Same Thing, But Different

More Leo in the news

2012-01-25T09:29:00.002-05:00

http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/01/24/2606069/victims-of-miami-ponzi-schemer.html

Conveniently left out (although you could do some quick math if inclined to read between the lines) is that the trustee/trustee's firm/trustee's accountants took 2/3+ of the assets recovered; also left out are that the trustee liquidated some assets at firesale prices (parcels in Cape Coral, Florida with CURRENT market prices of $10K sold for $750, etc.) in order to close this bankruptcy quickly

-J.

I'll quit procrastinating later

2012-01-24T16:52:00.002-05:00

One of the major Shakespearan flaws I have, and one that speaks to my being born as one of Nature's Writers is that I procrastinate beautifully.

On the other hand, a hostile witness to my being one of Nature's Writers is that I can, actually sit down and write. Rather easily, alas.

Quick story.

I have a great pal. She is a For Real T.V. Screenwriter. You've seen her work. I mean, YOU'VE SEEN HER WORK. She and I started working on something a while back. In the middle of this, she started working on something else with another writers whose work you might have seen.

They had a deadline.

In Hollywood there is, I think I've figured out, a tacit understanding between producers and writers. The writers turn stuff in VERY late and the producers pay the writers less than the contract stipulates.

Anyway.

They were coming up on what they called "a hard* deadline" and they were stuck on a couple of things. First was a thorny plot issue that was bedeviling the first half and the second was that they had no second half.

She emailed me, her font practically scrofulous with pleading: "Look, the guy I'm doing this with isn't half as good** as you, so please, could you take a pass at this?"

She then explains the problems they were having; one character was not even remotely believable, the "set-up" less so -- if such a thing was possible -- and the dialogue was stilted and therefore there were no 3rd & 4th acts.

"Send what you have, I'll look."

She explained the agonies her and her co-writer had suffered over the last three weeks. The torments of the damned were undergone by the both of them as they bounced from one problem to the next, each seemingly less soluble than the previous. She sent the first +/-30 pages of an expected +/-60 pages at 10am on Day 1. I asked her for permission to do whatever I believed was correct without major, invasive surgery to the structure and basic premise, which she kindly granted. She said I HAD to send her whatever I would within a week.

So, by 3pm the next day, she had her 60 pages.

Her response was:

"That's PERFECT.

I hate you."

The point of this narrative being that I don't have (probably to my detriment) an Artistic Temperament. I don't suffer about what to write. I just (once I can be bothered to sit down to the task) issue forth streams of prose*** with relatively difficulty and with a modicum of charm for the reader.

The trick, as has been amply evident to all of you who have stuck around throughout the Leo episode, is for me to actually sit down and write.

Now, if only someone in Hollywood would care to throw massive cash my way to inflict my non-delayed charm upon the masses...

-J.

* "If it's not in by this date, the deal is REALLY off."

** Pretty flattering, and likely true, but the guy in question has a fat contract and I do not."

*** I have, after all, been speaking in prose my whole life, so it comes naturally.

"That's black magic, that is!"

2012-01-21T18:21:00.004-05:00

Because you asked, I'll be blogging on the matter of pickles.

I had gone to one of those MegaPlusWarehouseClub places where you can't buy ONE cucumber, you must buy a trillion cucumbers. Getting good and sick of 99.99% of said cucumbers spoiling, I decided to try my hand at making pickles.

Which I like. Pickles, I mean. They go on various sandwiches and burgers and, in moderation, may be readily nibbled straight. So I cobbled together a bit of coarse salt, water, vinegar, dill seed and dillweed, garlic and cucumbers (the "Kirby" varietal is the one you want if you're doing this in the USA).

Anyway.

My kids think I have performed the wildest voodoo. Turning water into wine or getting Lazarus to wake up from the dead wouldn't prove nearly as impressive. Even better, they are consuming these by the barrel.

Next batch, I'll post the recipe with photos.

-J.

Let the record show I was not surprised.

2012-01-19T09:50:00.001-05:00

http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/01/17/2594321/cantens-preyed-on-priests-and.html

(The investor interviewed is one of our clients.)

My favorite cookies (or "biscuits")

2012-01-19T09:07:00.002-05:00

1 c. combination nuts (almonds & pecans are my sugg.) and dried fruit (apples & cranberries, if you ask me); both chopped fine, & raisins; ½ c. fruit and ½ c. nuts, or straight raisins (my pref.)
½ c. dark rum (or ¾ water)
6 T. unsalted butter
1¾ c. "old-fashioned" oats
1½ t. gr. cinnamon
1 c. all-purpose flour
¼ t. baking powder
¼ t. baking soda
½ t. salt
1½ c. packed light brown sugar
1 large egg
2 t. vanilla extract

1. PLUMP FRUIT/RAISINS: Adjust oven racks to upper-middle and lower-middle positions and heat oven to 350F/180C. Line 2 baking sheets with parchment paper. Combine chopped dried fruit/raisins and water (3:2 ratio) in saucepan and bring to boil over medium-high heat. Reduce heat and simmer until water has evaporated and raisins are plump, about 15 minutes; let cool. If you use rum (1:1 ratio) just let steep.

2. TOAST OATS: Melt butter in large skillet over medium heat. Cook oats, stirring constantly, until just golden, about 5 minutes. Stir in cinnamon and cook until fragrant, about 30 seconds; let cool.

3. MIX: Combine flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt in bowl. In large bowl, whisk sugar, egg, and vanilla until smooth. Stir in nuts and plumped fruit(s), oat mixture, and flour mixture until just combined.

4. BAKE: Roll 2 T. dough into 1½"(4cm) balls and place 2" (5cm) apart on prepared baking sheets. Gently press balls with measuring c. until ½" (1cm) thick. Bake until edges are JUST golden and middles are just set, 13 to 16 minutes, alternating and rotating baking sheets midway through. Cool 10 minutes on sheets, then transfer to wire rack. Serve warm or at room temperature.

At 5:12am.

2012-01-19T05:12:00.002-05:00

I don't always hate my insomnia.

I hate it when there's not a bloody thing to do. I don't suffer from insomnia, I suffer from boredom.

So it's 5:13am now, none of my pals can be found online, there's nothing on the Internet. Appalling stuff.

On the upside, I have discovered how to make pickles which is so absurdly cheap and simple and yield such fantastic results my children are treating the entire endeavor as a sort of exercise in the very darkest magic.

Salt, vinegar, dill (seed AND fronds), touch of garlic, mustard and allspice, bit of water and cucumbers. Three days at room temperature and ta-dah.

-J.

The "Leo" saga...some theories.

2012-01-12T16:49:00.003-05:00

Let me give you some background -- there will be conjecturing, so pay attention -- on the "Leo" thing. How it started, where (I believe) it went off the rails, etc.

It all started in 1990something.

Leo had found a spot in Florida that had a great deal of amenities, convenience (i.e. close-but-not-TOO-close to the major cities), and otherwise great location, with great weather, fishing, beaches and all that.

He also found that land in this part of the world, if one was willing to buy it in big enough chunks, was pretty cheap. So he bought it in a big enough chunck, broke it down into individual parcels and realized he had paid $3000 per parcel. He then sold it for $6000 per parcel.

He had a very efficient system of selling these, also. He would place targeted ads in targeted areas of the USA (usually up North, and usually in the dead of winter) wherein he offered to pay for a weekend trip for any interested buyers. Those buyers traveled to the West Coast of Florida, and were squired around by Leo's staff, showcasing the glories of this corner of the state. They had all meals paid for, as well as lodgings. (Leo, of course, had worked out bulk deals to get these cheap.)

At the end of the trip, a hard sell presentation was made and people usually bought a parcel or two. Some of them couldn't afford the full $6K, so Leo financed it at a pretty steep interest rate, since no bank would bother touching a $6K mortgage. The difference to a given purchaser of a mortgage payment at 5% vs. 15% on only a $6K mortgage was pretty insignificant, so they all signed up.

But Leo's model hinged on him buying at 3 and selling at 6, NOT in holding mortgages. He needed cash. So he bundled up the mortgages and sold them to investors. At first all was fine. He duly recorded the mortgages, he followed up on all the paperwork, etc. In fact, he had VERY big clients for these (by "big" I mean financial institutions, etc.) and all was kosher.

His brother, one of two people I have ever met who can be safely classified as pathologically inept, was the guy in charge of this aspect of the operation. He was too lazy to do this, so he sent the entire package "raw" to my office and the staff would do all the things that needed to be done the right way and our clients would get "dibs" on these.

One day in late 2001, the brother (we'll call him Barney), got into a massive fight with Leo. Just before Christmas. Just like that [insert sound of fingers snapping] Barney was gone. Leo took over the mortgage bundling operation. That, in hindsight, is where I believe the wheels fell off the wagon.

Leo was alarmed at the fact we (and our clients) were getting such a lucrative rate of return, and essentially began to freeze us out of these instruments (and into others that were better for him). But in doing so, we weren't doing all of his work (and doing it correctly) for him. Someone in his office was doing that.

Fast forward to 2009, after months on end of his swearing up & down that, due to the unique nature of his business model, his business was still bouyant, when he called me up to say he "needed 90 days to restructure" as he was having cashflow issues but I should rest assured all was going to be well. He had retained a very fancy-pants law firm to help with this.

Later on I found out that what he was doing didn't coincide with my understanding (or anyone's really) of "restructuring." You'd think he'd call in people to whom he owed $$$$$ and said "Look, ___, I'm having cashflow problems. I can't pay you the monthly X for 3 years, but what if I pay you half that amount for twice as long?"

But he didn't do that.

What I surmise he did, is shovel money overseas.

See, Leo had many sales offices in Latin America and many banking contacts in the Iberosphere. During those 90 days, he could have VERY EASILY shuffled money -- as he always did in the course of normal overseas operations -- to these various offshore banks, rebundled them into untraceability and then socked them away somewhere. The trustee's attorney -- about whom I cannot comment further without being grossly uncharitable -- told me, point-blank, that there were $14M that completely evaporated.

Had this guy been less penile in his behavior, I would have cheerfully volunteered my hypothesis and several other that would have allowed him to recover infinitely more (of which the entire trustee-bankruptcy complex would have sponged 75%, but I digress) than they did, but seeing as how he was myopically sadistic, I quickly lost interest in being helpful.

And now you know.

-J.

More fun with "Leo"

2012-01-10T00:02:00.001-05:00

http://therealdeal.com/miami/blog/2012/01/05/real-estate-exec-immediately-pleads-guilty-to-135m-ponzi-charge/

Remind me to dissect the scam for you later, including some stuff the FBI ignored.

If you want to find out more about "Leo"

2012-01-08T07:40:00.001-05:00

http://www.cbs12.com/articles/investors-4737806-miami-cantens.html

For those following along at home...

2012-01-05T12:16:00.001-05:00

...Leo has been arrested (after only 3 years) and has been charged in Federal court with ____ counts of fraud.

For added fun...

2011-12-22T09:29:00.002-05:00

Blogger had disabled the blog, so I didn't see any of the kind comments until now. It turns out someone from Japan, using my identity for reasons which have not yet been adequately explored, was sending random Internet users some Gentlemen's Special Interest Literature.

Blogger took exception thereto and shut it down.

Only the notice this was being done was sent to my GMail's spam folder. (Stop and ponder why Google would flag its own messages as spam.)

At any rate, you are all exceedingly kind and my gratitude surpasses my capacity to express.

To answer some questions:

Jen - Coming soon to a website near you and, one hopes shortly thereafter, a major retailer nearer you.

My downward trajectory from being "in the 1%" to um, not being anywhere even remotely near the 1% in a matter of a few weeks to the (Deo volente) return to being able to breathe again will make an interesting series of posts.

There is betrayal, revenge, forgiveness, perseverance, surprise discoveries, some science, some more surprised discoveries, continual putting-out of fires, herding cats, goat rodeos, wanting to take -- yet, admirably, refraining from taking -- blunt and sharp implements to many people who richly deserve such a fate, howling, imprecations, colossal wastes of time, arguments, stress, humo(u) of the "angry logic" variety, loyalty, friendship and, a consummation devoutly to be wished, profitability.

For those so inclined, you can glance at the blog we have up in expectation of the eventual website. http://110skincare.blogspot.com Yes, I am keenly aware of the irony that I, of all people, would be at the vanguard of something that is:

a) skincare
b) all-natural and organic
c) a bit of a breakthrough in something scientific

Not quite as startling as, say, Gordon Ramsay producing a masterpiece of Greek Orthodox theology, but in that general area.

Now, at long last, I can tell all.

2011-11-27T22:45:00.004-05:00

This is the post you have all been waiting for.

(You who are still here waiting, that is.)

In this post I will tell, sparing no details, how I went from the guy I was, to the guy I am. I will break some personal rules; for the first and last time, I hope. I will talk about money. I will talk about things that are, frankly, difficult and bitter and emphatically Not Happy. I will talk about (peripherally) issues relating to having a kid with special needs.

But, if you've stuck around this long, you have a right to know.

This WILL be a tsunami of text, so get a soothing beverage.

OK.

Around August of '08, there were distant rumblings of trouble. I'd heard them before and was always in a position to ride out the troubles. So I hear the rumblings, make the same defensive maneuvers as before and wait.

Up until Jan. '09, all was more or less fine. At least all seemed that way.

I get a call from we'll-call-him-Leo. Leo had been a friend of my dad for epochs. They had served on the boards of various philantropies together. Leo was in the real estate business. Leo had, for a very long time, made certain real estate "derivative" investments available to my Dad, who had been getting a very comfortable 18% annual return. Very early on, Dad introduced me to Leo and after looking things over took the plunge.

At first -- we're talking 1993-4 -- all was a grand, sweet song. There was nothing in Leo to raise an eyebrow. I started pouring most of my income into his derivatives AND suggesting to some of my clients they do likewise. (No commission or anything, just providing what I believed to be a good suggestion.)

My thinking for doing this was pretty clear; we have a boy with Autism and I have no idea what His Future will require when we're not around. He may be fine and fully self-sufficient, or he may not. So, something that affords me 18% annualized return is hailed.

Eventually Leo tells me there are even bigger opportunities, if I'd like to start some joint ventires with him. At this point it has been 10 years, and I decide to take a chance. We start off with a small real estate project, and within 9 months doubled my investment.

Cool.

So we take on more ambitious projects. #2 is a large parcel adjacent a high-traffic thoroughfare, #3 is an even larger parcel in an area where the first "clean coal" electric power plant in Florida will be built and #4 is a major apartment complex in an area where all other apartments have gone condominium.

Very cool.

We buy #2 for $2.5M in early 2005. We buy #3 for $6M in early 2006 and #4 for $9.5M in late 2006. By 2007, with the general economy slowing, I push Leo to sell #2. We meet with a series of real estate agents and Leo selects one. I'm not crazy about him but, hey, Leo knows what he's doing, he's the pro at real estate, he's the Something Something Magazine Man of the Year, etc.

Weeks pass and no news from the agent. So I pester Leo to ask. Cutting to the chase, a year goes by and nothing. No suggestion to lower the price (it had been listed for $7M), no suggestions on ways to market it, no anything.

We then discover there are some significant problems with #3. Starting with the
~~swamp~~ wetlands on the property. And the zoning irregularities. There are also (surprise) problems with #4. The occupancy rate (given the location in the epicenter of the real estate collapse, not surprising) drops from 98% to 60% as condominiums are suddenly allowed by law to revert to apartments, and the guy (we'll call him Manny) whom Leo got to manage this project is proving pathologically useless. So I start cutting $40K checks every month for the mortgage, as Leo and Manny assure me these are just temporary bumps.

Keep in mind that at this point, I trust Leo implicitly.

Then comes the call (remember that?):

Leo calls me. He is going into bankruptcy.

Besides the various projects, I also have $1.75M in Leo's derivatives which all of a sudden have evaporated. My clients, who were thrilled with Leo's 18% returns, are now incandescent with me. Almost all of these clients leave. My consulting practice, for all intents and purposes, collapses.

Then, of course, the bankruptcy trustee steps in.

What I did not know is that a bankruptcy trustee is not a government attorney. No. He is a private attorney (almost invariably from a medium-to-large firm) and he charges the bankrupt company fees. He also hires a law firm to represent him (His firm. Of course.) and they also charge fees.

In the middle of this, Leo calls me with the news there is an offer for #2. No, not $7M. $2M. If you figured out this was a loss, you're sharp indeed. But we have no real choice. The real estate market is disintegrating. We sell and eat the loss. Losing only $500K was the last bit of good news in nearly three years.

Anyway, the trustee starts his process.

He asserts in court that Leo, Inc., was insolvent since 2002 and that Leo knew this, therefore, by law, every transaction Leo, Inc. conducted was fraudulent and the creditors who held whatever documents saying they had invested $X now had those documents declared, essentially, meaningless. Leo, Inc. owed $45M, and had assets valued at only $17M. The trustee was also going to go after Leo's personal assets and the assets of any other enterprise in which Leo was involved.

This, by the way, took a year. During which time, the Trustee & Co. have racked up $4.5M in legal fees.

Anyway.

So the trustee subpoenas my wife and me. The associate in charge of us, a smarmy 30something with orthodontic braces, ill-fitting suits and a trillion dollar wristwatch, starts off by saying what a fair and compassionate guy he is.

Uh-oh.

He starts producing a trillion documents dating back nearly 10 years, conveniently out of context. He starts digging up stuff on my Dad, who cannot testify as he is in the final stages of Alzheimer's. He calls in my wife and browbeats her to tears.

Because (AHEM!) "as will be proven" everything Leo had done since 2002 was fraudulent, we were not entitled to standing as "creditors with perfected interests" and they had successfully gone after Leo's other assets. Including #3 & #4. So even more of what passes for my net worth turns to vapor.

Then the trustee's attorney sends a nastygram alleging all manner of awfulness. My wife takes it badly. I want to call his bluff but, frankly, not having my wife dissolving into tears every night makes our attorney negotiate for a settlement. Our "somehow non-perfected interest" claims (which were NOT, which is why they were so eager to swat them away as they would have to be paid in full, and not at the minuscule percentage at which other creditors would be repaid) are waived, we pay $25K, and they drop their claims.

So, gritting my teeth, I assent. The motion goes to the court, the judge approves, and it's a done deal. Only then it turns out the trustee's attorney had "made a mistake" in the statement of their claims against us...he was, in fact, bluffing. (Brazenly, as it turns out.)

In the interim, something landed on my lap, something that I soon realize could be turned into a world-class, all-natural/organic skincare.

And we begin this quest, to rebuild at age 47, my professional life. Making, of all things, makeup.

Now you know.

Great Beef, for the Great Recession

2011-09-10T09:11:00.004-04:00

See, here's the thing.

I love beef.

In fact, if one had to compel me to narrow down my foodstuff preferences to one species, "cow*" would be it.

But there's a problem.

It's rather pricy. And I'm a cheapskate**.

This is how that problem has been historically solved. You simply rummage around the butcher's for a different cut than those that occupy the Board Walk & Park Place of the bovine real estate. That was all fine. For example, skirt steak. Prepare it properly and it hit the beefy spot and all was good.

But then someone discovered fajitas, and the price of skirt steak, once a throwaway, went through the roof. So we migrated to flank steak. But then someone discovered satay, and the price of flank steak, once a throwaway also, went through the roof. So we migrated to hanger steak. But then Tony Bourdain became a big hit on TV talking about his restaurant (Les Halles) and "onglet" and then...you see where I'm going with this, yes?

So basically, whatever is one's steak refuge one day, becomes a king's ransom on the next. (The latest is the steak formerly known as Top Blade, now called "flatiron" steak by all the chi-chi restaurants. This may not have yet happened where you live, in which case enjoy the lull.)

Fine.

So I sat down to examine my options. And last night, I hit it. So, for YOU, I will buy another similar hunk of cow, tale pictures and show you how to get this stellar beefy excellentness for chump change. And I mean CHUMP CHANGE.

So here is the secret, in pictures.

Get the correct implements: 5" boning knife (make sure it is crazy sharp) and a plastic cutting board cover.

I have no idea what this cut might be called in other parts. But there ya go. (These come 2 to a pkg. We'll only deal w. one today, for purposes of illustration.)

Kindly note the $2.99/lb price. By far my cheapest beef option, as the "next available" costs $3.99/lb.

Here is the hunk o' cow in question. Throwing this on a grill would be madness. Normally you'd cube it and braise it for hours. But me? I have a cunning plan.

The slab o' cow weighs in at a pound-eight. Remember that.

As daunting as the breaking-down process is, it actually isn't, because we're only "seaming out" (a little butcher jargon for ya) this cut, meaning we separate -- often only by hand -- the individual steaks along the natural lines of fat and connective tissue.

We start off with the outside "cap," making sure you take as little beef off as possible.

Once trimmed, all you do is start cutting along the natural divisions. I got excited and the focus was blurry. Sorry.

...a-a-a-and that's the first steak off.

As you break this cut down into smaller components, you may start noticing the individual steaks are resembling other, pricier segments of cow. This is good.

Give yourself some points if you noticed this looks like a single-serving ($6.99/lb) skirt or flap steak***. (This is important, remember it, as you will see it again.)

Start "seaming out" the rest of the cut. (Again, my hands trembled with boyish glee.)

The trick to dealing with the "silverskin" connective tissue is to slide the knife JUST underneath it and angling the blade UP (i.e., towards the connective tissue and away from the beef) saw gently as you proceed to slide the knife down the length of a given patch of connective tissue. It takes a bit of practice, yes, but better on a cheap cut like this than on a $180.99/lb Kobe beef tenderloin.

Here's the two main sections separated. Now, trim the steak on the lower left...

...like so. Looks like a miniature flank ($7.99/lb) steak, doesn't it?

Then trim the remaining beef. You'll have a mini-Chateaubriand ($18.99/lb., at center right) and some excellent shish kabob bits (top right)

Scraps trimmed away...+/-4oz. At $2.99/lb, that's only 84¢ of waste. Nice.

Now, all you have to do is season with your favorite rub and let it rest (longer is better, overnight is ideal). I like salt and tons of fresh cracked pepper, homemade garlic powder and onion powder.

The way to grill is the "reverse sear" which means you cook it low and slow to your desired doneness and then let it rest and THEN you sear off the outside to get that crazy crust. Why? Because the enzymes that tenderize beef work from +/-100F to +/-120F so you want your beef to spend as much time at this range as possible.

Grilled -- perfectly, to medium rare, TYVM -- and carved. Kindly note the medium-rareness extend almost totally throughout the cross-section, with none of that overdone layer underneath the crust.

...and sauced w. Argentine-style cilantro chimichurri steak sauce. GLORIOUS.

* I can respect those who pick lobster or pig or lamb, etc.

** We'll set aside my occasional dalliances w. "Kobe" beef.

*** In Spanish/Portuguese this is called "churrasco" and it's a big $eller in those "gaucho steakhouses" now littering the landscape.

Part 2, even though I haven't posted Part 1

2011-08-30T00:09:00.004-04:00

OK.

First, I'm doing this to show the lovely and gracious Kim that it can be done.

It will be no secret to all of you that ever since the world imploded in mid 2008, my appetite for bloggery has been sharply curtailed. My fear was and is that at some point, a near pathological amount of not-happy-bunny stuff would emerge and frankly, I hate that.

"...and then, after the baby burst into a mass of flaming splinters, thieves broke in and stole my kidneys."

So, here I am.

The good news is that the proverbial light at the ned of the tunnel is still there and the more curious news is that while that light at the end of that tunnel has singularly failed to get closer (or, to be fair, I to it) another light at the end of another tunnel has manifested itself and that one is approaching and rather quickly.

So, here's a tiny bit of a weird announcement: I'm now a skincare mogul.

No, really.

http://110skincare.blogspot.com/

The short version is that we (the "1:10 Skincare" crew, have invented something we think rather revolutionary. And we're going to see if Adam Smith was right.

And, truth be told, we're sick of the Great Recession. Sick and tired of being sick and tired, to coin a phrase.

Anyway.

That's the big reveal. Once that is up and running (we're in the final phase of gathering up potential equity partners, a process made even more byzantine by the ridiculous regulatory labyrinth the Federal gummint has established) I'll FINALLY get to tell you part 1, which will prove riveting.

There ya go, Kim...a blog entry in a mere 12 min.

-J.

The Pause That Refreshes, or something.

2011-07-25T09:20:00.002-04:00

I'll be taking a moment to dry out my liver and otherwise enjoy a restorative comatose episode before trying to make sense of my bloody notes to continue the bloggery.

As you were.

-J.

Day 4 - Neeearly there.

