml (3 tsp) Ginger syrup
Juice of 1 meyer lemon
Shake above vigorously w/ice. Serve over rocks in glass rimmed with salt and ras el hanout.
Notes:
Smoky and sour with complexity from the luxardo. Mildly spicy with clove from the ras el hanout. Ginger syrup may get lost, but is what I have lying around and it dissolves better than granulated sugar.
12 fl Oz Speakeasy White Lightning
Liberal grating fresh nutmeg
Conservative shake cayenne powder
Cut down a 12 foot tall mirror plant. Dig out the roots. Plant a lemon tree in its place. Put spices into pint glass. Pour in bottle of beer. Relax and drink up the sun. You’ve earned it.
• 1 fl Oz Blueberry Shrub #2
• 1.5 fl Oz Patron Silver
• 6 drops Absente bitters
• 4 raspberries
• 1 thick slice lemon cucumber (cut into quarters)
Shake all with ice, strain into an old fashioned glass (allow drupelets through per personal taste) over two ice cubes, top with Pellegrino, stir. Garnish with a fresh slice of lemon cucumber and a couple fresh raspberries.
Would like to try this w/orange bitters, just didn’t have any.
Last Friday Nora and Kevin were in town from Chicago for Brishine’s wedding, and since they were here, we entertained a few folks at our place. To keep 15 or so people happy for a few hours and get the cheap thrill of making something other people appreciate, I knocked out a punch in the style of Alton’s Cape Fear Punch. The style breaks down to four basic components: tea, booze, citrus, and spice. I put on my own spin, of course, adding wormwood and anise hyssop flowers from the garden, and spiking with my homemade keffir leaf vodka and blueberry shrub. It turned out a good punch, though I’m sure the recipe could use some refining. For the sake of posterity, I present it here.
Steep in 375 mL near-boiling hot water for 3 minutes. Then add:
Set in the fridge for at least a few hours, preferably overnight.
When people start arriving, send the wife to greet them, strain the punch into a 6.5 quart pot, add:
Leave the nutmeg and a microplane next to the punch pot, so folks can add additional spice to their own drinks, if desired. Encourage them to do so. It really makes a difference.
If I were to do this again, I would probably decrease the amount of Bacardi, increase the amount of Keffir vodka, and increase the amount of shrub. Also, I’m not a huge fan of the rose cava, that’s just all we had around. A sweeter white cava or prosecco would have done nicely.
Basic Shrub recipe:
Based almost directly off of Neyah White’s shrub recipe, though I prefer a little less sugar and salt than he calls for. My original blueberry shrub recipe used 1 quart fresh blueberries, 1 quart white sugar, and 1 quart apple cider vinegar. I stuck to the same spices he used: 1 oz black peppercorns and 5 cardamom pods. I don’t remember exactly how much salt I used, but I know I prefer less than the 1 oz called for in his recipe.
Last night Claudine and I had a few friends over for a game night. I did a particularly bad job of planning it, so many people I would have wanted to come either couldn’t do so because notice was too short or weren’t invited at all because I am a lousy, forgetful friend.
Thanks to those who did make it: Jared Williams, Carlos Almendárez, and Lauren Clymer.
Anyone who’s ever been to one of my game nights before has probably played, or at least heard of, Mini Mao. For those who aren’t familiar already, I usually sum up Mini Mao thusly:
Kevan Davis created Mini Mao, which is itself a variant of Mao incorporating some of the principles of a Nomic.
By Kevan’s description, Mini Mao is a card game, usually played with a deck of normal playing cards, though not restricted to that medium. Last night was the first time we’ve tried to test that boundary, by incorporating a deck of Uglydoll cards and a normal deck of playing cards into a single, mixed deck.
Our findings: playing with a greater variety of cards only adds to the total amount of fun to be had. In other words:
cards++ => fun++
Rules that were developed and used last night (not in order):
Next game night, I’m planning on procuring a set of mahjong tiles to use instead of cards. Theoretically, we could use any objects instead of cards, but mahjong tiles (or dominoes, failing that) give the added benefit of easy 3D construction. in the discard pile. Ooh…now I’m getting ideas involving Lego pieces.
The crocs were discovered during a search by a female border guard, who screamed and ran out of the room, just what border guards are trained to do when they discover contraband.