Portion about 1.5 tablespoons mayonnaise into a small bowl. Add a quarter teaspoon yuzu koshou.

Mince two green onion. Melt a half tablespoon butter in pan. Lightly sautée onion with a little salt for about a minute. Pour butter-onion mixture in with mayo mixture and stir together. Use to coat the inside of both pieces of toast.

Melt another slab of butter in same pan. Crack in two eggs and fry sunny-side-up until whites are set and yolks still jiggle when pan is shaken.

Put eggs between bread and eat over a plate. Enjoy the delicious ensuing mess.

• 1.5oz St. George Botanivore Gin
• 0.5oz lime juice (fresh would be best, but I only had ReaLime)
• 3.5oz Fever Tree Tonic Water
• A couple cubes of celeriac (celery would do, but we happened to be cooking with celeriac)
• 5 drops Isaan Another Level bitters (bitters, old men)

Measure liquid into shaker, finely grate celeriac on a microplane into liquid. Give it a few minutes to infuse, then stir with ice and double-strain over rocks.

The warmth is inside me

• 1oz St. George Dry Rye Gin
• 0.5oz Hangar One Chipotle Vodka
• 4oz Fever Tree Ginger Beer

Pour over ice in a rocks glass. Stir.

• 20 limes = 750mL
• 1 grapefruit = 100mL
• 1 pineapple = 700mL
• 4 oranges = 300mL

Sweet:

• 1.5 cups Dark Muscovado sugar
• 100mL Velvet Falernum
• 100mL homemade orgeat

Strong:

• 500mL Smith & Cross Traditional Jamaican rum
• 500mL Hangar One Chipotle Vodka
• 500mL Laird’s Straight Apple Brandy

Weak:

• 1L black tea (blend of pu-er and assam/diksam)

Bitter:

• Peel of 1 small yuzu
• 3 healthy shakes Scrappy’s Cardamom bitters
• 4 drops Scrappy’s Lavender bitters
• 1 full eyedropper Bittermens’ ‘Elemakule Tiki bitters

Mix and chill. Pour over ice, top with fresh-grated nutmeg. Serves as many as can still stand.

Happy Birthday, Tony.

What was all that about, you ask? At this point, the booze will help preserve the yolks in case I don’t get back to them tonight, and I’ve got something that’s essentially the base of either egg nog or sweet sabayon, for which I planned to work out some kind of cocktail.

I had a couple hours on MUNI and BART to spend researching egg cocktails on my phone, but there wasn’t too much that seemed useful. When we got home from dinner, I pulled out my copies of Imbibe and On Food and Cooking and decided that I wanted to chase the sweet sabayon flavor profiles (add fruit instead of dairy) and build on Imbibe’s Golden Fizz.

Looking around at the cabinets, I came up with the following:

• 1.5oz of the above-mentioned egg yolk mixture
• 1.5oz Aqua Perfecta Poire Liqueur
• 0.5oz Germain-Robin Shareholder’s Reserve Alambic Brandy

Shake like hell with ice, then pour over rocks in a stemless champagne glass and top with a splash of Fever-Tree Bitter Lemon.

The result is rich and creamy yet light and refreshing, and not entirely unlike a piña colada, despite the utter lack of anything coconut or pineapple.

Hard shake all ingredients except bitters, strain into two chilled martini glasses. Top each with 5 drops bitters.

(makes 2 cocktails)

Dropped by K&L Wines today after work to pick up some good cheap vodka for my umeshu project and couldn’t stop myself from buying several other bottles of new spirits.

In particular, I noticed that Hangar One has rereleased their Chipotle vodka, and I couldn’t resist bringing a bottle home and testing it out right away. Holy shit is this stuff great.

1oz Espolon Tequila Blanco

0.5oz Hangar One Chipotle vodka

0.5oz Triple Sec (the cheap stuff)

1oz fresh lemon juice (from the backyard tree)

0.5oz agave nectar (trader joes)

3 drops Fee Brothers Aztec Chocolate Bitters

Hard shake everything together with ice while chilling a cocktail glass. Rim the glass with salt (I used some lovely pink flake salt my parents gave me) and strain into the glass.

Hot damn, the grassy, smoky notes of the H1 Chipotle and the tequila balance beautifully with the sour lemon and the sweet chocolate/agave. The perfect drink to celebrate the warming weather, I can see this being a summertime favorite this year. Here’s hoping Hangar One has produced a goodly amount of the Chipotle on this run.