2011-07-24T03:26:00.005-04:00

Before we get to the various specifics, I thought you should know what the range of activities on a given day might be; here are the scheduled -- there are several UNscheduled ones -- freebies for Day 4 (and this doesn't include seminars) with the description as printed in the event program:

Kahlúa Coffee Bar
8:30 AM to 10:30 AM
Mezzanine, Hotel Monteleone
Start every day “Delicioso-ly” with a Kahlúa-spiked coffee. The world’s #1 coffee liqueur is the perfect addition to any cup of Joe, providing the pick-me up any determined Tales-goer needs to conquer the day.
Presented by Kahlúa Coffee Liqueur

Absolut Bloody Mary Bar
9:00 AM to 10:30 AM
Carousel Bar, Hotel Monteleone
Tomato and spice and everything nice, that’s what Bloody Marys are made of. Join Absolut for a little hair of the dog to get you through another great day at Tales.
Presented by Absolut Vodka

The Enchanted Forest
10:30 AM to 12:00 PM
Bonnet Carre Room, Hotel Monteleone
Channel your inner cubeb and toddle along to the Hendrick’s Gin Enchanted Forest for a nectarous picnic of otherworldly cocktails (and cucumber sandwiches).
Presented by Hendrick’s Gin

The Sexuality of Pisco Varietals, The Art of Pisco Blending
10:30 AM to 12:00 PM
Iberville and Bienville Rooms, Hotel Monteleone
Meet the single grape varietals that make puro piscos: Quebranta, the Macho man; Moscatel, the Sofia Loren; Torontel, the Metrosexual, and Italia, the coquette. Blend your own with the help of producer Melanie Asher.
Presented by Macchu Pisco

Sailor Jerry Rum
10:30 AM to 12:00 PM
Royal Ballrooms C & D,
Hotel Monteleone
Party like you’re 100 years old at the our mid-morning BBQ—with punches, tiki drinks, and all-out-delicious cocktails that won’t be shy on flavor.
Presented by Sailor Jerry

Across the Bar Interview Series
11:30 AM to 12:30 PM
Irvin Mayfield’s Jazz Playhouse,
Royal Sonesta
Led by Robert Hess and Angus Winchester
Bringing you the stories of a few of the people who have made an impact on the spirits and cocktails industry. Discover how each of them got where they are and the true nature of those who continue to play an important role in forwarding our craft.
Presented by iSi North America

Fresh Treats at the Leblon Caipi-Mobile
12:00 PM to 2:00 PM
French Quarter, New Orleans
Our iconic Caipi-Mobile will be rolling through the streets of the French Quarter serving fresh Leblon cocktails by some of the world's best bartenders. Flag down the truck to see who will be hiding inside and try our refreshing Leblon Cachaça laced sorbets and frozen treats to beat the summer heat.
Presented by Leblon Cachaça

Get Shipwreck’d with the Brinley Family!
12:30 PM to 2:00 PM
Evangeline A & B, Royal Sonesta Meet Bob & Maryann Brinley as they pour their award-winning flavored rums and tell tales of their 10 years of rum running and 30 years of doing business on the beautiful island of St. Kitts.
Presented by Brinley Gold Shipwreck Spiced Rum

Creating Innovative Cocktails for Modern Mixologists
12:30 PM to 2:00 PM
Regal Suite, Royal Sonesta
The Supreme Cocktail Device will be demonstrated along with techniques for creating modern cocktails. Incorporate smoke, CO2, liquid nitrogen, and essential oils into your routine.
Presented by John E. Koerner & Co., Inc.

The Farmer’s Bar: Taste Farm-to-Table on a Global Scale
12:30 PM to 2:00 PM
Acadia Suite, Royal Sonesta
Celebrate the Farmers First mentality. Taste spirits familiar and new, learn their connections to the land, and sip fresh, custom cocktails from the nation’s top bartenders.
Presented by Del Maguey, FAIR (The Fair Trade Spirits Co.), Novo Fogo Cachaca, Ron
Zacapa, and Siete Leguas

Tullamore Dew Irish Whiskey
2:30 PM to 4:00 PM
Bonnet Carre Room, Hotel Monteleone
Taste the newest addition to the WG&S whiskey portfolio. You can bet your lucky penny there’ll be tasty cocktails, homey Irish fare, and rocking good times.
Presented by Tullamore Dew Irish Whiskey

Piedmont Distillers: Carolina in My Mind
2:30 PM to 4:00 PM
Iberville and Bienville Rooms, Hotel Monteleone
The Old North State is cookin’ up some of the best spirits around. Top mixologists present superb cocktails made with Catdaddy Carolina Moonshine, Junior Johnson’s Midnight Moon, and Midnight Moon fruit inclusions.
Presented by Piedmont Distillers

Fresh From Brazil
2:30 PM to 4:00 PM
Royal Ballrooms C & D,
Hotel Monteleone
Get the exclusive opportunity to taste Leblon fresh from our alambique stills, enjoy freshly made cocktails, and sign the Legalize Cachaça Declaration of Independence.
Presented by Leblon Cachaça

Cocktail Confessional
3:00 PM to 6:00 PM
Lobby, Royal Sonesta Hotel
An evening that begins with a good drink always ends with a good story. This year, we’re capturing these spirited stories at the Cocktail Confessional, Share memories from the week’s festivities and Tales events past in a video confession. Have you gotten into some down-and-dirty shoptalk, or up to no good with a newfound partner in crime? Join Tanqueray, sip custom cocktails, and hit the Confessional booth. Whether your story is best told solo or en ensemble, rouse the room with your own tales of Tales.
Presented by Tanqueray Gin

Pernod Absinthe Green Hour
3:30 PM to 5:30 PM
Mezzanine, Hotel Monteleone
Putting a refreshing and modern spin on the alluring centuries-old aperitif,
featuring the “Green Beast,” created by Pernod since 1805.
Presented by Pernod Absinthe

Botran Tiki Lounge
4:30 PM to 6:00 PM
Evangeline A & B, Royal Sonesta
Bringing our tropical roots to the Big Easy, our “Tribal Chief of Mixology” will be serving up innovative tiki-inspired cocktails with a modern twist.
Presented by Botran Rum

Kentucky Bourbon Hall of Famer:
Eddie Russell
4:30 PM to 6:00 PM
Regal Suite, Royal Sonesta
Join Wild Turkey Associate Distiller Eddie Russell for a tasting of our (currently top-secret) new expression, great food, and good-old Southern Rock on a Saturday afternoon.
Presented by Wild Turkey

Summer’s 25th Hour
4:30 PM to 6:00 PM
Acadia Suite, Royal Sonesta
Summer’s best times are perfectly complimented with pin-up girl art installations, live music, Deep Eddy Sweet Tea-glazed BBQ, and Deep Eddy Betty’s pouring cold, summertime beverages.
Presented by Deep Eddy Vodka

Tasty Tales Poolside
5:30 PM to 7:30 PM
Pool, Hotel Monteleone
Forget those paper umbrellas! Today’s punches and tiki temptations are fresh, complex, and exciting. Turn up the flavor while you chill out to carefree island music and enjoy savory small bites.
Presented by Monin and Proximo Spirits

Imbibe Magazine Happy Hour
5:30 PM to 7:00 PM
Le Maris Hotel, 717 Conti Street
Join us for a special happy hour with bartenders David Delaney and Dave Shenaut, winners of the 2011 Imbibe Cover Cocktail Contest, along with VIVE! bartenders Alex Orgeron and Shaun Doughty. Have a drink with Imbibe's editors, enjoy the winning Imbibe cocktails, and see some of the country's most talented bartenders in action.
Presented by Imbibe Magazine and Le Maris Hotel

Campari Negroni Pre-Awards Toast
6:00 PM to 7:30 PM
Carousel Bar, Hotel Monteleone
Campari will celebrate the nominees of this year’s Annual Tales of the Cocktail Spirited Awards® by hosting a Negroni Pre-Awards Toast at the Hotel Monteleone’s Carousel Bar. Stop by to congratulate your favorite nominees who embody the best of the mixology world and toast them with a complimentary classic Negroni, Italy’s incomparable signature cocktail, authentically made with Campari, gin, and sweet vermouth.
Presented by Campari

Tales After Dark presents Bacardi Ritmo Cuba featuring Alexi Martitel
12:00 AM to 2:00 AM
Irvin Mayfield’s Jazz Playhouse,
Royal Sonesta
The daiquiri began in Cuba on June 20, 1898, soon after the war, in the town of Daiquirí when Americans began exploration of the Daiquirí iron-ore mines. Take yourself back to Havana with Cuban rhythms and a hand-shaken Bacardi daiquiri.
Presented by Bacardi

[This entry is in progress. Come back for the rest!]

Day 3 - Halfway there.

2011-07-23T09:03:00.002-04:00

Those of you who attend conferences, symposia, etc. may think you're really a solid [insert name of activity here] but you really can't say that if the events are the arrive-midday-Friday-leave-Sunday-afternoon variety.

Here we are at Day 3 and we're only halfway done.

Now, something struck me last year and it strikes me again THIS year. At all the various seminars, you're plied with the equivalent of 1½-2½ full cocktails, starting at 10am and running through 4pm. Plus all the various tastings, freebie breakfasts (i.e. coffee liqueurs and Bloody Marys) and dinners (muffulettas & rum punches) and so forth. so, if you only have 1 of whatever is offered to you, by the conclusion of the day's activities, you will have had ten cocktails and it's only 6pm.

A brief pause while that thought comfortably makes itself at home among your brain cells.

So, what continues to strike me as strange is that after having had +/-10 cocktails by 6pm, you want to go bar hopping.

Why you want to treat your liver the way a Communist dictator would a particularly impertinent dissident, I have no idea. But there you go.

So, having arisen a touch on the late side, the first stop is the Absolut Vodka Bloody Mary Bar. Tomato juice has a lot of vitamins and minerals and that, dear Internet, is what keeps a boy keen and eager for the day's challenges.

The first of which was the "Classic Hotel Bars" seminar.

Primarily this focused on the hotel bars of London, with the odd discussion of (mostly) New York and Paris.

Hotel bars, having to cater to a not-exclusively-local clientele, with a veritable melting pot of tastes and proclivities, have given rise to not only legendary bartenders, but also great cocktails. Think of the Savoy Cocktail or a Piña Colada, two of a zillion famous cocktails born in hotel bars.

[The rest of this entry will follow, but first I believe I should absorb some fortified tomato juice.]

Preview of Day 3

2011-07-22T21:33:00.003-04:00

Guess what I had for breakfast. Go on, guess.

While you're at it, guess what I'll have tomorrow.

-J.

Day 2

2011-07-22T09:50:00.008-04:00

In 2010, this was all a Great New Adventure...this year the novelty has worn off, and now I am actually paying attention (and looking for more freebies) and taking notes and all that.

That's why I'm not bothering posting pictures of a million crates of liquor, or zillions of lemons being juiced. You can go back to the posts from July/Aug. 2010 to see that.

As the lovely and gracious Paola said, this year is "hard-core."

At least for me.

One of the nice things is that waiting for you in your room is not a fruit basket, nor a small box of chocolates but a bottle of some artisanal spirituous liquor*. After a travel day, there is little better than finding something potable and restorative awaiting you. I imagine some pasha or potentate feeling the same way when his harem's sommelier had read his master's mind. This is just like that, but without the human trafficking aspect about which some people have reservations.

The for-real professional people are studiously taking notes on navigating the byzantine liquor laws in the U.S.A. (don't get me started) and discovering the subtle nuances of menu design, and so forth. Some of that appealed to me, and the "drier" stuff didn't. But if the worst thing that happens to you is that you sit down to a less than scintillating (to you) discussion as lovely cocktails are distributed for your consumption, then complaining is not a very wise option.

Now, one of the things that may not seem sensible is that I believe 5 days are not really enough to do all you want to do. Weird, but true. For example, you have to choose between a session on "Beyond Punch: Colonial American Drinks" of "The Secrets of Wood Maturation" or "6 Rums You'll Probably Never Taste Again."

All of which run into each other.

My choice?

The 6 rum thing, run by the very estimable Ed Hamilton and featuring rums which their producers "cannot mass produce." By this we mean rums of which only a case or two are bottled per year. The REAL "private reserve" stuff which the distillers keep around for VIP gifts, personal consumption, etc.

VERY glorious stuff.

But lousy blog-fodder as all the raves and accolades I could heap on these bottles (from Ron Abuelo, Ron Botrán, Ron Flor de Caña, Neisson Rhum, Prichard’s Rum, and Ron Santa Teresa) are unavailable anywhere, at any price**. The only way to get your hands on one is to be a VERY close family friend of these distillers OR be a VIP visiting the distillery. Think Prime Minister or President or King/Queen.

Next up on the schedule, because I am a complete lunatic, is a seminar on the various Trade Secrets involved in ardent spirits and liqueurs, led by the Charlotte Voisey who is handicapped by being too attractive to be allowed. I cannot state for a fact that a majority of male attendees looked on in a reverie and, in lieu of notes, merely scribbled little hearts...but I wouldn't be surprised. Me? I am dedicated to my craft.

We got a history lesson on how, say, Lillet is made. We also found out that there's quinine in EVERYTHING that's even slightly bitter in a bar. Which is a good thing if your household, after a long day colonizing some primitive indigenous types, has found itself awash with malaria or dengue. Yes, "bitter" was the word of the day.

On the "practical" side, the idea is to pick out what one thinks are the various "secret ingredients" in a various bitters, liquors, liqueurs, etc. I need more experience, because all I generally picked out was "Bitter as the tears of the damned."

But it was fun.

The next one for the day was on swizzle sticks.

Which, as I was soon told, are NOT those cheap little plastic things made for stirring one's drink around. But, rather, slim sticks with multiple "forkings" meant to chill down a drink very quickly without shaking (which would cloud the drink) or stirring (which wouldn't chill it enough). You place the stem of it between the palms of your hands, and like a Boy Scout starting a fire, rub vigorously to "twirl" the stick. Pretty soon, the outside of the glass is nicely frosted, letting you know you have accomplished your task.

Mind you, lot of these cocktails involve 151 proof Demerara rum from Guyana. So it took a great deal of willpower to not lose focus. Yes, Internet, I have shaved decades off my life, but this is just part of the service I provide, for YOU.

The last one for Day 2 was Dave Wondrich & Jeff "Beachbum" Berry's "Around the World by (Brass) Rail" which basically an overview of the global influence of American cocktail culture. Tons of detail; so much, in fact, that you stop scribbling and just listen.

Here's the gist: There’s a myth the the American cocktail and the American bar being "planted" overseas was the result of Prohibition. But not so, according to Wondrich (author of my fave cocktail book, in spite of his incorrect Bloody Mary recipe, featuring lemon instead of lime), who noted that in the 1890s, one could find an "American bar" in Patagonia. "That’s practically the end of the earth! And you could get a Manhattan cocktail there. There are parts of Kansas now where I can’t get that." Just ask Poppy, a serious fan of the cocktail, who had to suffer through a veritable drought on her trip to see those whom she had offsprung at some music internment camp.

So you could get an "American cocktail" pretty much anywhere in the world. What Prohibition did was a) generate a diaspora of bartenders and b) kick the whole thing into top gear.

Some thing that I found out that was interesting (but not much more than that) is that in Ye Olde Barroome Days, there were no barstools. People hung out and milled. (Think of the Wild West saloons of yore: no barstools.)

"Beachbum" Berry's portion was to focus on Prohibition-era Havana, Cuba. (His upcoming cocktail book is called "Potions of the Caribbean") A short 90 miles from Florida, and awash in broad varieties rum (far more than you see these days from Cuba or most Cuban expat companies) it drew thirsty Yanks like a magnet.

The first of these was "Sloppy Joe’s" which had its own brand of 30- and 40-year-old rums. Let that sink in for a moment.

Like any great bar, they also had a signature cocktail:

"Sloppy Joe's Special"
2 oz pineapple juice (fresh is best, in a carton is fine, in a can is intolerable)
1 oz Cognac (Hennessy VS, says I)
1 oz ruby Port (Sandeman would be my pick)
Dash of curaçao (Make it Cointreau. Live.)
Dash of grenadine (BG Reynolds' if you can't be arsed to make your own.)

Shake with ice and strain into a martini glass.

Another Prohibition-era Havana cocktail is

"El Presidente"
1½ oz aged rum (Bacardi 8)
¾ oz semi-sweet vermouth (Dolin)
½ oz curaçao (again, Cointreau)
2-3 dashes of grenadine (again, BG Reynolds')

We can make it today the way it used to be because of the (new to us) availability of a key ingredient: semi-sweet Vermouth de Chambéry, here in the U.S. as Dolin Blanc Vermouth de Chambéry, imported by Haus Alpenz. Pretty glorious stuff. (I suppose you could go 2:1 sweet to dry vermouth in a pinch.)

I'll post a. bunch of photos at the end.

-J.

*Stay tuned for a review of that.

** When Bacardi relented and issued their own, it weighed in at $$$$.

...and so it begins anew: Day One.

2011-07-21T06:59:00.006-04:00

OK.

Before I cover the news of Day 1, some general background details.

1- LOTS of tattooed women. A lot of these are also rocking the 1950s pinup look. Not really sure why, on either count. Still, there it is.

2- I got to sneak a glimpse of all the prep work being done. Crate after crate of citrus being juiced in these industrial juicers. Syrups made in enormous stock pots.

3- A lot of the various participants are taking advantage of Twitter, so the more technoastute can hop on over to where the excellent freebies are.

Freebies are good.

For example, the good folks at Small Screen Network (a cocktail video website you should visit daily) hosted a “happy hour reception” featuring Rum Punch (made with the ridiculously excellent Dos Maderas Rum) and a New Orleans classic, muffuletta sandwiches. Which were delicious and substantial enough that this turned into (let’s not kid ourselves) a free dinner.

Now, dear Internet, you may think this is nothing more than 5 days* of nonstop, ethanol fueled bacchanals. But no. This is science and knowledge being disseminated. Which I, intrepid correspondent that I am, gather and bring to you.

You’re welcome.

Now, something you need to know is that Day One is really geared more to the People In The Trade. That doesn't stop the geeks from attending, but the information presented is really not so bloody applicable to a guy making excellent cocktails in his home bar.

The first thing I learned, and it was an official seminar (not merely a “breakout session”) was on the matter of ice. YES. There was such a seminar: "How to Build a Cutting Edge Ice Program, 10:00 AM to 11:30 AM." 90 minutes on the matter of ice.

(There was another on making your own sodas, but I have to find time to type up my notes.)

Anyway.

You’ve seen the glossy advertisements for some ardent spirit, in a crystal vessel, accessorized by equally crystalline ice. While THAT ice is likely acrylic (to withstand the lighting requirements of a product’s day long photo shoot) your ice at home can be likewise clear.

If you’ve ever wondered why some fancy places turn out perfectly clear ice, while yours at home (even with the fanciest refrigerator icemakers) is cloudy-white, I’m here to tell you how to do it right.

First, you need to filter your water. A standard, cheap, pitcher or faucet filter will suffice. If your refrigerator dispenses filtered water that will be just fine also. Place this highly excellent water in a scrupulously clean teapot. Boil. Shut off heat and allow to cool. Then boil again.

Why? There is a LOT of dissolved air in water, and the more dissolved air, the cloudier the ice. Boiling allows all that to escape.

Anyway, while it is still hot, pour carefully (!) into the ice tray. THEN – pay attention, this is the crucial bit – place the ice tray in one of those insulated cheap lunch “totes” that have sadly replaced the more artistic steel lunchboxes of yore. Then place the whole thing inside the freezer.

Basically you need two things to get super-clear ice: Very pure water, and a S-L-O-W freezing process. In a normal icemaking process, the surface of the cube freezes up much faster than the interior. Which “cramps” the interior, clouding it. By using very hot (and pure) water inside an insulated environment, you are assuring yourself a very slow freezing that allows the interior to cool down at a rate far closer to that of the exterior, and that lack of “cramping” is what produces such clear ice.

The next thing on the list was an excellent seminar on "Setting up your in-house soda program" so that you have an array of interesting fizzies to offer guests either straight up for those driving, or mixed for those not.

It is an abysmally kept secret that I am a big fan of "real" (i.e. made with real sugar) Coca-Cola. I basically enjoy carbonation a whole lot. So this is the sort of seminar that tickles my fancy.

Once again, we were drummed with the mantra of "filter and boil your water!" and, for sodaification purposes, to chill that water to about one nanodegree above freezing. (Boyle's Law hadn't been given this much play in my life since my Physics final.)

Insider's Tip: Two CO2 cartridges will create the optimal level of carbonation in 1qt/1L of water at 33F/1C.

The first recipe for anything is mineral water. No need to worry about the price (if you're a right wing maniac) or carbon-footprint (if you're a left wing maniac) of poncy mineral waters from a spring deep in the Alps. Check this out:

Recipe for Apollonaris Sparkling Mineral Water
23g sodium bicarbonate
11.5g sodium sulfate
8.8g sodium chloride
7.6g magnesium carbonate
1g calcium carbonate
5 gallons (18.75L) of water

Store in a
glass "carboy" like the ones you see in water coolers at offices. Carbonate each
liter/quart with 2 charges. Voila.

Which brings us to...homemade tonic water. Which is very handy if your household experiences dengue or malaria, or if you fly through gins-and-tonics by the trough.

First you make the "concentrate"
4 c. water
1 c. chopped lemongrass
(about 2 stalks for me)
¼ c. powdered cinchona bark
zest (use a
Microplane or other FINE grater) and juice of 1 orange, 1 lemon and 1 lime
¼
t. cardamom seeds
½ t. allspice berries
¼ c. citric acid powder (NOT
liquid!)
¼ t. Coarse sea salt

Put everything in a large saucepan,
bring to a boil and immediately lower the heat to the barest simmer, and cover.
Let it go for 20 min. Strain through a coffee filter. Add an equal amount by
volume of simple syrup (1:1), and that's your concentrate. To make tonic water,
add 3 parts of concentrate to 8 parts water, and then carbonate.

Just wait until you see what's on tap for tomorrow.

-J.

P.S. God bless Berocca.

People, get ready

2011-07-16T10:05:00.001-04:00

OK.

It's nearly that time of the year.

Hard to believe it was a YEAR ago that I gave Tales of the Cocktail my bloggy best. But time stops for no man, and I must pack my bags and schlep forward.

And why?

For YOU, Internet.

So stay tuned.

-J.

More to make it up to the lovely & gracious BreadBox

2011-05-31T09:00:00.004-04:00

For my monthly-ish update, something bready.

I was up at a ridiculous hour, bored out of my skull, messing around on Twitter when I saw that the lovely & gracious Kim had popped up and asked on the matter of no-knead bread.

This bread was "invented" at the Sullivan St. Bakery in NYC and when Mark Bittman vlogged about it at the New York Times, it became a mania among foodies, especially those who regard recipes involving flour and yeast the same way the average vampire would a crucifix and stake.

I gave her my opinion on the best baseline recipe (CI's) and, because "the best" isn't the same thing as "perfect" (I really wanted a very rustic flavo[u]r but I preferred the CI version's more delicate crust and crumb.) So, I had to develop and issue my tweaks to said recipe:

1- Use a starter (or "sponge") in lieu of yeast, if possible.
2- I use malt vinegar
3- I use a maltier tasting lager. That "mild" lager stuff is pretty much amber carbonated water and I wanted something to contribute taste.
4- I used 2tsp of sea salt instead of "table salt" (the measurements are to compensate for the volumetric differences; kosher salt will also work if it has no weird "anti-caking" ingredients)

Now you know.

-J.

PS Photos to follow.

BreadBox shamed me into it...

2011-04-06T16:35:00.006-04:00

[Blogger's not allowing my to separate this into paragraphs, the bastids.] ...here is an update. A real one. You may recall this post. There has been some movement along these lines. You may have thought I was on an extended jag of slackery and sloth. But no. There are people who, when the muse strikes them to transform a given area of their dwelling into a particular habitat immediately set to it with implements of demolition, followed by power tools wielded with much artistry, and in three weekends you have a showpiece in the back room/basement/terrace/etc. I, as will become abundantly clear in subsequent entries, possess almost entirely none of the skills required to bring such a project to gorgeous fruition. Between what I have in my mind's eye and and what I have NOW is a vast expanse mostly traversed via credit card, and then only when my beloved looks upon me with benevolence and pity. So, necessarily, my approach must differ from that of my betters. Instead of hurling myself headlong into a project and gracefully dispatching unexpected obstacles with a breezy smile, I must plan, plan, plan and then plan some more. Even this is less than ideal, because I can't draw. As a consequence, I have to pursue matters in an even more primitive way. Planning with crayon, if you will. What I do is simply to scour Craigslist, thrift shops and garage sales and see what I find. Whenever I am feeling expansive, I even rummage through eBay. The purpose is to gather the necessary chattels of tikification so that when the happy day for launching my Tiki habitat approaches all I'll really have to do is cover the walls with __________, cover the ceiling with ___________, install _________ lighting and I'm good to go. I know some people like that clutter-shack look, some people like that nautical/shipwreck look. I'm happy to go with a theme I call All The Tiki Things I Got Really Cheap Look. Your mileage may vary. Therefore, just to show you that I am still feverishly working the whole Gather Mode Thing, here are the acquisitions as of today. I have a couple of small bits o' tiki-ish hand luggage. I have no idea what I'll use them for, but they were free and tiki enough for me. Next to them is a medium-ish bit o' tiki luggage that I also have no idea what to use it for. I'm thinking these may hold all the odds and ends one needs to have handy in one's tiki habitat, but which would either look weird and out of place in the open OR would be stashed somewhere inconvenient. Feel free to suggest. I also got that smallish cabinet ($8) under the drinks-globe where I am storing all the non-tiki glassware; because, after all, you may get the odd guest who would rather have a Negroni than a Navy Grog. I'm thinking some refinishing and judicious appliqués would do wonders for it. Propped up against it is a brass & cherrywood shelf. Doesn't look particularly Tiki (but a case could be made that it looks nautical-ish) but it was only $5. Ignore the TV dinner tray tables. And finally, atop the bar a plumed tikiand the tiki glassware. I had never seen a plumed tiki, but for $1.50 I was willing to take a chance. Now. Here I must make a confession that just might send me from the list of Orthodox Tikiphiles to Reformed (if not Heretical) Tikiphiles. I prefer tiki glassware to tiki mugs. There. I said it. That's not to say I don't like mugs (in fact, there are several I have in my sights and you can see I have Trader Vic's coconut mugs and Mai Kai rum barrels) but that I prefer the glassware. Because I am also something of a Disneyphile, I like the glasses from WDW's Polynesian Resort. From left to right we have 1- current WDW Polynesian Resort Tiki glass (short, clear) a gift from the lovely & gracious Poppy, 2- Hukilau 2008 DOF, 3- vintage-ish Trader Vic coconut mug, 4- recent-ish Mai Kai rum barrel, 5- plumed tiki I got for practically nothing, 6- mid70's WDW Polynesian Resort Tiki highball, 7- Hukilau 2009 DOF, 8- mid70's WDW Polynesian Resort Hurricane glass, and 9- vintage-ish WDW Polynesian Resort Tiki glass (tall, frosted & logo'ed). Not pictured: vintage-ish WDW Polynesian Resort Tiki glass (short, frosted & logo'ed). Now, I'd LOVE to get some suitably tiki "luggage stickers" for the baggage. Given that my decor philosophy for the tiki habitat is "What things in nice shape can I get REALLY cheap?" and given what's out there in general, I think this will eventually skew more in the tiki-nautical direction. Bamboo, rattan, but also dark woods and brass. (I'd love to include a periscope, but I think the zoning guys may object strenuously.) More than anything else -- and here I think I'm in the solid majority of Tikiphiles -- I want this habitat to be IMMERSIVE. You step in, plop down, and within 10 minutes have no idea if it's day or night, what day of the week it is, or even what year it is. Speaking of mugs, etc. there are a few I'd dearly love to have. Miehana, Hukilau '09 and a suitable "fire" bowl (the one they showed in the Smuggler's Cove segment of Food[ography] is ideal, in case you feel a strange compulsion to shop for me now that my birthday time) would neatly round out my mug inventory. The room in question -- a rather narrow-but-deep specimen -- has a decent sized window at the very back; where "behind the bar" would be. The view from said window is underwhelming. I'd LOVE to put something waterfall-ish there. Again, patient Craigslistery has paid off in that I have found an old "wine cabinet" with a ruined refrigeration unit for -- let's just round down -- essentially nothing. Took out all the rusted, useless guts and I am left with a lovely, near-mint solid oak cabinet. Rattanize (this is a stretch for me, so cross your fingers) the panels, stain to match the bar and I finally have a place to stash my hoard of ardent spirits, liqueurs, syrups, bitters and hyperabundance of glassware (both Tiki and civilian). The former winecellar thing has been rigged up to be functional. Not IDEAL, mind you. But functional. As you can see, it came with a upholstery-ish grapevine fabric panel lining thing that's more Napa Valley than Rapa Nui. So, regrettably, it's gotta go. (If, for some bizarre reason, while you are on a Tiki forum you're also in the market for some grapevine fabric panels...I will trade them for something cool. Then I'll be Trader Joke. All sales final, offer void where prohibited.) I removed the X-shaped wine bottle storage shelving and installed (screwing in things more-or-less-level is pretty much the uppermost limit of my DIY skill set) a couple of glass shelves rescued from a Craigslist fridge, and a sliding shelf -- you can see it in the fully extended position above -- from a cannibalized computer desk and a (temporary) light. These shelves are framed with suitably sized wood frames, from a frame guy...who looked at me VERY weird when I made this request. And, most elegantly, I tucked in my old dorm fridge which my wife had been begging me to jettison for epochs. (I covered up the space with some spare grape fabric. It's a complete jury rig, but looks fine from 3 ft or further, and besides this isn't permanent.) The flooring on this beast is an unholy mess. Some ancient sort of parquet that probably began to dissolve its bonds sometime during the Ford Administration. That one's easy...bamboo flooring. This is the outside, in its current state. Remember that. Besides rattanizing the front, which is likeliest the Tiki aesthetic path of least resistance, I have been toying with the idea of covering the outside with [I have no idea what, just go with me on this, will ya?] to make it look like a big steamer trunk of yore. Then I'd slap a lot of the same travel stickers as I threatened to do to those Tiki hand-luggage pieces from 2-3 paragraphs ago. I am not sure what I'll discover once I excise the grapey fabric. Assuming it's merely fabric and padding, I was thinking of replacing the fabric with something suitably Tiki. Maybe reconditioning some past-their-prime shirts, or some tapa cloth or...something. Since I know you guys have all been on pins and needles as re. the back window of the proposed Tiki habitat, here's what I have struck upon. (Tell me where I am making a blunder, before I start taking out implements and making changes.) The eventual window-behind-the-bar in question is +/- 5ft (call it 1.5m for those so inclined) by +/- 3ft (.9m) and immediately to the outside there is enough overhang that my projector could be placed -- I didn't say "installed" did you catch that? -- and it'd still be protected and sheltered. That projector would then (duh) project, all rear-projectionlike, assorted images suitable for an Immersive Tiki Habitat. The temptation to steal, without the slightest chemical trace of shame or compunction, the idea of a diorama is very great indeed, but this simply won't meet the spatial requirements and it'd look all squashy and flat. I MAY use an approach similar to Walt Disney's "multiplane camera" (Oh, just Google it.) but now this is starting to sound ominously like work. There is also enough room under that overhang (6ft/1.8m) to plant suitable tropical foliage to add suitable depth. Unlike our cousins in chillier climes, all of the usual foliage will grow outside just fine. Also! I had been musing about a waterfall oustide that window. Which led me to...think of playing with the rain gutters so that, immediately behind this window, all the water from a given rainfall (it's been known to rain here in Miami...no, really, it does) can be channeled into a serious rainfall. Anyway, this is the room that will eventually become the Immersive Tiki Habitat. You can see what I'm talking about. Its current purpose is to serve as a homework station, which is why you will spy all sorts of shelf-y, computer-y things. Incidentally, the desk on the right came THISCLOSE to being comandeered as a bar. It's from Broyhill's "Fontana" line. The size is right, and with some very minimal work (a couple of bamboo-ish wood appliqués, some matting and tah-dah) can be turned into a Tiki bar very happily. Those are going for $200 on CL, on average. Just saying. Anyway, that's it for this report. Feel free to chime in with suggestions or impassioned cries of warning. -J.

Be there.

2011-04-01T22:31:00.001-04:00

http://talesofthecocktail.com/functions/totc_nola_2011/quo/seminars -J.

My St. Valentine's Day gift to you.

2011-02-14T23:31:00.000-05:00

Truffle French Fries (as hacked from the menu at the Culver Hotel)

2½ lb Yukon Gold potatoes (+/- 6 medium, and yes, it MUST be Yukon Gold, this recipe will not work otherwise), scrubbed & dried and cut into ¼" x ¼" sticks
6 c. peanut oil or "pure" (i.e., NON Extra Virgin) olive oil
6 large basil leaves, minced as finely as your patience will allow (flat-leaf parsley is OK too)
¼ c. truffle oil (take it easy, this stuff is strong)
Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese, grated finely with a rasp-style grater
Sea salt

1. Combine potatoes and oil in large (it MUST be twice as big as the volume of oil, you do not want to have hot oil boiling over) nonstick stockpot or Dutch oven. Cook, over high heat, until oil has reached rolling boil, about 5 minutes. Continue to cook, without stirring, until potatoes are limp but exteriors are beginning to firm, about 15 minutes

2. Using tongs, stir potatoes, gently scraping up any that stick to the pot, and continue to cook, stirring occasionally, until golden and crisp. (Start looking at them around the 5 minute mark, but don't let them go longer than 10 minutes. Using skimmer or slotted spoon, transfer fries to thick paper bag or paper towels. Season with truffle oil, and toss, then season with salt, basil and Parm, serve immediately with aioli and jalapeño ketchup.

A brief explanation

2011-01-11T13:15:00.002-05:00

1- I was swamped, then
2- On DECEMBER 22nd (stop and ponder that date) my entire computer system crashed catastrophically, and
3- By the time it got fixed I was so backed up that,
4- I was swampeder than ever.

If you envy me, you oughtn't be allowed to run loose.

-J.

Not as bitter as paying Stalin alimony, but still.

2010-11-27T09:21:00.002-05:00

One of the advantages of being here in SoFla is that citrus grows on trees, as it were.

So, all of a sudden your backyard grove sprouts forth with several tons of fruit and they must be given use. In my case, we're talking about Seville (i.e. "bitter") oranges.

For the uninitiated, these are not defective oranges, these are oranges with especially low sugar content and are not so much bitter as really, really sour. Their juice is used in marinades, etc. in Caribbean cooking. (For future reference, their quality can be approximated by mixing orange juice, lime juice and lemon juice in a 2:1:1 ratio. But I digress.)

One of the biggest differences between regular oranges and bitter oranges is the peel and the aromatic content thereof. The bitter orange peel is reallllllly aromatic. So what to do?

There are several options, but the subject of this entry is making of bitters.

Here is my recipe:

1 (750-milliliter) bottle "grain alcohol" (the 190 --!-- proof stuff, you can get away with 151 proof if that's all they have, provided it's clear. Failing that, the highest proof vodka you can find.)
½ lb. orange peel strips
1 t. fennel seed
½ t. coriander seeds
2 cardamom pods
10 drops orange flower water
15 drops gentian extract

Put these in a glass bottle or jar (make sure you don't have a lot of airspace) and shake daily for a week, minimum. 2-3 weeks is ideal for me, but if you like sharper flavors, by all means let it go longer. Strain through a paper coffee filter and decant into a bottle. I like the clear glass swingtop bottles of "French lemonade."

But you do whatever works best.

No, really, I'm touched.

2010-11-23T21:05:00.004-05:00

Dear Internet,

As long as you've known me -- coming up on 20 years dating back to the ol' Prodigy service -- you've known me to be a contrarian and something of a slothful one at that. But even I know that all those "It Gets Better" things that are humming all over the web simply canNOT be about the new TSA security measures.

I've refrained from commenting on these. I think it best to experience things first, er, hand.

As a recent flyer, I now feel sufficiently experienced to comment.

The choices presented to me were, as far as I could tell, the following:

1- Submit to surly molesters,

or

2- Submit to voyeurs armed with radioactivity

My choice? The surly molesters. Because someone in a now-tight polyester uniform can't give you cancer.

The alternative to the Chernobyl Foto Booth is the "enhanced pat down" or what some people have called "gate rape." Had I been 16 and the TSA patter-downer been that girl on whom I had a crush at the age of 16, I would have been pretty well delighted.

But I was not, and he was not and so I was displeased. Let's just say that, at THEIR discretion they are...uh..."free to move about the cabin."

The lesser angels of my nature were tempted to add levity to the situation.

Should I arch my back and pout?

Should I do my impression of Meg Ryan from When Harry Met Sally?

Should I quietly hum something from the "chick-a-chick-a-bow-bow" school of musical expression?

Should I warn them that "items may have shifted during takeoff?"

Should I wear bubble-wrap undergarments? Or conceal a squeaky toy about my person?

If I enjoyed it, would they let me get in line again?

In the end, I decided to "lie back and think of England" as a someone (whose qualifications seem to have been that he can lift 70lb. and has a high school diploma or equivalent) was allowed to reach what, in more innocent times, was considered "third base." (Readers whose base of experience does not cover baseball terminology shall have to get an explanation from a less decorous person than I.)

Just wait. Eventually we'll all fly naked and without any luggage.

-J.

Ow....

2010-11-13T23:58:00.001-05:00

I know, I know.

There's no Wayback Machine

2010-11-12T11:01:00.002-05:00

A while ago, around the time the world ended, I stopped rowing.

I liked rowing, but it was (and is) a schlep of impressive proportions. If you're a jogger, you put on your jogging shoes and you start jogging. You could be jogging well before you exit the house. Swimming is a bit more of a hassle. You have to have special apparel, and you have to dry yourself just to go home and rinse off either salt or chlorine. Or, you can shower amid a retinue of strangers.

Rowing is like that and between the hassle and the scramble to get back to Normal, such as I dimly remember it, put it out of my realm of activities. For, um, almost three years.

But I realized all this sloth wasn't good for me in any conceivable way. And so I opted to take up rowing again.

There's a problem with my taking up rowing again after a +/- 3 year layoof and that is that it is ME taking up rowing again. This means the following thought never crossed my mind:

"You haven't rowed in three years and in those three years you have gotten a bit out of shape AND you have aged three years. Maybe you should take it easy the first few times?"

So, never having had that thought, I threw myself at the endeavo(u)r as if I had never stopped. Which at the time felt a bit strenuous but not outrageous.

Then of course, I was driving home and felt every single tendon, ligament and muscle fiber from the eyebrows south stiffen to the maximum extent biomechanics will allow. It hurt to think about moving.

Oh, Internet, I was soooooooooooooooo sore.

It hurt to sit, stand, shift in my seat, shift in bed -- one of the very rare times I prayed my beloved did not feel inclined to avail herself of the manly bounty that is Joke -- cross my legs, stand, turn, reach for things, put things down and move my head.

I am still a bit sore in the legs and this was a WEEK AGO.

Please feel free to make book on how easy I take it this Saturday.

-J.

Instead.

2010-11-05T12:27:00.002-04:00

It's been election season ovah heah. I have been mulling a post that may edge over into the realm of polemics, and even came thisclose to posting it this morning.

But I didn't.

I was debating the exact phrasing of certain things (so as a- not to be misunderstood, b- explain my views while not being disagreeable to others who hold opposite views and c- detail certain things I had witnessed) when a friend on Facebook informed me she was flying out to help someone clean out Someone's Grandpa's apartment, since Someone's Grandpa died rather suddenly.

This reminded me of something (no really, stay with me) lighter.

Several years ago, I was the guy helping a friend clean out his Grandpa's apartment after Grandpa died.

It's something you do out of friendship and kindness and decency. The problem with being a loyal friend, kind and decent is that it does not prepare you for certain discoveries.

Like what?

Oh, I dunno, things you weren't expecting.

Wanna narrow that down for us?

OK. But get the kids out of the room. This is pretty much Grownups Only stuff.

I'll wait.

.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
Ready?

Let's just say Grandpa had amassed a collection of "gentlemen's special interest literature." The operative word being amassed.

And not, Dear Internet, the fluffy-frilly-giggly ouvre of visionaries such as Mr. Hugh Hefner. No.
It was more, um...yeah. Like that.

Grandpa, besides being a well-respected professor of Theatre Studies, also had something of a CIAish side to him. I was tasked with going to "the back room" where Grandpa the Respected Professor kept the chattels of his profession, and throwing away papers and bring out in boxes the books and VHS tapes Grandpa wanted to donate to the University Library. I innocently began to open filing cabinets and saw neatly organized interdepartment memos, performance evaluations, etc. I opened the first of eleventy zillion such drawers and started tossing folders into a cardboard "file box" such as offices use when they want to alphabetize the stuff they discard.

Did the same with the 2nd, 3rd and 4th drawers. Then I went around the back to unplug the fax machine when I noted the depth of the filing cabinet seemed not-immaterially greater than the depth of the drawers I had just emptied.

"Hmm. That's weird." I mused, returning to the front and reopening the cabinet drawer. I pulled it out to its fullest extent, peered and saw nothing other than it was not nearly as deep (maybe 2/3) as the cabinet itself suggested. So I went to completely remove the drawer.

But it wouldn't go.

Ditto all the other drawers. I looked at the left, right, top, rails, handles, etc. and saw nothing. I went flat on my back and looked at the underside and on the TOPside of the cross-rail of the drawer I saw a small, hastily screwed-in metal tab. Sure enough, that tab "caught" the trailing edge of a drawer being opened and wouldn't allow it its full travel.

Doing what any self-respecting Boy Scout would have done, I took out an ancient and battered Swiss Army Knife, such as has kept Switzerland free all these years, and unscrewed the screw and removed the tab.

Standing up, I pulled the drawer which slid out easily and with something of a...sound. Behind a partition in the drawer were some magazines. Some were merely...journals of...er...photography. Some were magazines of personal advertisements, with certain advertisers neatly circled or highlighted.

Other drawers had VHS tapes with intriguing titles -- puns on popular films and TV series -- which decorum prohibits my detailing.

One drawer had several Polaroid (!) photos of unnamed university-ish young ladies in various states of apparel.

All in all, an impressive volume of material.

Grandpa, as befits a man of the theatre, had eclectic tastes. Provided there were ladies involved, pretty much every permutation proved amenable to his collectioneering. A kaleidoscope of ethnic combinations (or not) a widely divergent array of scenarios, proclivities, activities...all were worthy of his inspection. One magazine which had a young lady posing with a small box (!) turtle in strangely innocuous poses. Except for the fact the young lady had neglected to array herself with garments...as if she said to herself:

"Oh! The photographer is here with his turtle! I am not yet dressed! Gosh, I hope he doesn't mind."

The problem, and I am dead certain you have spotted it, is the delicate issue of explaining to your very dear friend, whom you love like a brother, that his Grandpa -- that pillar of professorial respect -- was a man who dragged into his dotage an actively and eccentrically (did I say "actively"?) lascivious mindset.

Everywhere in this office area, Grandpa had hidden SOMETHING with ecdysiastic gamines disporting themselves with unsavory looking gentlemen, other gamines, or certain items that look as if they had extended warranties on all moving parts. Some were of very recent vintage, and some were definitely vintage.

I have no idea what he was thinking. Did he assume he would get some diagnosis like "You only have [however long you need to purge your home office of objets d'porne] to live?"

I don't know about YOU, but were I confronted with unarguable evidence my Grandfather was -- and there's simply no way around this -- a raving pervert, there wouldn't be enough psychotherapy to render me sensate again. So I thought I had best not disclose this discovery and conceal the offending material.

But that leads to a problem.

HOW do you conceal such a volume of...er...stuff? What's worse, if you don't conceal it properly then you are faced with a situation which is doubly troubling: Your friend finds out his Grandfather was the sort of man who spent many a pleasant hour exploring the nearly-limitless ways in which (on average) two people may interact AND that his best friend was smuggling the good stuff out.

That would have been bad.

So, realizing my time was not without limit, I hastily "leavened" the regular material (dept. memos, etc.) with magazines inserted "spine-down" and put the videotapes (spine IN) inside the box marked "Donate to Lib."

And then went home and got somewhat inebriated.

Now you know.

-J.

Today's round up of not very major news either way.

2010-10-15T09:18:00.002-04:00

I have no idea what to write, as the dearth of anything exciting, amusing, interesting, etc. has been pretty deafening. So here is a random list of stuff masquerading as a post.

The Wonderful News I have been awaiting for 293 years are still in "Just a second, I'll be right there!" mode.

Had a brief discussion with NOS about "What girls like in a boy." Answer: "Spectacular grades in school, a nice smile, kindness, cooking ability and being hilariously funny. But mostly the spectacular grades."

When he gets older I will clue him in on the aphrodisiacal properties of homework and diligent studying.

I have begun to hatch a plot to celebrate yet another suprise party for TFBIM. This means goodie* bags. Does anyone out there know how to etch glass? (Don't ask why. Your patience will be rewarded.) I figure it's time to amortize the $80 my snazzy new bar cost me.

Working with someone who has an artistic temperament is very, very trying.

Anyone out there use Skype? Opinions?

Why is Blogger moderating the comments of longtime readers?

Get your forms in for Tales of the Cocktail 2011. Last year there were 18,000 (!!!) attendees. Granted, most of these were from New Orleans, which tends to breed a sort of resident pathologically addicted to fun, but still. That's a lot of humanity.

Had to perform A Service on the new espresso machine. Now I know more about espresso machine innards than I wanted to.

That's it for now, carry on.

-J.

* It has been said, and not without merit, that I'd want goodie bags at my funeral.

Well, it's a start.

2010-09-23T19:22:00.005-04:00

After much effort, toil, angst, deliberation and frenetic Craigslist-surfing...I managed to get the very first component towards my (eventual) Tiki habitat. I managed to buy a bar and (I think) a pretty bloody nice one at that. It has only a couple of tiny dings and chips, but nothing that even someone as manually unskilled as I can't set right. Those teeny flaws aside, it's practically new.

Below is the "overall view" of the beast.
It weighs a TON...that slab o'granite top does not help and, even worse, makes it ridiculously top-heavy when all you have are one and a half men (me & NOS) to schlep it from the wifely minivan to the back room via the obstacle course of a hypercluttered garage, tall steps and rugged lawn terrain. Even worse when the grownup in the equation is supposedly down with the flu. But I am nothing if not committed.

Or, perhaps this is proof I should be.

I'm slightly embarrassed to state in public how little I paid for this thing. I spotted it on CL and it was being sold by a storefront church which seems to have been using it (probably donated, I'm guessing) as a hallway table. All of the other semi-acceptable bars I had seen on CL for the last year -- did I mention I was patient? -- were running in the $150-$300 range and this was not only FAR nicer, but also FAR cheaper. When I got there I was pleasantly surprised to see it more "tikiable" than I expected, with rattan-like panels and a workable color. It's supposedly a Bombay Co. model, but it has a Tommy Bahama-ish kinda feel to it. (See next)

Above is a closeup of the ornamental detail. (See what I mean about the Tommy Bahama thing?) So the question is this: How could I tikify those column-ish/rosette things (they look like they will pry off cleanly and relatively easily)? I was thinking of a shallow-ish set of wooden plaques with something (anything!) more tiki-ish, and possibly replacing those grooved columny details with something bamboo-y.

And, of course, placing a proper tiki dead center.

Any suggestions?

-J.

P.S. For those who are interested in following the progress of my eventual tiki habitat, be warned...this will go GLACIALLY slow, as I have very little in the way of time and even littler in the way of DIY skills and even littler than that in $$ my beloved wife will allow me to spend on such a project. Even if the projected space is the size of a medium phone booth.

The temptation, I must confess, was strong.

2010-09-16T08:54:00.002-04:00

There are several things I was going to do with this entry, that I shan't. Oh, I was tempted alright. But the better angels of my nature prevailed and I relented.

I was going to saturate this posting with yet more videos of tropical mixology, as I am devoted to mixology and reside mere minutes north of the tropics. But the last one failed to ignite the imagination of the populace and even I cannot countenance such an additional cheery little bit of contrarian sadism.

There was something else I was tempted to do, but I've forgotten what it was. Mind you, I had decided to forego whatever the Hell it was before I forgot it, so I want this to be counted to me as righteousness and not feeblemindedness in my dotage.

I was also going to gently tweak The Girl Who Cried Blog (you know who) who started blogging again...and then started disappearing again. But then I remembered I haven't been exactly fulfilling my blogly duties ovah heah, and seeing as how I enjoy the view from my glass house, I relented.

So, instead, I will issue another dispatch from the ongoing progress -- an odd choice of words, really -- report on NOS's Adventures In Puberty. It would help, a little, if the words "The Ventril-O-Matic & Rusty" meant anything to you, but that's not critical. But if they do, then you'll nod even more sagely at the subsequent.

The one thing that is VERY new in NOS is -- and there's no getting around it -- the Petulance.

Example.

ME: Hey, NOS, remember to breathe today.
NOS: Oh, my GOD. I KNOW.

And the like.

To his credit, he does recognize (frequently) he has misfired and so he makes it a point to (slightly less frequently) apologize.

Part of the problem is that the rowing thing, so instrumental in leaving him so utterly bedraggled he was an unalloyed delight to be around, doesn't start until after golf. And golf, regardless of its myriad marvels and attributes, doesn't exactly drain the participant.

Participant drainage, of course, being the ultimate goal of this enterprise.

So, in the meantime we muddle through.

Oy, gevalt.

-J.

P.S. Here is a tropical cocktail video.

What'd I tell ya?

2010-09-09T13:19:00.001-04:00

Tiki Now! at Tales of the Cocktail 2010 from Lush Review on Vimeo.

Well worth the hour-thirteen out of your life.

-J.

Hubris breeds nemesis.

2010-09-02T15:33:00.002-04:00

Assiduous readers of this blog (both of you) during the halcyon days of the madcap 2004ish-2007ish and during the somewhat more serious semi-postapocalyptic post-2008 world are due, I believe, something of an explanation.