(Named for the smoky, fiery sorceress in A Song of Ice and Fire)

12:53pm: just finished a delicious bibimbop, spicy Korean pickles, clear seaweed soup, and orange wedges. Used all the gochujong. Soo good! Two glasses of red wine in so far, and having some genmaicha. There’s both a regular outlet and a USB outlet, handily can charge two things at once, especially now that most devices charge via USB anyway. Movie selection is awesome, includes current Oscar winners the kings speech, true grit, black swan. Watching Never Let Me Go first.

1:17pm: just discovered disposable slippers and single use toothbrush/paste. Shoes are off now, seat is back, nicely wined and dined, pillow behind my back, blanket so soft, movie on…I may never fly another airline again.

4:35pm: just had two hot tasty beef buns. More than halfway through The King’s Speech.starting to get confused by time. It’s eternal night within the plane, but opening a window reveals eternal day. 6hrs, 35mins to destination.

12:20am: Starbucks at airport. Have cash and jr pass. Use citibank ATM.

1:24am: been on the train a little bit now, passing Sakura. Need to transfer at second stop past Tokyo. Sun is finally starting to set and turn golden. The breeze is cool when the train doors open. When they close, there’s a cool whirring sound followed by lots of squeaking as the train picks up speed. We’ve been passing what look like fallow drained rice paddies punctuated by small hills topped with bamboo and pine groves. The giant towers holding up the powerlines out here are reminiscent of the Oakland port cranes or the windmills in the east bay hills; they look like they could lift their feet out of the ground and go for a walk if they so pleased. I can’t imagine watching them sway in an earthquake.

3:30am: caught the hikari 485 to shin-Osaka. The lady back at Narita JR service desk was nice enough to reserve us seats on this one, which just means we’re in an emptier car – really, this car is more than two thirds empty. If there’s a rush from Tokyo to Osaka going on now, I can’t see it. These seats lean waay back, which is good, because I probably won’t be able to stay awake for the entire three hour trip to Osaka. Once we get there, I think we have to transfer to a local subway and then do a little walking to Hotel Dotonbori. It’ll be around 7:30 or 8am SF time, or around midnight local time before we’re checked in. That makes it something like 26 hours door to door today. I’m pooped. Set a prophylactic alarm so we don’t miss our stop. Thankful this train has most of the amenities of most planes, unlike the subway-like train that made up our last leg. All those dried squid snacks are gonna send me to the bathroom, I’m sure. It’s quite cold out. We both put on second layers and I pulled out my new gloves. Glad for them.

7:46am Sunday Osaka: it’s 3:46pm Saturday in SF, but I need to try to run on local time. I’m waking up with a headache after five hours of sleep. Drank some delicious barley shochu last night from the corner store to help me sleep, since my body thought it was 10/11am. Had my first real Japanese takoyaki and ramen last night. Showered in our miniature bathroom – when I stand on the balls of my feet, my head hits the ceiling. Ok, time to get up. There’s so much to see and eat out there.

Except as noted, gameplay, goals, and equipment are identical to traditional Monopoly.

Before the first turn, one player is chosen randomly to serve as a Judiciary and one Legislator is elected from the remaining players (all players vote, even the Judiciary). In the case of a tie vote, the Judiciary gets an extra vote to break the tie. The Legislator presides for a 20 minute term which begins as soon as the elections are decided.

Upon election, the Legislator has the option to create, rescind, or amend one rule for the duration of the game. This rule must be communicated in its entirety before play continues, or the body must declare its intention to make no change. In addition, the Legislator again gains the power to create, rescind, or amend a rule every time they land on or pass Go and collect $200 during their term. Any disputes over the rules are decided solely by the Judiciary.

At the end of the Legislator’s term, another election is held to determine the Legislator for the next term. Everyone votes and re-elections are allowed. In this election, the presiding Judiciary again has a tie-breaking vote. As a final action, the outgoing (or incumbent) Legislator appoints a new Judiciary, after which the new term period begins immediately for both offices. The newly-elected Legislator may now choose to exercise their rule-making ability.

At any time, if the Judiciary wants to initiate a dispute over the rules, they must recuse themselves from the trial. For the duration of that trial, a temporary Judiciary is chosen at random (dice roll) from the players who are not currently in office.