I had intended for that explanation to be issued more-or-less nowish, but it will have to keep.

Y'see, Internet, I didn't and don't want to be the sort of blogger who'd comment on his spleen (or gall bladder, I'm not choosy) mid-surgery. I want to say "Oh, yes, [internal organ of choice] blew up, but all is fine now."

I thought (as I had thought in several previous instances) that the New Important Project was about to sprout forth its oft-promised fruits and, with the first of said fruits in hand and the inevitable bumper crop behind me, I could sit down and tell you The Tale of how it all went base-over-apex, but it finally righted itself.

There had been some developments in that area to buoy me in the direction of thinking the day of the spellbinding narrative was soon upon me. I'd put a decanter of something worthy at my elbow, warm up both index fingers and start composing at the keyboard.

I'd spin a tale of blindness, shock, betrayal, family affection and love, craven depravity, resilience, perseverance, faith, loyalty, setback, ingenuity, and eventually, unequivocal triumph.

Then, of course, fires arose (again) that require my putting out (again) and which alters the schedule of my return to this blog as an amiable and carefree host. Notice I didn't say said return has been derailed. No. But, like a train in some 3rd World country it's been rescheduled for arrival.

Again.

You may, foolishly, think this has altered my sunny disposition. You'd be, foolishly, right.

That all said, I know things will be fine in the end.

I just wish the end would arrive when expected.

News to me.

2010-08-31T09:56:00.002-04:00

Dear Internet,

You weren't around back then, but I had a relatively easy puberty. One day I was a happy child playing with the chattels of childhood typical for the time and place, and the next day I woke up with an amazing lack of desire for these, replaced by a new and more enlightened view on girls.

And a rather disturbing and unexpected follicular flourish under my arms.

But other than the sudden obsession with girls and my active disinterest in the decently-sized collection of the toymaker's art, everything else remained pretty much the same. I still holed up in my room as I had always done, I still devoured books by the bushel, and I still pursued rather odd little hobbies.

I didn't have one of those boyish puberties that involve jockeying for Alpha male status, as one sees on nature documentaries. I didn't even back-talk -- possibly because I was in my room reading and nobody came to issue conversational volleys for me to return -- or otherwise make much of a nuisance. I also strategized on how I could best assure that my efforts* in the girl dept. were repaid handsomely.

I only had a sister and, unless I have been the victim of a practical joke, sisters tend to have an entirely different pubertical experience to boys.

So, basically, I am somewhat unprepared for NOS's first, experimental free-sample, travel-sized delivery of testosterone. Which will only increase with time, I expect.

What puzzles me (for now, I am sure other stuff will come along to puzzle me even more) are the questions he has reserved for me, the dad. (What questions he may have -- or even whether he has any -- for Mother are as yet a sealed book to me.)

NOS: (watching some program on TV) Dad, do you think [insert name of 20something actress] is hot?
Me: (looking up from some work stuff) She does look feverish...

The correct answer is "She looks as if she has taken more than once cycle of antibiotics in her life."

or, better yet,

NOS: (entering into my den) Dad...how do you pick up girls?
Me: Not with anything you get in an email message.

The correct answer is "Not with the intermittent and abbreviated shower regimen you've developed as a habit."

You see what I am dealing with?

-J.

* The initial efforts went over as well as Wile E. Coyote's more elaborate stratagems.

"Erm...don't help."

2010-08-27T15:31:00.001-04:00

One of the things I like the most is being able to contribute to a pluralist society. We all have our likes and dislikes and we combine, ideally, to form a social mosaic that, ideally, propels civilization forward. We acknowledge differences where necessary, dialogue where possible, and cooperate where mutually beneficial.

We try, Internet, not only to not muddle things, but to have our children not muddle them as well.

So, because NOS is doing the whole athletic thing this year, we go to a certain dept. store to get miscelleaneous things. The sporting goods section is cheek-by-jowl with the toy section. So, while we're in aisle X contemplating which brand of socks will raise the lad's performance to the pinnacle of human achievement, others may be in aisle Y rummaging through board games, or Barbie dolls.

In this particular branch of this particular chain of dept. stores, the part of the toy section immediately adjacent to the part wherein we were occupied (deliberating whether carbon fiber or activated charcoal in shoelaces yields the greatest net results for the budding Olympian) happens to (and there's no getting away from this) contain toy guns. Not so much toy versions of real guns, but trigger-operated things whose purpose is to launch small foam objects in weak arcs of about 10 feet. I s'pose there very well may be toy versions of real guns elsewhere in the toy section, but these were not visible to us.

Anyway.

As we were engrossed in the decision-making process as to which shade of blue strikes the most fear in one's opponent, a small child of a guesstimated 8 years of age went up to one of those gun-ish looking things (a particularly shoddy looking orange one) and pressed the trigger and the apparatus in question emitted the sound of flatulent ennui. The mother of the boy turned to him and said something like: "[Child's name] put that down! We don't play with guns! Guns are bad!"

The disappointed boy puts the gunlike toy implement ("New! With PhoamPhart® Action!") back on the rack and begins to walk away. It was then NOS addressed the boy (and by extension his nearby mother) with a suggestion he thought was both soothing and helpful, saying, in as bright and cheerful a voice as his desire to be useful to one's fellows can muster:

"They have swords on aisle Z."

Where we are right now

2010-08-26T20:44:00.002-04:00

We're on day 4 and I am tired. And we haven't even gotten to the exhausting part.

NOS has (so far) come home, plopped down and dutifully finished his various assignments and projects without being exhorted to do so. As I type, he is quietly studying for a math quiz.

NTS hasn't had all that much, assignment-wise, but he is also in a jovial mood and has been doing his readings without much drama.

But NOS has to be schlepped to golf practice and NTS has had a couple of appointments and TFBIM has been up to HERE with some office stuff. Plus there's the generic getting-to-know-you conversations between the New Teachers (ever eager to expound volubly) and me (ever eager to say "OK, great, bye!" and leap into the car).

Plus work stuff that, for the first time in two years is actually positive on average. (But my brain's work side had begun to atrophy, so that makes recovering the pace less than easy.)

So I am tired.

BUT!

I have to finish up a report. 20something pages by tomorrow a.m.

And I could stand to have a soothing tumblerful of something, too.

...aaaaaand they're off.

2010-08-25T19:14:00.003-04:00

Third day of school and I am already exhausted.

NOS on the golf team, NTS has a couple of afterschool things from before, NOS's homework is getting overwhelming in terms of complexity and volume.

In combination with work stuff both good and bad (50-50 these days, which is a colossal improvement from the Very Dark Days of 2009) I am EXHAUSTED.

I am tempted to relax with a soothing grownup beverage -- today is National Whisk(e)y Sour Day -- but I know that if I did, I'd collapse in a comatose heap.

Oy.

The First Day of School

2010-08-23T09:55:00.002-04:00

Both warring camps having spent their ammunition yesterday in the Battle of the Bookbag, today was a slow, exhausted affair. Lots of eyerolling, but not much energy for actual fireworks.

The real problem, from my perspective, about the first day of school is that for some children it's the first EVER day of school. This means a throng of -- there's no getting around this -- mothers gathered around the school gates weeping.

It looks like a reenactment of the Rudy Valentino funeral.

And it makes parking a bloody nightmare, because instead of parking, walking the wee tots to the assigned walk-them-in spot, kissing them with maternal tenderness on the fore'ead, and departing for parts unknown, they walk the wee tots to the assigned walk-them-in spot, kiss them with maternal tenderness on the fore'ead and both cheeks and then repeat this bussing cycle 4-5 times, and go beyond the gates to stare and weep as if they had just handed over the little darlings to Dr. Mephisto and His Evil Medical Experiments. More importantly, they do not vacate their parking spaces which, because there are far fewer of these spaces than there are wee tots, means an ever increasing contingent of parents -- some growing more lachrymose and some (hi!) more irritable -- must circle like underfed makos for the rare opportunity to station the vehicle within reasonable walking distance for our lad.

Our lad, incidentally, must elbow and push -- thiose who know NTS will readily attest this is NOT something that engages his conscience's dilemma mechanism -- his way past the contingent of people photographing the Very First Time The Wee Tot Listened To The Loudspeaker In The School Courtyard. There is less photography going on at a Presidentian inauguration.

But we have survived, again.

-J.

Context, subject to revision and extension.

2010-08-23T09:15:00.002-04:00

OK.

Context.

The lovely and gracious bb demands context to the photos appended in the penultimate series of posts.

Fine.

There were:
650 different "official" cocktails served.
13,000 pounds of ice.
16,000 mint leaves
16,000 lemons
14,250 limes
212 pounds of sugar
224 pints of blackberries and blueberries
120 gallons lime juice
102 gallons lemon juice
55 gallons grapefruit juice
31 gallons pineapple juice
35 gallons tomato juice
95 gallons simple syrup
950 Luxardo cherries
450 cucumber wheels
10 gallons double syrup
8 gallons honey
100 pints of raspberries
1400 orange twists
1200 lemon twists
1250 lime twists
940 lemon wheels
400 lemon wedges
430 lime wedges
350 sticks of celery
18,000 bottles of mineral water.

The most popular people there were Australians* whom I contend were really ministering angels. On Sunday morning they saved countless lives with their soothing, prayerful words:

"Bit of Berocca'll fix you up, mate."

I have NFI what Berocca is, or whether it's a byproduct of sacrificing innocents, but it certainly ranks up there with likely candidates for raising the dead. What it did for a rather exuberant contingent of some we're-here-without-our-families Bostonians must rank up there as the most impressive comeback since Lazarus.

All the time I was enjoying these potables, my family was hiking (!) through the wilds of Tennessee, touching leaves and treading on insects. I had to excuse myself because of a) this and my responsibilities to you, The Internet, b) Me, hiking? outdoors? are you mental? c) there was a cabin involved and d) no wi-fi. (I know!)

So while those I had offsprung were forced to ride horses and crunch twigs underfoot, I threw myself into my work, so zealous I am for my vocation.

There.

Context.

-J.

* The best bar tools, bar none and by unanimous acclaim, are from Australia.

Okay. That was weird.

2010-08-22T17:38:00.002-04:00

Blogger would not let me blog.

Which is pointless and stupid as that's pretty much anything called "Blogger" is good for, as is self-evident.

Anyway.

Today is the last day of the "academic" summer and as has been every year since I've had a child who is past the age of reason, the worst day of the year.

My beloved, for all her manifest glories, is one of those people who love the whole school experience. She adores shopping for new pencils, pencil cases, pens, markers, notebooks, composition books, agendæ, paperclips, highlighters, stationery, bookbags, uniforms, erasers, folders, files, binders, textbooks, workbooks, dictionaries, compasses and rulers. She loves assembling them in little monuments to scholastic organization, coded, arranged, and supremely organized.

The boys?

Not so much.

So she takes great umbrage and even greater personal offense the boys do not relish the task of taking all those new pencils, pencil cases, pens, markers, notebooks, composition books, agendæ, paperclips, highlighters, stationery, bookbags, uniforms, erasers, folders, files, binders, textbooks, workbooks, dictionaries, compasses and rulers...and then assembling them in little monuments to scholastic organization, coded, arranged, and supremely organized.

In fact, it has been expressed with a great deal of warm frankness that having a strabistic dentist performing unanesthetized root canal with a corkscrew and a garden trowel would be preferable.

So.

It's been tense.

Especially this year as NOS' mind has just begun to pickle in the first, experimental shipment of testosterone. Smart answers, general recalcitrance and back-chat are the order of the day. (NTS just complains loudly to nobody in particular and howls dolefully.)

For my part, I have taken the sensible way out and hidden under a sofa in the darkened last room of the house, trying to breathe through my pores; hoping against all hope not to be noticed and dragged into the melee.

This will not end well, I guarantee you.

-J.

Context to follow, part 4

2010-08-18T07:32:00.008-04:00

This is the final, catch-all, post. Photos in utterly random order with even less context than usual.

(This video shows a medium-sized sampling of what went into the various goody bags.)

Context to follow, part 3

2010-08-13T09:30:00.004-04:00

The rather soggy "Jazz Funeral" for this year's Bad Drink.

Because I'm all about asceticism and self-sacrifice

2010-08-13T09:28:00.003-04:00

...I am foregoing attendance at AutoBlog2010, to coincide with the Monterey ~~Hysterics~~ Historics, Pebble Beach, etc.

More photos of That Other Event to follow.

Context to follow, part 2

2010-08-12T11:08:00.005-04:00

Poppy texted me while I was in CA, demanding to know when the Hell I'd get around to posting those photos.

Context to follow, part 1

2010-08-11T21:25:00.004-04:00

A whirlwind, I say.

2010-08-10T07:38:00.002-04:00

Been traveling. Spotty web access. I owe y'all lots of photos. Tomorrow.

It's Day Five...welcome to Day Five.

2010-07-26T20:03:00.003-04:00

Oh, Internet.

Internet, Internet, Internet...

I am so.bloody.tired.

Go ahead and guess how often I drank -- and by "drank" I mean "chugged without pausing to breathe" -- water today. Go ahead and guess.

No.

You're wrong.

I was holding it together deep into the late afternoon/evening. But by the time I came home and flopped into bed it would not be so far off the truth to say I fell asleep in midflop.

This is not, mind, a complaint. A mere recitation of fact.

And ponder this little factoid, I was one of the ones who had made it a point to pace himself. as you may well imagine, there were not a few who took all that was offered, opened up like a mailbox and sloshed the contents of the glassware on a downward trajectory to the digestive system. I didn't actually listen for it, but had some begun to slosh like water balloons as they walked, that would not have surprised me.

If you run the numbers, the consumption can be pretty staggering. Without really going out of your way, just going to official events, each day had you sponging up between 12-16 cocktails, and pretty much nonstop from 9am-11pm.

That, you may have noticed, takes it out of you. Especially when your consumption pattern is more marathon than sprint.

So what did Day 5 have in store for us?

Sunday had a rise-and-shine routine different from the norm. It kicked off with the "Secret Sherry Society(?)’s French Toast Breakfast." The cocktail part wasn't as big a draw as having a substantial amount of system-cushioning nutrition on what was the part of the thing where energies would start to wane. But. That said, the "special cocktail" called the French Toast Flip was surprisingly tasty, if a bit rich. But it went well with the rather substantial foodstuffs and those who managed to power through the rather lovely I-could-use-a-nap were rewarded with a choice between a surprisingly fascinating history of New Orleans cocktails and a seminar on Cognac.

The first struck me as a documentary on TV that you catch when you are flipping channels that, for reasons you don't quite understand, just arrests your attention. A lot of this tends to be that whole Pre-Prohibition Gay 90s trip (hence the vests and handlebar moustaches and goatees). While I have an appreciation for it, it's not quite my thing. Maybe it's all those delicately etched coupe glasses.

The cognac thing was more my speed. There was a guy named Olivier who is the master distiller (I think...open to correction on this point) of Frapin Cognac, and the cocktails were courtesy of Salvatore [insert surname I was too distracted to recall] and Dale DeGroff, one of the big wheels in the cocktail rennaissance. Again, more my speed.

As usual, when the midday rolls by you are torn. Nourishment or a seminar? But what's this?

"Plate and glass, finding Harmony" Hmm. This is one of those that's really more geared to the People In The Industry. But. There will be "pairings" and "pairings" means "food." almost invariably REALLY delicious food. Since that French Toast thing had, er, nutrient-laden staying power, even a tiny bite or two would be all that one needs to keep motoring. Excellent.

Even better, this was a hands-on seminar with a guest chef (an interloper, hawking edibles in the land of the potable!) There was a lot of restaurant/industry jargon, but if one nods sagely and looks perfectly at easy, no eyebrows are raised. And yummies consumed. Also excellent preparation for opening up a restaurant with a food/cocktail pairing prix-fixe tasting menu.

After wrapping up, something beckons from the schedule up at me. It, translated into common, plain English says: Fools rush in where angels fear to tread. What it literally said was "Mezcal, Mezcal, and Mezcal Cocktails!" It wasn't as bad as you may have feared. I am, after all is said and done, no bigger a fan of Mezcal than I am of Tequila, which I consider to rest somewhere in the "Not bad" to "Pretty decent" part of the gustatory spectrum. But the coloring pages were, I firmly maintain, a nice touch.

After all this there was nothing else to do other than go to the semi-After Party at the pool or head straight for the airport. I took a brief look at the pool activity as that is all my schedule would allow, and buggered off.

Again, photos as soon as I find the bloody camera wire thing.

WHEW.

-J.

Day Four (Four, right?) UPDATED

2010-07-26T09:51:00.001-04:00

As I sit here, calmly reflecting in a bloggy reverie, the events of yesterday for your consumption today, I am filled with a mellow wistfulness. Tales of the Cocktail wraps up today and (much) later tonight I shall be found abed in my own, er, bed.

For all intents and purposes -- and the absolute best way imaginable -- yesterday was more of the same. Well, almost.

Let's start at the end.

One of the new traditions at TotC is the "assassination" of a drink. That done, it is treated to a full on New Orleans Jazz Funeral.

This all started in 2008 -- back then TotC was much more of a professional's event, and not as filled with dipsomaniacal arrivistes (hi!) as it is now -- when the For Real Industry Professionals were grumbling about what drinks were so awful and trendy they should be forever banished.

In 2008, the inaugural dishonor fell to the Appletini. 2009, the Redheaded Slut and for 2010 it was Sex On The Beach. (Speaking editorially, I'm somewhat suprised the Amaretto Sour or the Blue Hawaii are not in there, I think either of the latter to be infinitely worse than either of the former. But I digress.)

I think it's a capital idea. I may have some quibbles with the choice of victim, but this just gives me additional incentive to make it back to New Orleans next year. (Pretty much same time, next year. For those of you who might be enticed to come over, it's July 20-24, 2011.)

Of course, it wouldn't be New Orleans unless some sort of natural calamity threatening and in this case it was TS Bonnie. Not an all-out hurricane, but New Orleans' big worry is more the rain than the ferocious winds. (It was the "after-rain" from Hurricane Katrina that breached the levees, not the winds.)

So, naturally, there was some...y'know...edginess. Those who had grumbled at being stuck at the Hotel Monteleone's 833rd floor (hi!) were feeling rather smug (hi!) about it all.

Anyway.

At 11:30pm, rain or no, there was man's work to be done. It is Sex On The Beach's fate to be dead and buried. So the assembled throng, uh, assembled at the nearby Hotel Roosevelt at more or less the appointed time and proceeded. It would be something of an exaggeration on my part to state with absolute certainty that all of those in the processsion were fully cognizant of the circumstances. It certainly is well within the realm of possibility that several of them just noticed a crowd holding rather jovial beverages -- Aussie readers, be proud of your delegation, as they do not stint in voicing their joy -- and a largeish assembly of people with musical instruments and allowed themselves to be enveloped and carried by the zeitgeist du jour, as it were.

It must also be said there are some people whose energy is, and there's no way around it, flagging badly. By the time (near midnight) the Jazz Funeral is going on, people have been "carryin' on" for the better part of four days straight, and long days at that. Not everyone has my foresight to find a lull in the schedule about halfway through the thing in order to execute a well engineered ~~short-term comatose state~~ power nap, arising refreshed and renewed.

It also helps if, say, your energies are flagging badly, to be in your hotel room. You pop on your PJs and execute a well engineered ~~short-term comatose state~~ power nap. The further afield from this desired situation, the greater the potential to afford your fellow man some welcome comic relief, so needed in these dark times. I won't name names but someone who is known as "Simon" was resting amiably in the cool that is the marble flooring of the Hotel Monteleone's lobby by the time I was proceeding to attend to the matter of my slumber.

Being an ardent libertarian, I refused to interrupt the man's rest. That said, should I have been apprised, at very first light, "Dude! There was a dead guy in the lobby ALL NIGHT LONG!" it would have only surprised me very little.

[It is at this point I had to break off. There was a MASSIVE French Toast breakfast put on by the Sherry importers. I wrote "Can't possibly miss. Ta." and buggered off. This will be explained in the Day Five entry.]

Day Four, as previously stated was More Of The Same. What's interesting is that after a while, at least on my case, your body adjusts. It's very weird to spend hour-upon-hour-upon-hour just slightly Not Sober. "Crafting the buzz" is the term thrown around. Well, I can be a craftsperson.

Something else struck me, and that is that, unlike most of these events (I assume), there were a LOT of heavily tattooed women. There were some men equally inked, but in percentage terms the women sported, by far, the greater proportion of tattoos. Don't really know what that all means, but I'm just saying.

So.

Back to the beginning -- if this is starting to seem like Tarantino with jet lag, sorry...may take a few days to regain the customary clarity of thought -- which brings us to breakfast. A little bit of research clued me in to the fact the Absolut Bloody Mary thing (at the Carrousel Bar!) started at 9am, but...the Kahlua Coffee Bar opened up at 8:30am. You see where I am going with this, right?

So, by 10am-ish, without any material amount of effort, one already has about a couple of drinks in one's system. And I haven't even hit a single seminar or tasting event.

There were a few events events scheduled for the next block, and any rational person would have been torn by the options. Example? A seminar on bartending in the 40s-60s by a guy named Brian Rea. Mostly on the strength Brian Rea is 722 years old and --I'm just guessing here -- may have a story or two that might prove amusing. However, my choice was for a brunch hosted by Laird's Applejack. I figure food to nestle in my system alongside any Kahlua coffees and Absolut Bloody Marys may also give ~~my liver~~ me a respite, as it doesn't seem to be a sampling-intensive sort of thing. Which it wasn't, really, although there were a few tipples to be had. But let's just say the combination of artisanal cured porcine excellentness, paired with apple distillates is well worth inspecting.

At this point, my body clock has been jettisoned entirely. Sleeping too little, then sleeping overlong, not breakfasting at ALL but brunching pretty regally, skipping lunch and having a spectacular dinnah or skipping dinnah after a very impressive lunch, or just grazing freely all throws your rhythm off.

But, dear reader, this is precisely what I undertake as a service for you.

(Another option - and there were several more - was a tasting session hosted by Hendrick's Gin, but much as I love and respect gin in general and Hendrick's in particular...at 10:30am? Even I have my limits.)

Now, part of the reason for my wanting nutritional fortification is that there was one seminar at 12:30pm which I was loath to miss, sacrificing my Spirited Luncheon opportunity. This was the "Tiki" seminar hosted by a guy named Blair "Trader Tiki" Reynolds. I won't write too much about that because I have it from the Very Highest Sources this seminar would be available online. (There may be a prize for whoever spots me in the audience.) It was tailor made for my very own enjoyment. That's all I'll say for now.

(Here's my fave cocktail of the whole thing:

Occam’s Second Thought by Blair Reynolds

Bols Genever
Domaine de Canton ginger liqueur
Trader Tiki vanilla syrup
FRESH lemon juice
muddled crushed Thai chili pepper)

That led to a Sazerac tasting (for those of you who enjoy a Manhattan, you may want to consider a bottle of Sazerac Rye...just sayin') and that led to a choice between a Pernod Absinthe tasting and Coole Swan Irish Cream tasting.

Here's the dilemma. I cannot stand licorice. Other than in cooking with anise-flavored spirits. I can appreciate and enjoy a serving of pastis/absinthe/etc. in context but not two. Still, absinthe has a service procedure that is so arcane and riddled with esoteric equipment so cumbersome and utterly useless for anything else that it makes for fascinating viewing. But Coole Swan is something I hadn't tasted before and its marketing implies it's going to cost a bundle (someone at Coole Swan may want to look at the business news to ascertain the wisdom of launching a "superpremium" anything these days) and that was enough to tip the scales in its favor.

Would you look at the time? 6pm!

At various rooms, there are fully functioning bars set up. No. You didn't grasp what I said. There are hotel rooms, regular hotel rooms, in a perfectly normal hotel where the guests assigned to that room have taken over the space and PUT IN A BAR. And not just one or two of these. Oh no.

How do you choose which of these extracurricular Happy Hours to attend? Easy. Go for the one with food the aroma of which lures you in. Why? Well, if the food smells like something you like, then the chances are good the beverages will also entice.

The problem with that is that you, should you find more than one of these, wind up hopping from room to room and next thing you know it's 11pm and where has the evening gone?

[More photos just as soon as I can find the camera wire thingy.]

-J.

Wait, wait.

2010-07-25T20:05:00.002-04:00

Dear Internet,

I am so, SO tired. Happily tired, sure, but very tired nonetheless. I will take this week to air out the liver, in a personal sort of unbridled Temperance binge. I will finish up yesterday's post and write up on the doings of today.

(I hope the airlines know better than to put outbound TotC-ers in the exit rows.)

Wow I had a fun time.

-J.

Day Three

2010-07-24T11:58:00.006-04:00

Well. There may be more than one reason why I was all by my lonesome at breakfast. Some of you might assume, with what I would consider sound reasoning, that the bulk of the population of TotC simply cannot manage to assume a vertical status, never mind an ambulatory one, at such an early hour. Even with the enticement and allure of the Kahlua Coffee Bar.

This is perfectly valid thinking.

There may be another reason, into which I will delve and report any findings. This reason is encapsulated by the phrase Absolut Bloody Mary Bar. While I yield to none in my affection for a caffeinated jumpstart to my day, I am also among the greatest of admirers of the Bloody. (For further details, please see my published works.) So I suspect many among the hardier exemplars might make a quick dash for some caffeine-fueled first aid, and boost their operational range by consuming sweet nature's tomato-based restorative. Even those who court the lovely and gracious Badger's wrath by slagging on vodka.

Something else has captured my attention, as I stop to ponder things in the time allotted between seminars and symposia, when lesser mortals swig desperately at bottles of Fiji Artesian water in an effort to keep their embattled electrolytes in homeostatis. This something else is this: TotC runs FIVE days. Five FULL days, really. (July 21, 22, 23, 24 and & 25) There is some putative respite by having awards ceremonies, but I am not fooled.

My strategic advice? Consume only what's placed before you and only finish which taste you enjoy. The more innocent among you will be stunned to learn there are not a few people among the assembled who are not necessarily exhibiting optimal levels of temperance. (Ahem.)

Anyway, Day 3 (hey, give me a moment...it isn't easy to rummage through ill-cobbled notes!) featured the expected cavalcade of events:

The aforesaid Bloody fest, leading directly to what strikes me a particularly posh academic discussion on being an empowered agent of change: "Armagnac, France's First Brandy." Now, although Cognac is France's most exported brandy, Armagnac is its most popular among the French. I think Team Armagnac's suffering a bit of an (unwarranted) inferiority complex. But "Alain" is doing a good job of explaining the differences in terms the pros and the (hi!) laity can grasp. There may have been a great deal of emphasis on "terroir" and soil alkalinity, as muddling through a Lilliputian browser window as tasting samples are being distributed tends to distract even the most seriously-disposed attendee.

(Normally, I would have attended Jeff "Beachbum" Berry's presentation, but he had run that one -- on a fascinating character named Joe Scialom who was pals with Churchill, had a doctorate in chemistry and spoke 8 languages -- a few weeks earlier at The Hukilau in Ft. Lauderdale. Also tempting was the Honey & Smoke event with Irish whisky and Zino Davidoff cigars, but even I know better than to partake of straight whisky and cigars at 10:30am.)

This led all concerned into the lunch hour. The seemingly wiser members of the contingent (hi!) headed over not to a Spirited Luncheon, but to "Bax vs Clift: Progressive Cocktail/Cooking Techniques from Tippling Club & Der Raum." To those who have been pacing themselves carefully, an opportunity to further pace themselves with something less taxing to the liver and digestion at the time of the midday meal is a welcome opportunity. Frankly, I have NFI what "Progressive Cocktail/Cooking Techniques" really means, but the subheading promised it would be Asian, award-winning and at "the Riverview room" and that sounds like far more incentive than my willpower can overcome.

I am, after all, merely flesh and (rather diluted, by now) blood.

This seminar, run by some rather jovial Aussies flush with Singaporean funding, turned out to be rather...molecular. Lots of VERY deconstructed things. Most were...um...interesting. Some were...er...not my thing. This seminar was packed and, frankly, I doubt many thought skipping the more conventional luncheon was a wise decision. (A smoke infused Scotch drink? "Tastes like a Marlboro made into a beverage" is more like it.)

Now, if you attend this seminar not only do you forego the Spirited Luncheon, you also forego the Great Vodka Debate. Two cocktail experts for, and two against, slugging it out on the relative worth of vodka. If your mind is pliable, perhaps this is for you.

Anyway, the problem is that if you stuck it out the whole way with the molecular Aussies it would certainly feel as if they had fed you but a mere molecule. If that. (Even when you pace yourself, you still need something to cushion your system, yes?)

Decision time. The molecular Aussies are playing to a very packed crowd and so the truly wise among the teeming horde (hi!) decide to bail out, while there is still time to make the Spirited Luncheon. My thinking is that, if one is going to have a Very Late Evening, where food is likely little beyond the odd canapé, then lunch should be of impressive proportions and staying power.

The decision, then, is a no-brainer: Dickie Brennan's Steakhouse for The Spirit of Texas lunch. The only drawbacks, and they are small, are that it's PACKED, I have no idea what the cocktails are going to be and I'm not even sure there's going to be a "pairing" thing, and while undoubtedly delicious, it's not going to be particularly fancy. But I don't mind. Look:

1st COURSE
Shrimp Rémoulade
Steamed jumbo Gulf shrimp with "Texas coleslaw" (huh?) with chipotle rémoulade sauce, applewood smoked bacon and deviled egg. Yummy.

2nd COURSE
Mesquite Grilled Prime Ribeye
Prime steak served with jalapeño and cheddar mash, beer-battered onion rings -- shatteringly crisp is ideal -- and ancho chile & honey BBQ sauce. (Sauce struck me a superfluous and I didn't bother with it.) Leidenheimer French Bread Texas Toast also, which is kind of hard to describe to someone who's never had "Texas toast" before, but it's nice.

DESSERT
Pecan Pie
Drizzled with caramel and chocolate sauce and served with sweet cream. (Sauces seemed to me a bit of overkill. But I would have eaten two.)

The spirited part is a highlight of Texas distillates (Tito's vodka, Paula's Texas Orange liqueur, Treaty Oak Rum, Corazón Tequila -- how's THAT from Texas? -- and other spirits I didn't catch, because OMG you would not believe the din. The margaritas are appreciatively downed with all the chile stuff going on.)

That crisis solved, the time comes to go to the happy hour for The Cocktail Spirit (a web series on SmallScreenNetwork.com) in preparation for dinner. This is preferable to me over the pool thing because a) I'm not all that hopped up about pools, b) I'm not that hopped up about Pama and its compatriots, and c) TCS is giving away free t-shirts.

Having accomplished my mission, the natural thing to do is to skip around to see what events catch my eye. Grappa! There is a grappa thing. I figure grappa = Italian = food. Never mind that by this point I am quite satisfied. That leads to Russian Standard's vodka tasting (Russian-style) which is quite nice. Especially since they are doing it in an authentically Russian way.

It may surprise you, but I decide to take a nap after this wraps up around 6pm-ish, figuring to be well and properly rested for the long night ahead. Small problem is that I wake up at 6:50am.

Oops.

-J.

Funny You Should Ask, Part 1

2010-07-24T10:02:00.001-04:00

[This is a recovered post, some stuff I originally wrote is now lost to history. Probably the funniest stuff.]

The lovely and gracious bb, in the previous post's combox, asked (regarding Tales of the Cocktail) "How is this different from BlogHer? We move from room to room drinking." This is not materially different than what my car blogger pals, making their pilgrimage to Monterey, CA for "Monterey Week" have asked me. The impolite analogy is to compare these other events to a torrid tryst, and TotC to a Roman orgy. But that is imprecise and not really, y'know, informative.

Anyway, I started to issue a comment in reply, but it soon spiraled (volume-wise) into something worthy of its own entry.

Not being among the target market for BlogHer, I can only offer surmise and conjecture. But, as far as I can tell here are the main differences:

1- There are significant numbers of people (I'd say not quite 60%) officially part of this august event who have prostates.
2- If one is so inclined, the drinking is free. The assiduous can find venues where one may pay for ones tipples. (I consider them demented.)
3- The goody bags seem to have a singularly boozy theme. (There are TONS of goody bags.)
4- Nobody has yet said "website metrics." (To be utterly fair, a lot of perfectly aggravating mixological jargon has been uttered.)
5- All of the sponsors are spirituous liquors, liqueurs, assorted mixers or otherwise unclassified ardent spirits.
6- Nobody moves from anywhere to anywhere to drink. (Good heavens that sounds like effort.) You sit down pretending to take notes and strange new libations are practically given to you intravenously.
7- There is very little blogging going on. And that's the bloggers.
8- Come to think of it, there is very "motor-skillswise" going on.
9- It's in New Orleans.
10- The giga-deluxe hotels are going for a fraction of what they would in any other city.
11- The food. Oh, dear me, the food. And not just the "New Orleans" food.
12- There are not only a lot of prostates around (cf. #1) but there are a LOT of men with vests and "creative" facial hair. (Not I.) I'll try to take a census of the number of goatees and handlebar moustaches.
13- Seminars and events generally involve giving the attendees at least three drinks. Yes, even at 8:30am.
14- The lunches! The dinners! (cf. #11) These are also paired with, on average, between five (!) and eight (!!) cocktails.
15- Issues related to interpersonal relationships haven't yet come up.
16- This probably has a LOT more unexpected mopping at 3am.
17- There sure seem to be a lot of free t-shirts one gets along with one's complementary drinks. (If Donald Duck were a dipsomaniac, he'd be in Heaven.)
18- The Mayor showed up. (Possibly it was some state legislator. Or some official functionary. Either way, it was someone supposedly important and official and there seems to have been a proclamation. But. There were some lovely beverages within my orbit and as a result I temporarily lost interest in the proceedings.)
19- There are a lot of expensive, pseudo-vintage, silk bowling shirts being worn. And those little Rat Pack straw mini-fedoras.
20- There are very heated discussions on the correct way to make, say, a Sazerac.
21- Vodka is scorned by a lot -- not most, but a lot -- of people at this event. I mean they are really hatin' on it. (Badger would have no option but to resort to physical violence.)
22- It's eerily quiet here early in the morning. (I just finished breakfast and I am the ONLY person here.)
23- The main bar is a carrousel. Yes, it spins (slowly). No, it's not you. No, they don't go out of their way to point this out to newbies.
24- If you ask your bantender how s/he made your, say, Old Fashioned you will start an argument between the bartender and someone who overheard the bartender.
25- I'm guessing the word "digestif" gets a bit less airplay at BH.
26- "Dude, dude. What's your name? Think you're sober enough to be on a podcast?" is likely said more frequently at TotC than at BH.
27- I have to put up with a lot of First Name "Crazy Cocktail Nickname" Last Name. (Such as Larry "Dr. Digestif" Johnson, to invent an example.)
28- There are a LOT of people photographing little plastic cups, close up.
29- There are people who have fully set up bars in their (standard!) hotel room. Stop and ponder that.
30- No, seriously, EVERY SINGLE OFFICIAL EVENT involves at least three cocktails. Except breakfast, which only has one.

-J.

* For fun, while it would not truly capture, y'know, the whole zeitgeist of the thing to compare the schedule at the former with the one of the latter, feel free to see if you can spot any general thematic differences between Day One at BlogHer and A Typical Day at TotC:

8:30am - 10:30am
Breakfast at Kahlua Coffee Bar

10:30am - 12:30pm
There and Back Again: Dos Maderas Rum, The World’s only Dual-aged Rum. Come sample and experience Dos Maderas, while sipping cocktail creations from the award-winning team at Alambiq Mixology.
Scotch Mixability - William Grant & Sons

12:30pm - 2:00pm
Spirited Luncheon - Antoine's

2:00pm - 4:00pm
Team Spirits Imports and Friends Tasting - Professionals and aficionados can sample spirits from some of their favorite boutique importers currently or soon to be available the market.
Wodka Polska - Come enjoy Poland’s national drink with us while learning more about the history of Vodka. Mixologists will be pouring creative libations, authentic Polish food will be served and live music will make for a carnival atmosphere. Sponsored by: Sobieski Vodka
Suntory Presents... “Blending” Harmony with Nature - A full HIBIKI blending apothecary lab where Shinji will invite select guests to “Blend” harmony with nature while making their own personal HIBIKI 12 year old blend.

4:00pm - 6:00pm
Brugal Rum - Go on a Caribbean holiday featuring food, drinks and entertainment of the Dominican Republic.
The History of Bar Tools and Bar Ware from the 1800's to Today. At the Museum of the American Cocktail.
The Dalmore Tasting - Learn from The Nose! This tasting, hosted by Richard Paterson, master blender for Whyte & Mackay, will introduce participants to one of the most awarded single malt scotch whiskeys, the Dalmore.
The Official hum® Lab will allow you to create your own unique libations using hum®, specialty liqueurs, and an assortment of fresh ingredients.

6:00pm - 7:30pm
Aperitif Bar With Martini & Rossi, Sponsored by: Martini & Rossi

7:30pm - 10:00pm
Spirited Dinner – Arnaud’s

Day Two

2010-07-23T12:04:00.006-04:00

While this is not officially an event for bloggers who are left handed, bloggers who are redheads, bloggers who own uteri, or bloggers who only drive hybrids -- or, for that matter an event for bloggers, per se -- it is, by all indications, an event geared almost exclusively for people whose unexpressed motto runs along the lines of "Nothing is more fun than fun."

There is, of course, the merest veneer of seriousness. Seminars aimed, ostensibly, at For Real Working Bartenders and other industry professionals. But even those relatively few symposia are more than a little leavened by the fun. Most of the time, it's a few souls making glorious cocktails, and multitudes of other souls absorbing them.

Let other events try to lure you with near-pornographic enticements such as "Utilizing Social Media To Market Your Writing." The utterly earnest folks here must make do with dry and dispassionate fodder such as "Art of the Aperitif: Exploring Pre-Prandial Spirits, Wines and Cocktails" or "Civilization Begins with Distillation." Also, strictly in the name of science, there is serious tippling going on well before noon, to say nothing of 5pm. (In fact, if you make it a serious point of going out to drink, you will probably collapse into an ethanolic coma. The smart thing to do is just sample a little bit, and you may escape with but a mere intoxication.)

Me, being the high-minded and terribly serious individual, will be reporting on one the events most closely approaching seriousness. Such as that is.

The first one I bring you is the recentky concluded, if rather unfortunately named, "Bartending Fun-da-mentals."

Here is a recap, based on my notes:

The premise of this one is "To put the fun back into bartending." (Because we all knew what a meaningless nightmare of despair it is?)

The two presenters (hosts? guys in the front?) are "Jacob" and "Angus." Never heard of 'em before today. Jacob dons a horse head, Angus makes a couple of insider-ish wisecracks. They suggest bartenders are in it for sex, drugs, and rock and roll.

Then! Actual content!

Principles
I Make the guest smile
II "Optimize the Guest Sale" which, unless it has to do with how the Royal Navy used to recruit with the aid of unscrupulous pub owners, I have NFI what that is.
III Give people reason to come back, by making them feel
a) comfortable
b) important
c) welcome, and
d) understood

They talk about how "customer time is 5x normal time." Also have NFI what that is, but it sounds completely true. "Always smile," is another.

Aha! Some real wisdom for schleps like me: Ask your guests questions about how they want their drinks." That is, don't just make a "Manhattan" but try to get guidance from your guests to see if they want it with rye or bourbon; dry, sweet or perfect...that sort of thing.

More "interesting" than strictly informative, Angus (or possibly Jacob) starts rattling off the "ages" of bartenders. Currently, says them, we're in the 2nd Golden Age (I'm waiting to hear the 1st.) The 1990s started the Age of Ingredients (fresh lemons and limes, say, or herbs, spices, aged spirits) followed by the Age of Technique ("molecular mixology" for example).

That, in turn is followed by what they call "The Age of Scrutiny and Authenticity." The hallmark of this is going back to cocktail history, old cocktail books, bartenders who look like "Winky" from Disney's Wind In The Willows. We also see ingredients that are resurrected (eau celeste, anyone?). The problem says Jacob (althought it might have been Angus) is that all of these Ages are "serious." Not a whole bloody lot of fun.

Oh, look, a lovely beverage...a Corpse Reviver #2 but made with blue curacao. Not bad, although I'm not so fond of blue drinks.

And then...the rules! What's good and what's bad. (I'm more the sort who focuses on the drink in hand. I'm a baaaaad boy.)

I- Small is good: big is evil. (No, GOOD is good, bad is evil. Sheesh.)
II- Vodka is evil. We drink vodka wrong, we don’t drink it like the Poles or the Russians.
III- Commercial is evil.
IV- Not obeying rules is evil.

Another good bit of advice: You can’t truly resurrect ancient recipes. Everything is different now. (Spirits are different, mixers and modifiers are different, etc.) No harm trying, though.

(Hey! Another drink came and went! I didn't get to taste it! I'm sure another will be by soon. Aha. A drink here with rosemary in it. Interesting, but I'm not REALLY convinced by it.)

Some examples of serious-with-a-side-of-fun drinks are mentioned, including one served with some sort of S&M accessory.

The next one I bring you, is the most-talked about one thus far: "The Smooth and Creamy History of The Fern Bar."

For those of you who have NFI what a Fern Bar is, just think back to the hit show Three's Company. In that show, set and produced during the woefully lamentable ghetto-of-a-decade 1970s, the characters' watering hole of choice was a place called "The Regal Beagle." Men in polyester suits with condor-wing lapels, Qiana, disco, Farrah Fawcett hairdos. THAT kind of bar.

The panelists, Martin Cate & Jeff Berry are two of the funnest and most charming guys around. It's impossible to not be when your careers are devoted towards a fanatical pursuit of perfection in the realm of tropical drinks, and when you make a detour into the slushy ones of the 1970s, it's even more delightful. This was, by everyone's estimation, the one nobody should have missed. I hope against hope some or all of it finds its way on YouTube. It was that fun.

Then of course, there was the Spirited Dinner mentioned yesterday.

And here I am.

I'll try to post photos, after I look for some kind of detox beverage.

-J.

As promised.

2010-07-22T10:26:00.003-04:00

There are some people -- a benighted sort, in my opinion -- who attend gatherings of people solely because they are [demographic category] who also happen to enjoy [hobby or activity]. God bless them. We live in a pluralist society, and that, while unfathomable to me, is fine.

Me, I don't loiter with people because we happen to share bonds of ethnicity, gender, hair color, diopter, etc.

I do things like this.

This is my first dispatch on the matter of the utter excellentness on Tales of the Cocktail, as I promised. Think of it as a "ComicCon" for people with civilized dipsomania.

Here goes.

There are people (and I really need to figure out how to be officially recognized among them, for reasons which shall become pellucidly clear) who are The Cocktail Bloggers. Which is fine, especially since they have been able to hang out in a house -- as opposed to the Hotel Monteleone, etc. as "the little people" must -- with a fully stocked bar sponsored by several major distillers. They also get goody bags which are likely to require pack animals for transport. (Expect an interesting array of boozy memorabilia on eBay next week, as some try to cash in on the free branded glassware, bar mats, etc.)

The main spot for all the ardent fans of even more ardent spirits is the aforesaid Hotel Monteleone. It is very nice, and the rates, even for such a popular event as Tales of the Cocktail, are infinitely more than reasonable. As people were checking in, a large church youth group was trying to check out. There were several eyebrows raised, but most people from either group had other things in their sights to provide much more entertainment beyond that.

Highlights:

They have what they call "tasting rooms." I can't (yet) say they all function a given way, but the first one up was the Kahlua Coffee Bar. It's a smallish reception room, where a given brand has various tables and each has a different cocktail. You could wind up having, say, four full cocktails in one room, and then stagger to the next. To start things off easy, there was only the Kahlua one on the first day. (Think "caffé corretto" with Kahlua in lieu of grappa.) The remainder of the days of TotC there many. For example, here is a random day's listing of tasting rooms:

Absolut Brooklyn
Cabana Cachaça
Casa Noble
Cointreau "Bar Star" Mix-Off
Engineering Gin
Grand Marnier
Kahlua Coffee Bar
Oxley Gin
Pernod Absinthe Green Hour
Rémy Cointreau USA

So, as you can see, even with only ONE drink at each, you could be really doing a number on yourself.

Another highlight: There are a LOT of men here with unusual facial hair, vests* and those silly little Rat Pack hats. They utterly despise 99% of all vodka cocktails. I think these are the manqué bartenders, but I cannot be sure. There are cocktail groupies in mufti (that'd be my group, really) and then there are the celebrity bartenders. Yes, there really is such a thing.

Yet one more highlight: "Spirited Lunches/Dinners." If you guessed these are meals at restaurants where each course is paired off with a corresponding cocktail, you'd be right. My first choice, for a number of reasons beyond the scope of this immediate post, would HAVE to be Arnaud's.

Arnaud's is the kind of restaurant that used to be found in most major cities, a grande-dame sort of place. Where the dishes were all named, as opposed to described. (Think "Tournedos Rossini" vs. "Medallions of seared Kobe beef on a Beaujolais reduction on a bed of Morel mushrooms and...")

To make things even more exciting this particular Grande Dame of a restaurant is showcasing itself with an EIGHT course meal. Surprisingly, the prices are VERY reasonable.

First Course
Leontine Aperitif and
hors d’Oeuvres

Second Course
Consommé and
Ti Punch Leblon

Third Course
Turbot and
Windsor Cocktail

Fourth Course
Selle d’Agneau and
Décolletage (a Dubonnet and tequila drink, surprisingly well recieved!)

Fifth Course
Sorbet à l’Absinthe (meh, not a huge fan of licorice)

Sixth Course
Salade Cresson avec Fromage Blanc

Seventh Course
Bombe Glacée

Eighth Course
Café, Digestifs and Bon Bons

(They even feature a "Service d’Absinthe" for those doing that whole Green Muse trip...not I.)

Next report: Tasting rooms and "Fun"damentals -- hey, I don't make up these names -- of Bartending.

-J.

*waistcoats

I'm going to be famous.

2010-06-27T19:50:00.003-04:00

My company got a bit of a pickup online.

Looky.

-J.

Before the link goes down again...

2010-06-22T12:15:00.002-04:00

P.J. O'Rourke on Classical Education

Get an education - a classical education filled with Plato, Cato, Pliny the Elder, Pliny Junior, and Cicero by the yard; with Marathons of an un-Boston kind and Hannibals who cross the Alps, not Jodie Foster; an education that includes Pythagoras's theorem, Zeno's paradox, Occam's razor, the rest of Occam's toilet kit, some basic science (nothing beyond a Bunsen burner), and a few of the mustier works of great literature. (What is Hecuba to him or he to Hecuba?)

The entire British Empire was built by young men who'd studied nothing but Latin, Greek, and plane geometry. They graduated from college, were sent out to rule India, and telegraphed home: "People here acting as though they were in The Iliad. Have figured out all the angles. Send pecunia."

Nowadays Oxford and Cambridge have courses in anthropology, sociology, psychology, political science, economics, and no telling what else. Meanwhile the British Empire has shrunk to three IRA informants, a time-share deal with the Red Chinese in Hong Kong, and that bed-and-breakfast of an island, Bermuda. Sic transit gloria mundi, as if anybody knew what that meant anymore.

There are, admittedly, things that can't be learned by studying the classics. But education is not just a matter of learning things. There's a difference between information and knowledge. It's the difference between Christy Turlington's phone number and Christy Turlington. There's also a difference between knowledge and meaning. Socrates wouldn't know grunge rock, but he'd know what it means. It means every flannel shirt in America should be dripped in Prozac. Furthermore, there's a difference between meaning and life. Hillary Clinton loves the "politics of meaning" and all it's gotten her is week upon week locked in a roomful of nerds figuring how to pay the country's doctor bills. What kind of life is that?

A classical education helps us unravel these, as it were, Gordian knots. It teaches us the lesson of continuity in human affairs. We read Juvenal's Sixth Satire:

"Meantime she completely
Ignores her husband, gives not a moment's thought
To all she costs him. She's less a wife than a neighbor -
Except when it comes to loathing his friends ..."

And we realize first wives weren't born yesterday.

If we can do such reading in the original language, we can travel back in time, go back two thousand years and find what's inside people's minds ... some pretty nasty minds, too, such as that of the poet Nicarchus:

"You should certainly have made a sign saying which was
your mouth, which your asshole.
Just now when you were gabbing I thought you'd farted."

And a classical education gives us perspective. For instance, the fall of Rome is a melancholy tale, but careful readings in history show us that we happen to be the people Rome fell to.

A classical education provides no skills. But, personally, at age forty-five, I don't want a skill. If I had a skill I'd have duller work. I'd be a dentist. Instead, I get to pursue that career of professional amateurs called journalism. Besides, the skills I might like to have - getting on the green in three, pestering trout with lint on a pin - aren't gotten in school. And school is what I wish I'd gone to more of. Much stupid behavior could have been thereby avoided.

If I'd known how Plato came a cropper trying to put his Republic into practice under Dionysius II in Sicily or if I'd had a better idea what caused the collapse of representative government in Rome and Athens, I would have been spared a decade of radical politics.

If I'd read the mush in Virgil's Ecologues:

"... for you the Nymphs bring lilies,
Look, in baskets full; for you the Naiad fair,
Plucking pale violets and poppy heads . . .
et cetera, et cetera, et cetera"

I would have been nauseated enough to escape all sorts of hopeless romances.

If I'd been led from Aristotle through Roger Bacon and Erasmus to the Enlightenment of the eighteenth century - if I'd realized what pains mankind had taken to achieve empirical observation, logical thought, and experimental methods of proof - I would have eschewed vibes, auras, mantras, astral projections, and all the other mental rubbish of the last thirty years.

And, if I'd read Petronius and François Villon, I would have given the feckless bohemian life a pass and gotten a bath and a job.

On the other hand, I liked being a hippie pretend guerrilla writing horrible long poems to Suzy and Moonbeam and Babs. I had a great time thinking I could end war and social injustice by letting my hair grow and dressing like a circus clown. And - though we're not supposed to say it these days - the drugs were swell.

Such follies are born of ignorance, but I've enjoyed them. So maybe you shouldn't get an education after all. I'm not well educated enough to know.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

P.J. O'Rourke's recommendation of the Classics, from his latest collection, entitled Age and Guile Beat Youth, Innocence, and a Bad Haircut (Atlantic Monthly Press, 1995). It was originally published in Esquire, October 1993, as part of a sixtieth-anniversary "Sixty Things a Man Should Know" collection.

A little rearrangingitivity.

2010-06-21T09:01:00.003-04:00

OK.

For reasons I can't QUITE explain just yet, all of my recipe/food/beverage posts (AND ONLY THOSE) will be moving.

I'll put up the link when that's all set up.

Thanks

-The Management

No pictures, alas.

2010-06-19T18:50:00.002-04:00

Today, dear Internet, I made and utterly savo(u)red a hamburger of such excellence it has left me marveling 4 hours after the fact.

I regret we are not yet capable of feasibly cloning cows, because this cow was definitely worthy of getting the whole Jurassic Park treatment. This was a Hall of Fame cow, whose sacrifice for a greater purpose was so noble and pure it was clearly maniftest to every single tastebud I currently own.

My sorrow will be great when it finally sinks in that the odds of ever again having a burger anywhere near as delicious are smaller than even purely theoretical particles. But my soul is still aglow and sorrow will have to wait, much like Suicide Tuesday for devotees of XTC*.

To anyone wishing to attempt to replicate it here is the basic road map.

Take a couple of pounds of beef from the short rib (sans bone and sinew, natch) and put it through your grinder**. If using your grinder is a complete PITA to you, feel free to skip to the end. Use the coarsest setting, and grind TWICE. This is key.

Form the burgers -- a gentle hand, s'il vous plait -- into burgers 1''/2.5cm thick. Very often in food programs you see skyscraper-ish burgers anchored by lumps o' cow 3''-4'' tall. Unless you have developed a way to unhinge your jaw, this is not a fun way to eat and you will not get a good, even bite of your burger and you will not get the full spectrum of taste of beef, bun and condiments. The diameter of your burger should be +/-½''/1cm greater than that of your hamburger bun, to compensate for the shrinkage in cooking. Give the burger meat a slight dent in the center, to compensate for the puffing that also happens whilst cooking.

At this stage there is a hotly debated divergence of opinion. Cook on an open grill or in a pan/griddle? Each has its advantages. An open grill allows for smoke and flame to interact with the beef, and a pan or griddle allows for greater searing (esp. in a cast-iron pan situation) and a greater retention of rendering fat. I prefer grill. The beef has enough fat that any which renders out will not go missing, and the searing is sufficient. You do whatever you want.

I salted the burgers, then dusted them with a certain steak rub which I hacked (because I was NOT going to pay $2.50/oz.) to my immense delight.

As far as bread goes, I went to my local bakery where they had these buns made out of the same eggy dough as challah. This is ideal, because the crumb is tender enough to collapse slightly under bite, absorbent enough to contain condiments and juices, and will toast slightly in a beautiful way.

Condiments:

Heinz Organic Ketchup - the ne plus ultra of ketchups. In a trial of a thousand years I might come up with something almost as good. So I just buy it.

Grey Poupon Dijon Mustard and Gulden's Spicy Brown Mustard - 50-50.

Vidalia onions, raw and sliced as thinly as your patience will allow. (In my case, I like one gossamer-thin slice that covers the surface area of the cooked beef.

McClure's Pickle relish, the regular not the hot. About a tablespoon, spread evenly.

Sea salt.

Cook the burger over a rocket-hot flame, and the nanosecond you have proper grill marks, flip over to a cooler -- think "medium" vs. "high" -- section of the fire. Cook 2 minutes for medium rare...which, because you ground this yourself, is a far safer proposition.

Enjoy.

-J.

* The recreational pharmaceutical, not the band.
** Mincer, for the rest of the Anglosphere.

Foodie weakness.

2010-06-09T19:21:00.002-04:00

I need to work on three areas. My breads, my pastry and my cakes. I want to develop one go-to, "I have it wired to my synapses" recipe for each. Whenever I make something I have to refer to whatever cookbook I am using as if I were reading the manual for a defibrillator or a bomb-defusing manual.

These should be relatively simple (NOT dumbed down) and with short-ish ingredient lists.

Feel free to suggest.

-J.

The promised assortedness.

2010-06-04T09:55:00.004-04:00

Still, there is no One Great Thing about which to write.

So I will try to fill up this space with (one hopes) entertaining miscellanea.

1- Steal these wines. It seems the Vinapedia site is down, a victim of the Slightly Less Great Depression. So I must make my suggestions here:

Las Rocas 2007 Bodegas San Alejandro Garnacha Calatayud - Brilliant garnet. Velvety cherry and framboise on the nose, with hints of coffee, anise and cocoa. Bit of "smoky" going on, with elegant underlying tannins. Light but long finish. At $10, this is a steal.

Primus 2007 Veramonte Colchagua Valley - I've mentioned these wines before, and this Bordeaux blend remains an astonishing bargain. Deep scarlet. Fresh raspberry/blackberry aroma, that carry through to the palate, along with a tart sort of raisiny/minerally something, and some cocoa notes are lurking there too. Modest tannins show up if you aereate it. You can let it spend some time in the cellar and your patience would be rewarded. Good finish, decent length and just sharp enough.

2- Blogfests. I shan't name names, but some among the assembled like traipsing off to events where other bloggers of similar description gather for, as The Master wrote, "browsing and sluicing." Which is fine. I've never understood the desire to gather with fellow-blogging lefthanders or redheads or [insert demographic category here] but we live in a pluralist society and so, when this sort of thing is announced, up goes my banner of live-and-let-live.

In slight contradistinction, I am the sort who likes to gather with fellow travelers. The problem being there are so very few of these as to make the whole proposition somewhere between useless and unfeasible. Until now. An event hath crossed mine radar, and I wish to attend it and bloggify therefrom.

Therefore, it is my intention to travel to New Orleans and attend this stellar confab and, for the benefit of my reading public, blog live.

This won't be easy.

After all, this is an event specifically created for the immoderate consumption of spirituous liquors, for refreshing oneself generously with the finest of the distiller's art, with the alchemy wrought on ardent spirits by "mixologists of tipulars." Combine this with my abysmal typing skills and daily entries may resemble Scrabble games at Happydale Sanatorium.

But I press on regardless.

3- Someone approached me about starting a for-profit newsletter devoted to "the finest things in life, for those who are cheap, broke or both." I thought it intriguing but was unsure of whether there is enough of a market for that. Discuss.

That is all.

-J.

Hold that thought

2010-05-28T03:00:00.001-04:00

Have some assortedness to report. Stand by.

In which our hero succumbs to a cyber-fad

2010-05-19T09:29:00.002-04:00

I am always wary of blog contests. I realize I am being lured into something not for grand and noble purposes, but rather, merely to inflate someone's readership. So I generally skip those, being deeply principled and unimpressed with the prize.

But my principles, as anyone who knew me back during my Wilderness Years will attest, can be malleable.

So I make this embarrassing-ish deviation from policy because the prize of a certain blog contest is so wonderful, containing, by my estimation, a small fortune's worth of ardent spirits of unimpeachable quality.

My purity cannot be swayed for, say, a $25 gift card from [insert retailer here] -- much as I enjoy [retailer] -- but when one is offering wildly rare and somewhat expensive spirituous liquors representing the very zenith of the distiller's art...well, I can tell my purity to take the day off.

So, basically, stand by for a blog post in the next 3-4 days that might prove a craven and unabashed attempt to win some highly coveted (I cannot emphasize sufficiently how hard to find these particular bottles are) potables.

Ya done been warned.

-J.

Pretend, for a moment.

2010-05-14T12:06:00.007-04:00

This is not really new content.

It really is NEW, so that's good. It's just not so content-ish.

But one cannot be deaf to the vox populi, so I must place digit to keyboard and issue dispatches from the front.

Today's dispatch is in the form of a cocktailian recipe.

Many, MANY epochs ago, my parents' go-to beverage was the whisk(e)y sour. Having grown up practically submerged in rum and its cocktail offspring, bourbon was seen as both The Done Thing in this new land, and also as quite an exotic quaff. So there you have it. At that time (i.e. the tail end of the Mad Men years) this was a very big cocktail, having supplanted in popularity the dry Martini and Manhattan as a looser and more relaxed beverage.

Then, of course, that ghetto of a decade (the 1970s) clamped its jaws upon the throat of civilization and all manner of vile beverages infested the land. But now cocktailness is making something of a rennaissance in the broader culture and with it come classic potions of yore.

So I go for the Whisk(e)y Sour. It is yummy, and soothing and also I have a gift bottle of Virginia Gentleman I'd like to finish so that I may free up shelf space for something new, bourbonwise.

So here is my recipe.

Take an old-fashioned or double old-fashioned (i.e. "rocks") glass, and stash it in the freezer. Some people suggest filling the glass with ice, but the appalling slowness of my icemaker, I like not wasting such a precious commodity.
Assemble your ingredients. Lemon, bourbon (in this case Virginia Gentleman, which I am trying to finish) and simple syrup. (You will note the judicious use of the labelmaker.)

Slice your lemon in half, equatorially. (Incidentally, if you use a Meyer lemon you will need less syrup.) If you use a manual citrus press, cut two deep perpendicular scores into each lemon half.
Squeeze. An average lemon should get you 2oz (+/-60ml) of juice.Add your bourbon. 1½ ounces (+/-45ml).
Then your syrup. Call it one ounce (+/-30ml)

Fill your shaker's tumbler with cracked ice. (Some people like to add some of the lemon peel. I approve, but often don't remember or cannot be bothered.) Shake until a thin frost forms on the outside of the steel part of the shaker.Strain into the awaiting vessel filled with fresh, "dry" ice. (Not "dry ice" but ice that happens to be dry. This is crucial.)

There you go.

-J.

Ah. Well. Yes.

2010-05-12T09:12:00.002-04:00

I have absolutely nothing to say.

Nothing.

At all.

Zip.

Zero.

Zilch.

Nil.

Bupkis.

Nada.

I could very well grab any random post from the last 3 months (either of them...ahem) and repost it here and it would be truthful and accurate.

But I won't.

Because I respect you, Internet.

Instead, I will see

1- How entertainingly I can write about the current nothingness, or
2- Write nothing until something semi-coherent materializes around my frontal lobe and filters to the keyboard.

I suspect the former.

I meant to have a lovely ceviche recipe, but several of the readership have mentioned how it's still snowing, and a cool dish of cured seafood seems all wrong when Mother Nature has clad herself with a placid mantle of while global warming. So I have stayed my hand. It was also consumed before I had an opportunity to photograph it, and I haven't had a chance to run out and get more scallops and shrimp therefor. Which is a pity, because ovah heah it has been hotter and muggier than Satan's armpit, and something in the ceviche line would have hit the proverbial spot.

So now you know to be on standby.

-J.

Like a tapas bar.

2010-05-05T09:12:00.002-04:00

This post won't have any one Main Thing.

For better or worse, there ISN'T one to be had, so you'll have to graze contentedly on amouse bouches until otherwise directed.

1- Now I know why they call them "smart phones." Because they are, and you, you decrepit post-pubescent ruin, are most emphatically not.

2- My espresso machine is, quite possibly, possessed. Would you believe it if I told you it makes espresso for nobody in the middle of the night? (The concept that ghosts, etc. need the caffeine will not be entertained.)

3- The Compliment of the Year. Late last week, someone found me on FB. Someone whom I had not seen in almost 30 years. In the middle of an email volley she chimed in with "OMG, even on the Internet you sound exactly like the guy you were 30 years ago." Don't let the grey hair fool you kids, I still have the same immature outlook I did back in 1981.

4- I saw that. (You know who you are.)

5- Youth can be determined by whether you qualify a given situation as "exciting" or "stressful." I am not used to, having concluded an exciting/stressful day, being nearly comatose with sleepiness. WTF?

6- Kentucky Derby aside, I'm actually not all that crazy about mint juleps (or, to be fair, mojitos) and, in fact, I consider mint rather underwhelming.

7- Mint feels the same way about me, refusing to grow in my garden.

8- Aging beef at home is worth the moderate inconvenience.

9- Why is it parts of me that were perfectly discomfort-free at 7pm on Monday are a mass of aches at 7am on Tuesday? (You see why I don't sleep? That's when they get ya.)

10- I'm puzzled as to why some people age better than others. Even more puzzled by people who get more attractive as they age. Trying to join the latter camp.

Carry on,

-J.

...in which our hero realizes he has, officially, become ancient and decrepit.

2010-05-01T21:37:00.002-04:00

My cell* phone died today.

So I went to get another. For reasons which have yet to be adequately explored, when you go to the phone store, you will see manifestly inferior phones for a patillion dollars, and then you'll see phones with enough computing capacity to suit three of NASA and most of NORAD for a mere bag-of-shells.

There are arcane and byzantine rules governing the pricing of these, even more absurd and impenetrable than those governing airline tickets. But, the price for what I wanted was right, and I leapt at it. (Cynics would say that what I wanted was because of what was cheapest, not YOU, of course, but cynics...)

It's a touchscreen phone with a moderate amount of bells and whistles. Came with a pouch, and an ear thingy which I'll lose soon, and chargers and so forth. Then I got it out of the box and started to try certain features, which began to vex me almost immediately.

So, reflexively, I turned to NOS and said "You. YOU. Set this bloody thing up."

And he did. In 2 minutes.

I am now practically a fossil.

-J.

*mobile

I was wrong.

2010-04-29T18:06:00.004-04:00

Unlike loathsome periodicals such as the NYT, WP and Puffington Host, when I make a mistake requiring immediate correction, I do not bury the correction, in shame, in the bowels of the publication. The novel experience of not being right inures me to such feelings.

Here goes:

In my bar post below, I said I didn't see much need for tequila beyond margaritæ. I was wrong. I forgot the Tequila Sunrise.

Management regrets the error.

Speaking of setting up your first bar...

2010-04-29T00:34:00.001-04:00

Look at this on sale!

-J.

Passing the Bar

2010-04-26T14:29:00.004-04:00

People often stop your Uncle Joke out on the street and demand advice on all manner of things related to the arduous task of living civilizedly in a world seemingly overrun by philistines. The most thorny of all questions is the one of wanting to have a "good bar." Not because of the degree of difficulty in answering, but because the answer is lengthy.

But, I have a few moments, and I am feeling voluble. Lucky you. Here goes:

First, my general approach. Find a drink that you like and get the highest quality ingredients therefor. From this "genesis" cocktail, branch out. A daiquiri begets a mojito, etc. DO NOT head to Bob's Liq-O-Rama with a blank check.

If you have guests over, and if your guests are the sort who enjoy a variety of properly crafted tipples, this is going to run you +/-$350.

WHISKEY

My cocktail bourbon of choice is Maker’s Mark. The price will give you reverse sticker shock -- especially if you can purchase it at a warehouse club's liquor store -- quality is excellent and it is supremely mixable. If your bourbonic cocktails run more to the mostly-straight (and mine do not, being more of a Whisky Sour than a Manhattan sort) or even doing the whole snifter routine (which I enjoy on occasion), then I vote for Knob Creek. My favorite Super Special Limited Edition is Wild Turkey's Rare Breed, but this is so optional as to be an afterthought.

If you had to pick just one: Maker's Mark.

Rye-wise, I really, really suggest you seek out Russell's 6-year rye. Failing that, Wild Turkey's rye. Failing THAT, Jim Beam is the easiest to find and it’s affordable. But rye isn't the linchpin of a bottle shelf that newly minted cocktailians would have you believe. If you get a bottle of rye, unless you, yourself, are a big fan of rye-based drinks, it is very likely that bottle will last you a good long while. Just saying.

For your old-school scotch-and-soda drinker, Johnny Walker Black will be just the thing. Now, I'm a big fan of single-malt scotch and have a veritable surfeit thereof. But my go-to single-malt scotch is Aberlour 10 Year. Like Maker's Mark in the bourbon category, this is the one that does the most things well. It's smoky enough, for those who like that, not so much that it will leave the others coughing. It goes exceptionally well with a cigar -- it's my default for a cigar -- it does marvels with soda, ice, or playing solo in a snifter. I also have Macallan 18- and 25-year, and Balvenie, Laphroiag and Cardhu (the core whiskey in Johnnie Walker). I can also heartily recommend Kirkland 19-year old, made for them by Macallan. Not only is it superb, but it will give you the reverse sticker shock we all know and love. Not to mention the irony of serving "Costco scotch." (If that is more of an issue than a perverse point of pride, place the contents in a decanter. Seriously, nobody would ever suspect.)

If you had to pick just one: Johnnie Walker Black.
If you had to pick just one single-malt: Aberlour 10, or that Costco one.

For the odd moment where Irish whisky is needed or desired -- which, really, ain't often either here -- I have a bottle of Michael Collins which I received from my dad and was probably a gift to him. After several years and two owners, it's still sealed. Mind you, there could be a colossal awakening of palates to Irish whisky, but for now, it really is something beyond the scope of "a basic bar."

If Canadian whisky drinks manifest themselves in your life, use Seagram’s VO.

GIN

During the warm-not-hot times of the year (here in SoFla, that means the last two weeks of April) I like gin. Especially London Dry gins. I am currently going through a bottle of Bombay Sapphire which is phenomenal. But my default is Plymouth, which is less botanical. Prior to that I liked Beefeater. Any one of these will be fine, and nobody will think you deranged if you chose Tanqueray. But Plymouth is the more flexible of all, with more manageable levels of juniper and botanicals.

(The botanical gamut runs, from least to most, thus: Plymouth, Bombay Sapphire, Beefeater, Tanqueray.)

If you had to pick just one: Plymouth, or Bombay Sapphire if you can't find Plymouth.

VODKA

I admit it: I don't "get" vodka. There is only one drink made with vodka which I love -- the Bloody Mary, as recipe-ed in The Preppy Handbook -- and for that I am wildly flexible. I also like consuming smoked salmon or caviar/roe on blinis accompanies by an icy shot of vodka. But that's it. To be brutally frank, most (not all) people who drink "vodkatinis" or vodka-and-tonics or Cape Codders are not the sort who would be able to spot the delicate nuances that distinguish Ketel One from Grey Goose.

Any good vodka will do. This is not to say I can't taste the subtleties that separate, say, Stoli from Smirnoff...it's that I just don't care about those differences. (Cook's Illustrated ran some cheap, plastic-bottle vodka through a Brita pitcher a few times and pronounced it as good as any hyperdollar brand.)

At the moment, we have Finlandia, with a gifted bottle of Absolut Citron in the freezer for blini duty. When that runs out, I think I have an unopened bottle of the Smirnoff silver label (whatever THAT's called) and if I'm wrong and it turns out I don't have that bottle, then I can try the new Kirkland vodka, made in the same town where they make Grey Goose -- draw your own conclusions. If your vodka-loving pals are few and far between, and the few that do drink it stick to Bloody Marys...then stick to a good-but-not-top-shelf vodka; if they like drinks where the liquor is in the spotlight, then get Tito's.

Incidentally, we also have 10-12 mini bottles of vodka in the freezer. When those run out, we refill and refreeze.

If you had to pick just one: Tito's or the Costco one.

RUM

This is where it gets interesting. Rum is a strange liquor. Before I go on, I'll illustrate via an analogy:

Think of cats. They vary in coloration and hair length and some of them have squashier face, but that's it for cats, variationwise. Dogs, on the other hand, are a riot of variations. From great danes to pekingese to labradoodles to shnauzers to boxers and pointers. Rum is like dogs. Rum can be as colorless (and flavorless) as vodka, as overpoweringly offputting as one of those middle-of-nowhere single malt scotches and everything in between.

There is a gamut, see.

If you are an aficionado of Tiki drinks -- and you should be -- you will need a minimum of five rums. Silver, gold, black, aged, Demerara. Maybe an aged and an overproof if you really want to be thorough.

Here's what I suggest: Silver rum - Cruzan, Gold rum - Bacardi 8 (Bacardi has a less than stellar reputation among cocktail snobs, but their Bacardi 8 is really above reproach), Black rum - Cruzan Blackstrap or Gosling's Black Seal, Demerara (a smoky, funky rum from Guyana) rum - El Dorado 12 year old. I'd also suggest Barbancourt 8 for your aged rum, and for your overproof...pick 'em. I have Bacardi 151. This bottle will last you a long while. Flavored rums? Um. Cruzan Coconut, otherwise learn to infuse your own.

If you are not into Tiki drinks (it happens, even in the best families), you'll still need a silver and a gold rum.

If you had to pick just one (of each): Cruzan Aged Light and Bacardi 8.

TEQUILA

I find tequila wildly overrated. There. I said it. Outside of the margarita I don't see a lot of call for it. And here in FL, when people think of a slushy something with a kick, they think daiquiri and not margarita.

Basically, there are three types of tequila (blanco, reposado and añejo) distinguishable by color (clear, "beige" and amber). There is no such thing as a "gold" tequila. It's merely a blanco with caramel. Don't be fooled. You also want to go with something labeled 100% Blue Agave. Again, don't be fooled. If it doesn't say so, scoot down the shelf to the next one.

Some people like their margarita made with a blanco and some with a reposado. I'm neutral on the issue. More important is to select the right brand. I am especially partial to Patrón is a really good, reasonably priced tequila, available anywhere. Take your pick of blanco or reposado. Again, because I am perversely inclined, Costco's tequila (made by boutique distiller Tonala) is on my list of things to try, especially for $23 a bottle.

If you had to pick just one: Patrón or the Costco one.

ABSINTHE

This is treacherous ground. The only people who like absinthe, so far, are those folks doing the whole belle epoque I'm-so-indolent trip, complete with cravat and ridiculous tonsorial affectations. If you can score some legit absinthe, go to it.

BRANDY

When people say brandy, 99% of the time mean Cognac. The sad thing is that Cognac has a pretty clear relationship between price and quality. You will NOT get, ever, reverse sticker shock with Cognac. If you have a lot of friends of the snifter-and-fireplace persuasion, pop the coin for an XO. If you are someone for whom the finesse and delicacy of a stellar Cognac mean everything, then you already know what you like and you can skip this section.

Otherwise, stick to Martell VS, which is a really nice (albeit not outrageous) bargain, both better and cheaper than its VSOP stablemate. No, I don't know why, but there you go. I like Martell XO if you're going a bit more uptown.

But Cognac has a rogueish brother, Armagnac. You can get a LOT more bang for your buck with this brandy. My pick? Sempe Extra, which often comes in a blue Limoges "Crown of Louis XIV" decanter (skip the decanter and save a few bucks). Cognac also has an even more rogueish first cousin, sherry brandy from Spain. Get the Lepanto, which comes in a snazzy, gold-leaf decorated decanter.

I also suggest, if you are so inclined, that you look into Kirschwasser, Calvados and Poire. I suggest, respectively, Etter Kirsch Buger, Calvados du Prieure, Etter Poire Williams. But this is really getting beyond the basics. (In the cherry front, Cherry Heering or Luxardo are useful, not so much for making cocktails in my particular case, but for making for-reals, legit cocktail cherries.)

If you had to pick just one: Martell VS.

LIQUEURS, CORDIALS, ETC.

Anisette

A small bottle of Pernod or Herbsaint for classic cocktails. This is like absinthe with training wheels, easier to find and without that whole Green Muse pas de deux.

Benedictine

NOT, you will kindly note, Benedictine & Brandy (i.e. B&B). If I want brandy with my Benedictine, I'll do so myself, thankyouverymuch.

Orange Liqueurs

Cointreau: Once you hop from generic triple sec or curaçao to this, you will NOT be able to go back. But you CAN substitute it rather well with Patrón's Citronge, for about half the price. Really.

Grand Marnier: Not a direct substitute for Cointreau. Yummy on its own.

Créme de Cassis
If you cannot live without Kir Royle, get the Marie Brizard.

Irish Cream
Bailey's is the archetype. Stash it in the fridge once opened.

Raspberry
Chambord is the archetype also, but my liquor store guy convinced me to try Mathilde, and I have been quite pleased.

If you had to pick just one (of each): Citronge and Bailey's. Maybe a couple of minis of Chambord. Maybe.

VERMOUTH

You need a sweet and a dry, I like Noilly Prat dry ("green") and Cinzano sweet ("red"). If you can't find Noilly Prat, Martini & Rossi or Cinzano dry are just fine.

BITTERS & AMAROS

At a very bare minimum, you’ll want Angostura bitters. You can, as you advance further up the fluid food chain, get something like Peychaud’s or Reagan’s orange bitters.

Campari

Vital to a Negroni and a must. In a pinch, it's a terrific substitute for orange bitters.

SYRUPS

Here is where it's verrrrrrrrrrrrrrrry easy to get derailed. A good rule of thumb is to make a beeline for the back label of any bottle. If there is no real, natural flavoring (i.e. almonds in an orgeat, pomegranates in a grenadine, etc.) or if there is high-fructose corn syrup (i.e. HFCS) move to the next one on the shelf. Here are the ones you will need, especially if you are often doing Tiki drinks.

(While all of these are easy enough to make at home, they do require some forethought and time. I very, VERY strongly recommend Trader Tiki syrups, available online and at some stores.)

Grenadine
Orgeat
Passion fruit syrup
Falernum
Cinnamon syrup

Cream of Coconut. Until Trader Tiki rolls out Phase Two, you will simply have to gather up some canned coconut cream (Thai Kitchen is the most readily availableone, and while usually the "lite" will work fine, in this case it will not) and mix it to your liking with sugar until it's a luscious tropical sludge. The Very Famous Ones available are riddled with chemicals. Avoid them.

BOOKS & EQUIPMENT

This is a personal idiosyncracy. Whenever I see a bartending book I flip it to the Bloody Mary recipe and, if that recipe calls for lemon juice instead of lime juice, I almost always (only one exception, ever) quietly place it back on the shelf. Here are my recommendations for bartending books:

Esquire Drinks or Killer Cocktails - both by David Wondrich. The Esquire book is the only exception to my Bloody Mary rule.

Williams-Sonoma: The Bar Guide - passes the Bloody Mary test, great sections on history, ingredients, equipment, etc. These days you can pick it up for under $2 used. A bargain.

Remixed and/or Sippin' Safari - both by Jeff "Beachbum" Berry. The irrepressible Mr. Berry is the clear leader of the tiki cocktail rennaissance. His books are terrific and fun reads. I especially love the Kevin Kidney illustrations of Sippin' Safari. If your cocktailiness runs to Tiki, you are disgracing yourself by not having these books on your shelf.

You are also going to need some gear:

Shaker - The two-part Boston-style, in a metal-and-glass configuration. Make sure the glass part has ounce measurements along the side.

Jiggers - OXO makes the almost perfect one. (It needs a ¾oz measurement to be perfect.)

Strainer - You want the spring-encircled Hawthorne strainer from OXO, it will fit inside your Boston shaker. (Just make sure you clean the springs of citrus pulp, mint leaves, etc.)

Bar spoon - There is a great one out of Australia, Uber Pro-Stirrer, but that beauty (what with shipping from as far as one can be and still be in the same planet) will set you back almost $28! Basically you want a long-handled spoon, with a twist in the handle, and a flat/blunt opposite end. This way you can used stir (you'll need that to keep clear drinks like Manhattans and Martinis from getting cloudy), for bar measurements (some recipes call for a “barspoon” of X), for layering (down the swirly handle, and gently across the blunt bit at the other end) and for some moderate muddling or strirring from top to bottom with the blunt end.

Citrus juicer - Repeat after me: You cannot get away with bottled lime or lemon juice. You can get away with not-from-concentrate orange juice (I suggest Florida's Natural) which is especially handy when you have a horde descending upon you. But it is clearly a case of mere adequacy. But in the case of lemons and especially limes, there is no getting away from the fact you will have to squeeze all those lemons and limes. Accept it. The good news is that, properly refrigerated, those juices will keep quite nicely a couple of days. Pre-squeezing also allows you to strain out pulp, pith and pips. You can also zest these citri and do all kinds of fun things with the strips o' peel.

A side note on juices: Do not -- ever -- use canned juices. Your drink will suck, even if your guests are too polite or dipsomaniacal to say so. If bottled juice is bad, then tinned stuff is Dark-Lord-of-the-Sith-evil. You don't have to (and often can't) get fresh juices, especially of the more exotic fruits (and, depending where you live, a pineapple may count as exotic). In those cases, frozen pulp (Goya or La Fe are my standbys of choice) or the stuff in cartons is your best bet. The only semi-exception is banana nectar, and I suggest Looza.

Anyway. Citrus. I have an ancient Braun (ca. 1992) electric juicer and it still works perfectly. If your bar doesn't have access to electricity, the enameled steel ones (green for lime, yellow for lemons and orange for, well, oranges) are great. Just remember to cut the citrus halves ALMOST in half before using them in these squeezers.

Muddler - Vital for smushing chunks of fruits, peels, mint or sugar. I prefer the silicone and metal version. I stole a Bacardi branded one for $3 on eBay.

Zester/peeler - To cut long strips of peel from citrus. OXO.

Ice crusher - If your fridge doesn't have this feature (or if it doesn't perform this particularly well) you will need such a gizmo. I grabbed one that fits my Oster blender for $6 on eBay.

Blender - I adore my Oster. The separate blade assembly allows for two things: 1) different blades (for blending, for ice crushing, for frothing) and also the blade assembly neatly fits onto your standard Mason jar -- DO NOT USE WITH HOT LIQUIDS and DO NOT OVERFILL! It's also a snap to clean. Get the beehive model with the most power you can find. For slushy drinks I especially love the "cloverleaf" jar. There are a whole lot of glorious attachments for it, too.

Glassware - To start off, we will NOT be discussing wineglasses. That's another post. For cocktails you only really need four kinds of glasses: short fat ones, skinny tall ones, biggish stemmed ones and cocktail glasses. If you're sashaying down the pre-Prohibition aisle, to the tune of Prof. Jerry Thomas, you may want coupes, toddies, etc. If you're doing the whole Tiki thing, then ceramic coconuts, bamboo-shaped coolers, and tiki mugs could be your thing. This is all fine, mind you, but it ain't the basics. So skip that if you're not at the sophomore level or higher.

The short/fat ones are old-fashioneds, although you cannot get old-fashioneds any more. Now they are double old-fashioned glasses. They hold 13-14oz. of beverage goodness. Tall/skinny ones are highball (or cooler or Collins or chimney) glasses and usually hold between 14-16 oz. of beverage goodness.

The biggish stemmed ones are often called "water glasses" and usually hold between 16-20oz. They are good all-rounders, and can also hold water or beer in an elegant way. Anything you might envision served in a hurricane glass, or a tiki mug, or laden with fruit/veg. garniture, etc. can find a home in one of these. The cocktail glasses are usually called “Martini glasses,” and while it may take some effort, you really want them with a capacity of right about 8oz. Not only is this easier to serve and drink from, it's also a bit more responsible, host-wise.

If you feel a bit more ambitious, you can also opt for a shot glass or a snifter, which, for the maladjusted, is like a hippy wineglass with a very short stem.

My personal suggestion is to find a brand that is sold at restaurant supply stores. This will assure you of plenty of replacements and a decent price. My personal choices for the stemware is Luigi Bormioli's Michelangelo (this also extends to the wineglass selection, like I mentioned, a whole post in and of itself) and for the glassware Luigi Bormioli's Strauss.

Coasters - Get some, preferably those porous stone ones, or cloth (!) bar napkins. You want to absorb condensation, not merely direct its flow.

There. Now you know.

(Stay tuned as I update this with hyperlinks and photos.)

-J.

Today's update du jour.

2010-04-24T10:25:00.002-04:00

I am taking the opportunity that my dad, after a rough night, is resting away, therefore I can regale you, dear Internet, with bloggy goodness.

Not a colossal volume of said bloggy goodness, but if'n I were you, dear Internet, I'd be mindful beggars can't be choosers and just be grateful I'm putting digit to keyboard.

NOS, that exceptional child, has just been smitten by an unquenchable desire to play lacrosse. No real explanation how this mood overcame him, nor anything else even vaguely explanatory but he took his hard earned ducats and bought himself the necessary implements.

He has, in contrast, seen fit to explain his desire to become adept in the ways of massagery. Not only does he consider this a worthy social skill to have (having noted he often sees female lady persons ask their husbands/boyfriends to rub away a knot or kink on their shoulder; TFBIM is egregiously guilty of this) but that he might also find some way to make this skill lucrative.

Yes, my son could very easily be led down -- should strong correctives not take place immediately -- the path to a career in the gigolo industry. The sound you hear is that of dowry offer plummeting.

He is right at that point in his development when, for reasons which have not yet become clear to him, he is eager to "get" girls but -- and mark this -- not really sure what he would do with one, should he actually succeed in doing so. For the moment (those of you with sons have or will witness this phenomenon) he is just happy when a pretty girl talks to him as if he were not an idiot.

In other fronts, the various lights at the end of various tunnels have brightened by the smallest possible increment measurable. More news once the all-clear has blown.

I am also going to plant additional citrus. I'm thinking key limes, Tahiti (i.e. "regular") limes -- lime being, of course, the apex predator of the citric universe -- Valencia (i.e. "juice") oranges, Seville (i.e. "sour") oranges, and possibly some kind of lemon (torn between Meyer and "regular") with an outside chance of grapefruit.

The rosemary is taking over everything, which is nice, but the mint -- ostensibly a plant with weed-like growth tendencies -- ain't , which is not. And with the Kentucky Derby nearly at our throats, and my marveling at some glorious eBayed sterling julep cups, this becomes critical.

Mint, herb-wise, is a funny thing. What seems like a lot on the stem can be run through in minutes, just by making one measly round of juleps or mojitos. So, I was hoping to have a veritable shrub of the bloody thing, but instead I have a forlorn twig with three sad leaves. Instead of wondering "Oh, merciful heavens, whatever am I to do with all these basketfuls of mint leaves???" I am left scrambling and flexing my compensatory skills.

But, that you may know what a terrific exemplar of humanity I am, I proffer my thus-far secret Mint Julep recipe:

12 mint (I prefer spearmint) leaves, plus a sprig for garnish
2 tsp (10ml) superfine (i.e. "caster") sugar
Soda water (I suggest you invest in a siphon, but bottled water would be fine...NOT mineral water, though.)
Cracked ice
2 oz (+/- 60ml) bourbon whiskey (I prefer Maker's Mark for this, but you may also use a "Tennessee" whiskey such as Jack Daniel's)

Place the mint leaves in the bottom of an "old-fashioned" glass or julep cup. Sprinkle the sugar on top. Muddle (i.e. mush) these together until the leaves begin to break down to a paste -- disregard the unbelievers who say this releases "bitter oils" for that is simultaneously heresy and drivel -- if you haven't a muddler, a wooden spoon or a pestle would suffice. Add a splash of water (enough to release the minty paste from both your muddling implement AND the bottom of your drinking vessel) and fill the glass ¾ of the way with cracked, NOT crushed, ice, and add the bourbon. Add another splash of water, stir lightly. Place the sprig mint in your palm and give it a bit of a clap to "enliven it" and then garnish. Serve immediately. Repeat as needed.

You're welcome.

-J.

Housekeepingness

2010-04-14T10:44:00.003-04:00

Dear Internet,

1- If you an email, allegedly from me, from my Yahoo account...delete it unread. 'Tis vile spammery or worse.

2- Dad came home yesterday, almost exactly three months after being hospitalized. His condition is "eh." Some days he is amenable and agreeable, other days he is combative and unpleasant. His body is pretty atrophied and the rehab center was borderline useless. (They'd ask him if he wanted to do some therapy and he invariably said "no" and then they'd say "OK, then!" and take an early lunch hour. Not happy.)

For reasons I haven't quite fully understood -- nor with which I entirely agree -- everything he eats has to be pureed. Allegedly he is in danger of aspiration (I don't believe he is, but after 30 years of nobody listening to me when I've been right, I'm inured to my role as Cassandra of the Tropics.)

This is pretty tough all over. Toughest on my mom because, hey, that's the man she's loved since she was a 19 year old girl. Tough on my sister because she was the offspring my dad "got." It's tough on me, but this is tempered by the fact my relationship with my dad was, until VERY recently, not the most cordial. (No, there is nothing worthy of an unauthorized Hollywood biography.) But my dad and I had and have vastly different temperaments and he saw it as his mission to mold mine to his, never minding that mine was not particularly malleable. (Still isn't; ask TFBIM.)

It was only recently when he started becoming fully aware of the magnitude of his imminent decline that he mellowed and became more approachable. This isn't to say I never loved him, or that he never loved me...blahblahblah. He was simply not easy to approach and I don't think his temperament allowed him the flexibility to approach me.

3- In lighter news, NOS -- he's only 12, mind -- has become rather fond of holding court and fascinating 16- and 17-year old hotties with his tales of making sushi, discussing BBC programs* and other man-of-the-world things.

So there.

-J.

* He saw the whole Narnia (w. me) & Jane Austen (w. TFBIM) cycles, and so was able to provide sage wisdom and insight into some of the books the young ladies had to read for school.

So you know.

2010-04-08T13:39:00.002-04:00

There is stuff I want to tell, you but daren't tempt fate.

NOS is trying to dazzle a young lady five years his senior. Which wouldn't be all that impressive in, say, 30 years. But when 5 years is "42% older" it takes some doing.

Everything else still the same.

-J.

Hi, I'm Joke.

2010-03-23T21:16:00.003-04:00

Remember me?

Well, here is an update of sorts. I'll leave -- inadvertently, and with the very bestest intentions -- lots of items behind. Normally I shrink away from posting anything that sounds even remotely "down" or as if I am throwing a pity-party, and I'll try not to do so now, but I make no guarantees. Here goes:

My dad is STILL not home. When he fell and broke his shoulder we foolishly took him to one hospital (the one that was good for bones, to oversimplify) but that wasn't the one where his personal neurologist practices. So his combination of Alzheimer's and Parkinson's really got out of hand and the sheer volume of sedation, to say nothing of the rollercoaster of prescription dosages have taken a severe toll on him. A toll, I fear, from which he will probably never recover fully, if at all.

It's very jarring when the doctors ask you to decide for him what to do in terms of "heroic measures." It's one thing for you to decide what you want done or not done, quite another to decide on someone else's behalf.

So that's been that.

In the interim, the very dim light at the far end of the ridiculously long tunnel is slightly less dim, and the tunnel is marginally shorter. Unrelated to that light, another (dimmer) light has also popped up. I shan't jinx anything, but suffice it to say I have not worked this hard or traveled this often since I was a young newlywed husband. I am wildly exhausted. In the last 5 weeks, I have traveled far afield for three of those, with redeye flights littering my schedule.

Irony: I finally got comped to first class and a raging sinus headache laid me low so as not to enjoy the edible food and acceptable beverages. Not happy.

That's all I'll blog about this for now, lest jinxery overtake what passes for my good fortune these days.

Poppy and Badger, you guys need to email me because the 1st light at the end of the tunnel could be VERY good for you.

For those of you who are sticking with this blog...thanks.

-J.

P.S. I think I know what jinxed me way back when. It was starting down the road of building my own brick oven. Everything has collapsed in its wake.

Online focus group.

2010-01-22T08:57:00.004-05:00

OK. For those wanted to participate in this online focus group, instructions:

There are 4 logo & 4 "slogan" options.

Pick 1* of each.

This product** is aimed at both industrial users (supermarkets, food processors, etc.) & consumers. It's an all-natural spray (org. cert. pend.) which keeps food both a) fresh for 14-21 days & b) eliminates ALL foodborne pathogens such as e. coli, salmonella etc.

Comments VERY welcome, but strictly optional.

http://tinyurl.com/y8kncs2

Since different computers/browsers/operating systems will result in different layouts, please let me know which option (and slogan) you prefer...Option A, Option B, etc.

Thanks!

-J.

P.S. Let me know if there are issues viewing the file, it's a PDF

* More on that next post.

** If you think one works better for industrial users, and another one better for consumer users, let me know also, but pick your favorites.

Temporarily lighter news

2010-01-21T09:50:00.001-05:00

I need some volunteers for an ONLINE focus group. Go click on a couple of links, look at the two logos, pick A or B (comments optional) and that's it.

There is NO need to register, no need to sign up, leave an email address, etc., etc.

If you'd like to help, please comment here.

Sigh.

2010-01-19T19:53:00.003-05:00

Just wanted to bring you up to speed on something and, ask for your prayers.

On Sunday, my dad fell out of bed in his sleep and fractured his humerus. He walked into Doctor's Hospital's ER, after 11 hours (!) there he was admitted; surgery was considered and subsequently ruled out.

Since he suffers from both Parkinson's and Alzheimer's the fall, fracture and subsequent hospitalization has seen an exceedingly sharp decline in his condition.

He is completely incoherent, disoriented and agitated and not recovering from that state. What seemed like a moderate medical annoyance has now become a potentially grave health crisis. Tonight my mom, sister and I had to have The Extraordinary Measures Talk. It was saddening and surreal to select from a "menu" of possible actions.

"Yes, No, Yes, Yes, No."

Yes, this sucks. (Comments disabled on purpose.)

Busy! In a good way!

2010-01-16T15:49:00.001-05:00

Turns out the new(ish) project with the new(ish) client? Makes a product that would help IMMENSELY with relief aid in Haiti!

(More later!)

-J., humanitarian

Brrrr.

2010-01-05T13:57:00.001-05:00

Because it's near freezing here in the fringe o' paradise...I'll be busy with this.

Brrr.

-J.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again.

2010-01-04T10:09:00.003-05:00

Why do people have friends whose opinions they request and then disregard?

What is the correct protocol for when you are throbbing to say "You idiot! I TOLD you!" and just might have an embolism if you do not?

Here's the thing.

There are people, say a friend of yours (and I know that you know several just like this) whom we'll christen X, who express an interest in someone else (we'll call this specimen, Y). You tell X this is an unwise move, which is echoed by all the other friends and heartily seconded by all of X's family. X then starts dating Y. You try to dissuade X, as does X's family and all of X's friends. X and Y get engaged, and you desperately warn X, as do all of the above people and finally X and Y get married. You hang out at the bar and commiserate with X's friends and family wondering what the Hell X sees in Y.

In a movie, this would all lead* to a happily ever after. In real life, you know what happens. Cheating, divorce, acrimony, custody battles and, the one that drives me apoplectic, "I never knew Y was like that." or "Y changed after we got married."

Um, no.

Y was always like that, and everyone could readily tell Y was like that and, furthermore, we all spent 18 months telling, as bluntly as we could, that Y was exactly the sort of person you discovered to be $50,000 in legal fees later.

Moral of the story: If your best friend, your friends, you parents, siblings, cousins, aunt, uncles and inlaws all tell you Y is a trainwreck waiting to marry maybe, just maybe, you should listen and save yourself and your kid(s) a ton of aggravation and heartache.

Trying my bloody hardest to NOT thwack someone on the head with a heavy tome,

-J.

* Or two shepherds in Wyoming being unable to quit each other, but I digress.

NYE's post mortem

2010-01-01T12:05:00.002-05:00

Short version: The foodie/cocktailian potluck was pretty good.

Longer version: The salmon/blini thing FLEW. Even a couple of hours after they had disappeared, people meandered by the server as if a new platter would materialize. This leads me to the conclusion that some of you might be getting a gravlax and a jar of blini mix (add egg & milk).

The artichoke thing went down well also. But the salmon was the colossal hit.

Drinkswise, limoncello sours, Buena Vistas (a mint daiquiri or soda-less mojito, if you will) and Lapu-Lapu were the big deals. A few Mai-Tais were also slung out.

Someone else made a great flan, and a pretty good chili was there to be had.

By 12:03am I was utterly exhausted.

Today I am running on pure caffeine. I'd hate to see what my adrenal gland looks like today...I'm figuring it may resemble a rather abused walnut.

Happy Twenty Ten.

-J.

Dear 2009: I've changed the locks and you can send for your stuff later.

2009-12-31T09:25:00.005-05:00

This miserable dungheap of a year is finally ending. The only thing that could be said for 2009 is that it made 2008 look good, and that's not really a compliment.

So, much like Mme. LeFarge would prepare something excellent to knit to celebrate the rolling of the heads of assorted aristocrats, I am getting ready for this year's sendoff.

Ideally, NYE would find me in black tie and holding court, but this isn't the year for that. Between the Very Bad Stuff and the Stuff About Which I Am Hopeful*, I'm dog-tired. So, as it turns out, are everyone in our immediate circle of influence, so we're just having a sort of foodie potluck cocktail thing.

So I've spent the last couple of days preparing cocktail mixes and garnishes (lemon mix, lime mix, REAL cocktail cherries, orgeat, falernum, simple syrup, etc.) and some cocktailish edibles. This year, as it turns out hyper-expensive Caspian sea caviar is unavailable at ANY price. Which is convenient since we're in the middle of the Great Recession and people are broke. Cynical people would spot something suspicious about this...not you, natch, but suspicious people.

Anyway, this led me to gravlax. Next year I may go utterly insane and smoke my own salmon, but for now, 'tis enough, t'will serve.

For this sort of cured salmony goodness, I am utterly enamored -- so much so I have hardly altered it over the years, which speaks volumes -- this recipe. It replaces the sugar normally found in the cure with molasses (treacle?) and gives the salmon a lovely dark ring.

1½lb (+/-700gm) salmon (I like it skinned, you do whatever)
¼ c. (NFI what the metric equivalent is) coarse salt
1 T. sugar (I like light brown or "raw" sugar)
1 t. ground cumin
½ t. EACH ground allspice and sweet unsmoked paprika
¼ t. EACH ground cayenne pepper and nutmeg
¼ c. molasses (I prefer the mild stuff)
2 T. soy sauce (I like San-J "lite" tamari)

Mix all the solids together and rub all over the salmon (if you keep the skin, score it lightly to get some flavor penetration), wrap in cling wrap and weigh it down (I have heavy tomato cans for this very purpose). Stash it in the fridge AT LEAST overnight, and 12 hours would be even better. Remove from the wrap, shake off the seasoning, and pat dry. (This is key.) Mix soy sauce with the molasses and coat the salmon. Rewrap, tightly. Refrigerate overnight or longer.

Unwrap, pat dry and slice as thinly as your patience will allow.

Now, what I have decided to do for this is a simple blini and a chive creme fraiche.

Happy New Year (belatedly so for my pals down undah).

-J.

P.S. For all the cocktail excellentness, I have some lovely Finlandia in the freezer.

* Still chanting, praying, sacrificing vermin by the light of the full moon? Good. Just checking.

Fridge-cleaning, part 2.

2009-12-24T06:48:00.003-05:00

I've noted with some delight that several of you have posted entries along these lines. Excellent. World domination cannot be far away.

1- Turns out my 5th Blog-O-Versary was last week. Ooops.

2- As we speak, I am doing this. It's kind of a PITA to have two big nights during the Christmas season, but I am stamina personified. I have always liked to believe that, if needed, I could have jogged the entire Bataan Death March.

Actually, the way it works is that (and we're going by Iberic tradition ovah heah) we gather at my parents' -- more on that in a later post -- do the entire Iberic thing with people whom I have been assured are related to me by ties of blood. The Christmas Day we schlep up to my BiL's and do something brunchy, then schlep back down to my sister's and do something dinner-y (again with people whom I have been assured are related to me by ties of blood) and engage in The Public Opening of Gifts, another tradition. (More on that anon.) Then, at long last Boxing Day, whereby we host a brunch whereby we invite people we like and rarely see.

3- If 2008 sucked, 2009 was a nightmare. Easily the worst year of my professional life, by several orders of magnitude. Goodbye and good riddance. More on what is expected in 2010.

But this is Christmas, and professional disappointments and family vexations aside, I remember (and remind) what the real purpose and meaning of this season is.

4- Thanks to all of you who have stuck it out with me even through the rather, er, uneven bloggy output. MWAH.

XXXHoHoHo,

-J.

Unrelated unrelatedness.

2009-12-21T17:20:00.003-05:00

This post will be the equivalent of cleaning out my fridge. You've been warned.

1- I had to subject myself to some of the more unsavory outlying members of my gene pool yesterday. Even though it was INFINITELY less bad than feared, it has still soured my mood to this very moment. I simply don't like those people. My little fantasy is that someday it turns out either they or I are adoptees.

2- Numbah One Son is still crushing on a girl 33% older than he. His judgment cannot be faulted, as she seems utterly delightful. Charming, attractive (in an upmarket girl-next-door way), athletic, and all that. Granted, he is growing up to be a young man of admirable standards...but at some point attainability must rear its impertinent head. Compounding the problem is that yesterday at a Christmas not-quite-party, she went up to him, pecked him on the cheek and wished him a lovely Christmas.

It took him almost an hour to descend from the ceiling.

Fortunately, he is still not old enough to do something realllllllly embarrassing. But I am dreading the eventuality of him writing an abysmal sonnet, or something equally ghastly. When I think about the imbecilities which I committed in my early years, I am amazed the tic ever left me.

3- My laptop is dead, long live my laptop. It seems an article of faith that no two models of laptop can ever share a keyboard layout, so I am making even more typing mistakes than usual.

4- My AWESOME espresso machine is on life support. It can wheeze an excellent shot, but before it can perform that little miracle once more, it must be allowed a refractory period best measured with a sundial. This is vexing.

5- The thing I am not trying to jinx could still benefit from your chants, prayers, indigenous dances, etc.

That is all.

-J.

On a serious, but unrelated note.

2009-12-15T15:09:00.002-05:00

This has nothing to do with me, but, rather, a news article and it caused me to blow SUCH a gasket, I simply had to ~~vent~~ share.

**************************************

Take a look at this BBC report on morally dubious field-testing:

A major trial of a vaginal microbicide has produced no evidence that its use
reduces the risk of HIV infection in women.

The gel, PRO 2000, is intended for use before sexual intercourse to help reduce HIV infection. It was tested in a trial involving 9,385 women in four African
countries.

The risk of HIV infection was not significantly different among women supplied with the gel than in women given a placebo gel.

Stop and ponder that for a moment. So as to determine the effectiveness of the microbicide being tested, half of the cough-cough participants were provided a substance with no medicinal properties whatsover -- the placebo -- and then sent forth with the instruction to (re)commence sexual activity in a place where the population has a monumentally high incidence of HIV infection.

What the researchers considered mere guinea pigs in this "experiment" were people. People with families, friends, hopes, jobs, loves, children, fears, desires, and responsibilities. Don't forget, people, the cough-cough participants -- necessarily -- had to be uninfected women when the trial got started. It stands to reason the scientists were hoping the test subjects would be inseminated by men infected with "a lethal disease agent."

(It'd be kinda pointless otherwise, yes?)

Somehow (the article does not specify) the women in question were induced to comply (were they given Ecstasy? or told "I really love you and we'll get married as soon as I can move out of my parents' house."?) but they did get "free condoms and access to counseling about safe sex."

Which is nice.

Not clear eitheris if these women were satisfactorily informed as to

1) what "placebo" means,

2) what the chances of being one of those using the medically worthless substance were,

3) how likely the trial medicine's effectiveness would be.

If you think 9,000 volunteers gathered together without the truth being shaded...well, you must have a black belt in naiveté.

Lo and behold, the gel was not particularly effective in bringing down the transmission rate for HIV.

Which leads us to the money quote and the Bald Faced Gall Award.

Lead researcher Dr Sheena McCormack, of the Medical Research Council, which
part-funded the study, said: "This result is disheartening."

What one wonders is how disheartened those women (who were shoved out of the proverbial airplane with what turned out to be a knapsack and not a parachute) are these days.

What's holding up Judgment Day?

-J.

Hold that thought.

2009-12-14T16:02:00.002-05:00

Remember that thing I didn't want to jinx? I really don't want to jinx it now.

Just got back from a long-arse trip. Tired. Happy Chanukah to the Jewish kids.

More to ensue.

-J.

Verily it doth sneak up.

2009-12-04T09:09:00.003-05:00

We are fast approaching the blackest day in the Googlia boys' calendar: "Making Room" Day.

For those of you who are new* here, or simply maladjusted, Making Room is what we do +/- 2 weeks before Christmas. The kids present their wish list, and are summarily instructed that, should they be really serious about desiring these things, they ought to immediately go through their already colossal pile of "stuff" and cull it without mercy or pity.

This underscores the point the purpose of life is not to accumulate. If you've been blessed with material, um, blessings...fine. Enjoy them. But that's not to the point of this existence. And it also underscores that when we drill them with the importance of sharing we don't mean merely with each other, when we are watching them.

Last year, you will recall, we have a particularly ruthless episode of cleaning out the toy ~~vault~~ chest, producing a ceaseless parade of bags of toys to donate to poor kids.

The reason I post this is that I was reminded by something the lovely and gracious BabBab mentioned about sometimes feeling guilty that we give our kids too much stuff. There is some of that -- at least with me; my beloved grew up in more straitened circumstances and is missing that gene -- at play here, and this mitigates the guilt.

On a related note, this is the first year that giftage is specifically tied to performance in school and at home. NOS's year-end-review, as it were.

Welcome to the real world, kid.

-J.

*HA!

Thanksgiving: The Turkey, Pt. 2 (UPDATED! With pictures!)

2009-12-02T06:58:00.000-05:00

As the more assiduous and mnemonic among the assembled may recall, last year-ish I got a BBQ smoker. You will also recall (if not, the last couple of posts should have reminded you) of my love for Thanksgiving.

So, I have decided to combine the two in the cooking of the 3rd* turkey which will alleviate much oven space stress.

For anyone fool enough to try this, here's what my trial run -- yes, I do that -- hath revealed.

12-20lb Fresh Turkey** (not self-basting, or God forbid, "enhanced") I like Bell & Evans, but any turkey you like will do, the more natural, the better.
Brine with:
4 Cups Coarse Salt
1 Cup White Sugar
3 Gallons Water
4T dried sage
2T dried marjoram
1T dried thyme

Heat up 2 cups of water and make a "tea" with the herbs. Mix everything until sugar and salt are dissolved. (This recipe can be cut by 1/3 and used as an injection if time is short. Inject the turkey an hour or so before you're ready to cook.)

Remove giblets, turkey neck and any metal or plastic trussing. Put turkey in vessel (I like a smallish cooler, supplemened with those blue gel freezer packs) and make sure the entire turkey is submerged. Let brine 8-12 hours or overnight in the fridge. Remove turkey from brine, VIGOROUSLY pat dry, rub the outside with coarse salt (and a little baking soda) and, ideally, let rest in the fridge. The day of the cookery, place on the smoker.
One is s'posed to rinse prior to smoking, but I don't. Smoke using a wood of your choice, I use hickory. Smoke in the 245ºF-260ºF range until the breast reads 160ºF and the thighs are at least 170ºF.

Authorities will have you wrap the turkey with foil and let rest 30 minutes - 1 hour on the counter before slicing. I don't wrap, and only rest it 20-30 min. Covering with foil only steams the otherwise shatteringly crisp skin. This is key.

Ta-da!

-J.

* There ARE 56 people to feed, after all.

** Do NOT brine if you are using a Kosher turkey -- which are delicious -- as the final result will be more like turkey-flavored salt.

Thanksgiving's basics.

2009-11-25T11:40:00.004-05:00

Notwithstanding the experiment (see previous post) with the
BBQ-smoker, as a service to humanity here are my Thanksgiving recipes, all in one easy to access lump.
http://thejokeblog.blogspot.com/2005/10/thanksgiving-101-syllabus.html
http://thejokeblog.blogspot.com/2005/10/thanksgiving-101-soup.html
http://thejokeblog.blogspot.com/2005/10/thanksgiving-101-salad.html
http://thejokeblog.blogspot.com/2005/11/thanksgiving-101-turkey.html
http://thejokeblog.blogspot.com/2005/11/thanksgiving-101-potatoes-ormake-me.html(keep in mind the above recipe is sheer heresy; its purpose is to have the potatoes absorb as much dairy as is humanly, er, potatobly, possible. Yell at hyper-chef Joel Robuchon whose Three Michelin Star mashed potatoes have a ratio of 2:1 potatoes to butter. Stop and ponder that.)
http://thejokeblog.blogspot.com/2005/11/thanksgiving-101-stuffingdressing.html
http://thejokeblog.blogspot.com/2005/11/thanksgiving-101-pie.html (pedantic types will complain that pecans and maple do not belong together, but I say this shows post-Civil War unity)
and for people to see exactly what it all entails:
http://thejokeblog.blogspot.com/2005/12/better-late-than-ever-part-1.html

As I have already beat-to-death, Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday despite my (and NOS the sous-chef and NTS the appliance switch operator) having to sling out foodstuffs for a brigade of friends and relatives.

This year NOS has been assigned his very own turkey. I'll try to get footage of NOS wielding a knife. We love this because other members of the ::cough, cough:: family go all Chief-Inspector-Dreyfus when they see a 10 year old handling something sharp. I'm sure the lovely and gracious Tere knows WTF I'm going on about.

In a few minutes, I head directly for the butcher and pick up my order.

Doing it this way not only helps out the butcher (which in turn keeps the supply of excellent and unusual edibles coming my way) but a vastly superior turkey is had at a very comparable in price. I'd blater further, but I have to press on, as there are 50+ for whom to cook.

-J.

...and now, a brief...er...something.

2009-11-24T11:48:00.003-05:00

I take this moment to wax rhapsodic about Thanksgiving.

Later on I'll repost my recipes, and even the Complete Unedited True Story of Thanksgiving.

But first, I must do my little, awkward best to 'splain why I love it so.

As you read before, this holiday has a lot going for it. It's got the God thing without being too specific about which version of God is being mentioned, and all that. But it's what it doesn't have that really gets me excited.

No cards, no gifts to buy, not much in the way of decoration (turn your jack o'lantern's around and you're done) and not much in the way of commercialization once you exit the halls of foodieness. For the most part, most people celebrating Thanksgiving have a remarkably similar menu; something of a feat when you're talking about +/-300M people.

But, and let's be honest here, I must say I revel in the accolades. People love what I cook (maybe they're just happy they don't have to cook) and I can tell they are going to love it by the way the verious items are coming along.

I especially love that NOS and NTS want to help (moreso the former than the latter, possibly because NOS gets to wield knives and NTS isn't quite at that stage). NOS is also loving the attention and accolades while NTS simply likes tasting things all along. So it's an ol' man and his lads, flailing away with knives and fires.

Now you know.

-J.

Lights. Tunnel. That sort of thing.

2009-11-21T05:16:00.002-05:00

We interrupt this wildly neglected blog for some good news.

I can't, in the spirit of "In the name of all that's holy, do NOT jinx it," tell you what these good news are. But they are pretty good. Not out of the woods but, to mix my metaphors, the light at the end of the tunnel is finally larger than a pinhole. I actually exhaled restfully once or twice.

Which is a welcome development, and more than just for the "face value" of the good news. This is the first streak of good news since late 2007. Those of you who have prayed, sacrificed chickens, chanted, etc., are the object of my most fervent thanks.

This is the point of the post when I debate internally whether I should spill more details, or just stoically clam up. On the one hand, I think I owe the assembled throng a measure of candor, but I also shudder at the whinge-fest that would ensue from my keyboard. Especially since, let's be honest, as bad as things are this hasn't exactly been the Rwandan genocide.

For the moment, then, let's just go a bit via media.

I have learned a LOT about myself. I have learned that my marriage has been a LOT more resilient than I ever wanted to find out.

The good news is that I have confirmed I have my mother's "Bataan Death March" gene. The bad news is that there have been days when, during quiet moments, I could actually, literally, no-I'm-not-kidding, feel years being shaved off my life. Whenever, in 30 years' time, I blog about some horrible development in my health, you will all be able to snap your fingers in recognition and say "Of course! The Great Unclaimed Malady of 2007-2010!"

It takes, I suppose, "crucible moments" to reveal what lies at our core, both good and bad. I found it very jarring to have to face these aspects of my life, seeing as how my life's greatest ambition was to spend my earthly days in placid smugness and benevolent complacency, on a hammock and sipping a lovely beverage. Pride goeth before a fall, goeth the cliché and I have had to adjust my mindset in uncomfortable ways.

Among you are many, many, who have been startled by sudden crises or horrible developments that require, for successful navigation, perseverance above all. Having seen such from a new perspective, my hat is doffed in your direction. Seriously, to you -- and you know who you are -- Respect.

To keep this from devolving (further) into maudlin-land, I am now leaping to action as Thanksgiving is nearly upon us and, it being my VERY favorite holiday, I must prepare to feed a brigade of +/- 50 people.

Thanksgiving, I have discovered, is my favorite holiday because it combines a lot of the things I like. There's the God angle, the gratitude angle, the "this country has gone abysmal and so we'll get on this boat and go to this whole other country" angle, the obscure history and trivia angle, the lack of cards and presents and appalling mass market candy, and -- let's not deny it -- the hyper-foodie angle.

At least ovah heah, this is the one holiday (even more than New Year's) when one's foodie self can sashay freely in the open. Tell people you only feed your family organic chicken hand-reared by nuns and they'll roll their eyes, but tell people you're looking for the equivalent turkey and everyone nods sagely.

So there.

But before I do.

2009-11-05T12:36:00.003-05:00

Much swampedness, some (!) of it actually good and positive.

Now.

Before I get all hopped up on writing about these developments, I have a VERY strange, important and oddly minor favor to ask, for a client.

We're looking for suggestions of unknown-in-the-USA children's authors and/or book series. Can't exactly tell you why or divulge much. Even better would "up and coming" authors of such a type. Feel free to answer in the combox.

More to come.

-J.

Cuban Sandwich.

2009-10-07T16:53:00.003-04:00

Another one you missed.

-J.

******************************

Here is the RIGHT way to do this.

Start by slicing pickles. NOT the sweet kind, and (ideally) not the ones that sit at room temperature. You need the crunch. I'spose you could get away with the pre-sliced ones, but I like my surface:mass ratio just so, and the Pickle Industrial Complex will not comply.
Take Cuban bread, or Cuban rolls or, if you live in the provinces, something in the egg bread family (which turns this from a Cubano to a Medianoche, but whatever.) split them and mustardize them. The classic choice is plain ol' yellow mustardbut I like the "deli" style mustard better. You do whatever you want. Some people, bless them, like mayonnaise in this sandwich. It's NOT correct, nor authentic, but whatever.
Then you lay down your pickle coverage. I love pickles, so I practically TILE the bloody thing.
Over the pickles you'll need to place a layer of ham. Since I am an insufferable foodie, I use prosciutto (but not the hyper-fancy stuff). Either way, you want to make sure it's sliced so thin, as to be translucent. This allows you to plop it down in a wavy sort of way, which is key to get the right sort of chew and mouthfeel.
Next,the swiss cheese. Yes, it must be swiss cheese. Or, if you're insufferable as I am, Swiss cheese (Emmentaler is a teeny bit preferable to Gruyere, but either is wonderful.)
To get the right melting action, you will need to grate it. Yes, slices will work okay, but by the time the cheese is melted, the bread will be too dry and brittle.
Shredding it in the food processor is fine, but yields bad photos. So I hand grated. Just for YOU, Internet. Scoop it up and get ready to apply to the sandwich.
Like so.
If you like to give the cheese a head start on the melting -- or you are a raving pyro -- you can use a kitchen torch.
Now, take your leftover roast pork (ideally a very citrus/garlic intensive roast pork, although that can be doctored up) which you have warmed up to about 125F (this is important) if you have roasted it properly, it should shred into luxuriant, pillowy nuggets of porcine goodness.Assemble atop the cheese (cold side cold, warm side warm). You want about a 3:2 pork:ham ratio. So that your whole assemblage looks like this.
Fold the bread around the filling. Place in a panini/sanwich press or, if you have a whole battalion to feed, use a griddle set to medium-high, buttered lightly -- DO NOT USE MARGARINE -- and toast the cheese side first until it JUST melts, and then flip over to warm the other side.
Eat.
-J.

A history lesson.

2009-10-01T18:54:00.011-04:00

More from the mo(u)ldering crypt of posts which didn't get auto-posted.

-J.

************

It's 1521. You're a chieftain of some lovely Pacific island. You have the most women, the biggest hut, your pick of outrigger canoes. Life is good. Then some big ships show up. "Great. MORE Europeans." The Europeans make friends with your rival chieftain from the other side of the island. You snub everyone. The Europeans take the snub as a snub and choose to attack you. But they misjudge the tide and leap into water waist deep in full armor, and too far to use their weapons.

You slaughter them all, especially the leader.

That leader was Magellan. Immortalized by the Magellan Straits and also that GPS* thingy, among other things.

You?

You're chief Lapu-Lapu and, instead, you're immortalized by a tiki drink served in a cored-out pineapple, most famously at Walt Disney World's Polynesian Resort's Tambu Lounge. This past Labor Day** we went to this very spot. TFBIM had the selfsame beverage. Verily she loved it and has developed a fondness therefor and I was commissioned to replicate it.

Like so.

You start off with a pineapple. Note the corer. US$3 on eBay. Before I get more carried away with this, let me say I cannot say enough good things about this cheap-o corer. Yes, you can get fancier ones, made of stainless steel with sharper blades and finer teeth. These will give you less jagged pineapple rings, if that means that much to you. I, personally, couldn't care less about the aesthetic qualities of the rings...so the extra 600% premium isn't worth it.

You lop the top off, much like Lapu-Lapu's warriors seemed to have preferred. (Hence the name?)

All you have to do to core out the pineapple is center the corer right on the, er, core of the pineapple and drive the corer in, twisting with slight downward pressure. When you get down as far as you want, you pull up as with a manual corkscrew.

Et voilà

TIP: Place the pineapple being cored inside bowl of some kind, as there WILL be juice spouting forth generously and you want to capture said juice. This will also keep your wife from exhibiting displeasure.

1 Tbsp Simple "2:1" syrup

1 Tbsp Passion fruit syrup (50-50 passion fruit pulp and 2:1 sugar syrup)

1 Tbsp Orgeat

2 oz Orange juice (absent any fresh-squeezed, of all the supermarket brands, I suggest Florida Natural)

2 oz Pineapple juice (absent any fresh-squeezed -- you'll recall I said above you wanted the fresh juice -- I suggest Dole; this scenario presumes you're making this in a regular glass)

2 oz Dark rum (Bacardi 8 in this case)

2 oz White Rum (I like Cruzan Aged Light, but I was trying to finish up the Bacardi Silver)

[Picture would have gone here, but NOS was getting hollered at by TFBIM.]

Put this all in a shaker with about 6oz of cracked ice. Then you shake...

...and shake. Until the tin of the shaker frosts over.

TIP: With any drink calling for syrups, juices, etc. and you're only using ONE measuring vessel (i.e. a jigger or shot glass) do so in this order: syrups THEN juices THEN any flavored liquors or liqueurs THEN the spirits.

And here you are.
(all photos -- both the excellent and the ones which proved unusable -- courtesy of Numbah One Son)

-J.

* SatNav to the rest of the Anglosphere.

** First Monday in September to the rest of the Anglosphere.

Whither Junior

2009-09-28T14:59:00.003-04:00

Another from the archival mists, or something.

-J.

********************

One thing I have noticed in having two sons is the dwindling of naming a son for his father. Numbah One Son is not merely a Junior, he's actually a fourth. He, for reasons which I suspect are inextricably linked to genetic insufferability, particularly enjoys appending that IV to his name.

But within his (and his brother's sphere of influence) there are pratically no other boys named after their dad. This is not a rant about people who give their children crazy-ass names such as Carrion or Treyteur, what PG Wodehouse used to term "raw work at the font." In fact, our census shows exactly one other Junior, and that's pretty much all there is.

I'm not really sure why this is.

Some of them, I am reliably informed, have to do with the fact the wife, while she may love and adore her husband, she does so in spite of his name. Maybe it reminds her of a childhood bully, maybe she has harbored a grave distaste for the most prominent consonant thereof, maybe there is a villainous TV character who shares the name, no matter. That name will NOT be levied upon HER baby. And that's that.

My BiL is a Junior, and when my nephew was born, his wife resolutely refused to allow the lad to be saddled with a III. And so the long day wears on.

This isn't to say that every dad should have a lad named in his honor, but I am perplexed as to why this is in decline.

-Joke the III

Cherry

2009-09-27T17:20:00.004-04:00

Yeah, yeah. I know. Mea maxima culpa. Here's what you would/should have seen a while back.

-J.
********************

One of the latest things which has taken the world by storm, or at least my corner of it, is taking the decidedly ~~fanatically, dysfunctionally obsessive~~ Joke-like approach to food and extrapolating it into the cocktail sphere.

The first guilty party to go up against the wall, in matters of food or beverage, is The Artificial Ingredient. So, in pondering the ideal Manhattan cocktail, I was stymied by the fact the cocktail cherry is a concentrated repository of multisyllabic chemical evil. Of late, there have been some places where cherries not aswim in an ocean of something-hyde and something else-zoate are available, but at prices which betray their purveyors' wide-eyed innocence regarding prices during The Great Recession.

This leaves me no alternative but to pursue the DIY approach, as I am simply not going to pony up $22.99 for a mere 8oz. Especially when I know the ingredients contained therein add up to a princely $2 at very most.

Before you start to bemoan the the effort required to make your own cocktail cherries know this – setting aside the time required for cooling -- a batch takes but a mere 10 minutes.

There are, of course, aeleventy gazillion different cocktail cherry recipes, but a good starter cherry recipe is this one:
6 pounds dark, sweet cherries
¾ cup sugar
1 cup water
¼ cup fresh, strained lemon juice
2 cinnamon sticks
1 ¼ cups cherry brandy or liqueur. For this go-around we have Cherry Heering, but the next time it'll be Kirchwasser. (You can use brandy, bourbon, pisco, rum, rye, grappa, vodka...etc.)

Put sugar, water, and cinnamon in a large saucepan over medium-high heat. Bring to a boil and reduce heat to medium-low. Add the lemon juice and cherries. Simmer 5 minutes. Remove from burner, fish out the cinnamon sticks, and stir in the liqueur/liquor.

The smart thing to do is to pit the cherries, but I chose to keep the pits for a more complex flavor...and because I couldn't be bothered in my zeal. Next time, I will enlist someone I have offsprung to man the pitter. I also chose basic supermarket sweet (NOT SOUR) cherries.

These cherries are amazing!

You will need to make extra, because you will ingest half of them warm right from the stove. These will definitely migrate into your supply of vanilla ice cream and banana splits will suddenly begin to materialize. The ensuing cherry liqueur is also spectacular. Mind you, bereft of chemical escort, the cherries will eventually "turn" at +/-2 weeks, and they hit their peak of excellentness at the 1 week mark.

Try it, I exhort you!

-J.

Oh.

2009-09-26T13:57:00.001-04:00

Seems the auto-post thing, um, didn't. So there has been an ominous silence from ovah heah.

Please stand by.

Management regrets the inconvenience.

Orange Marmalade for the Slothful

2009-09-14T12:27:00.002-04:00

I finally got sick and tired of standing over a simmering pot of marmalade, stirring like an idiot.

Why do we stir the orange/sugar thing? Because if you don't it will stick to the bottom of the pot and scorch. By stirring each molecule of (future) marmalade gets just enough heat, but not so much that it will scorch.

Inner Voice: Ah...but doesn't an oven provide the same sort of even heat?

Me: Mmm...yes.

IV: And don't you also stick many things in the oven to cook that normal people usually put on the stove?

M: True that.

IV: So, then work on a method for making orange marmalade in the oven.

And so I did, and these are the results.

2lb Seville oranges
1 lemon, zest finely grated and juiced
6 c. water
3¾ lb. sugar (feel free to make this less sugar-y, the oranges from our tree -- I love saying that -- are unrelentingly sour and call for a ton of sugar)

Wash the oranges and lemon thoroughly. Slice the oranges into 1/8" (4mm) rounds (use a mandoline) saving the seeds as you go. Stack the slices and quarter them. Place the oranges into your jam pot. Put the seeds in a cheescloth/gauze/muslin bag and add. (These carry tons of pectin and you want that.) It should hold 8qt/8L. Add the lemon zest and juice and the water to the pot, set over high heat and bring to a boil, approximately 10 minutes. Once boiling, transfer to a roasting rack (to catch any unlikely spillage) in the dead center of your oven set at 250F-275F (120C-135C) which varies because all ovens are different. The idea is to have yourself a rapid simmer. Cook for 40 minutes or until the fruit is very soft.

While this is going on, put a saucer in your freezer. Boost the heat of your oven to return to a boil (in MY oven that's 350F/175C). Fish out the seed sack (that is NOT some lurid euphemism) and add your sugar and stir and cook, until it reaches 222-223F (105F-106F) on a thermometer -- I like a remote thermometer w. an alarm, for added idiot-proofness -- which in my oven takes 15 to 20 minutes. Since all ovens are different, the first time you make this, you may need to monitor the heat to prevent a boilover. (You also don't want to caramelize the sugar for a million different reasons.)

Test the set of your marmalade: drop a teaspoon of it on your chilled saucer and let it sit a half minute. Then tilt the saucer. The marmalade should be a soft gel, running slightly. If it's thin and "dripples*" keep cooking, checking every 5-10 minutes. If it resembles silicone, you've overshot your mark.

Your mantra should be: The pectin in the fruit needs to hit 222F/105C or so to do its magic.

Put in cans/jars as you normally would.

Boom.

Done.

[photos to ensue]

-J.

* There really is no other word.

Beef. I like beef.

2009-08-18T09:09:00.007-04:00

In two separate discussions elsewhere with the lovely 'n' gracious BabBab and the equally lovely and equivalently gracious Badgeah, the subject of steak came up.

Which prompted me to dig up and complete this post that had been mo(u)ldering away in a near-forgotten sector. (What the coarse and vulgah population might rudely term my "draft pile." But they'd be wrong.)

Anyway.

Last Christmas I received a sampler pack of seasonings from Williams-Sonoma. Smallish tins of +/- 1 oz. each. Mexican this, Seattle that, etc. Anyway. They had a steak seasoning which I rather enjoyed. But, while one is trudging through The Great Recession, buying the large tin at $10 (!) for a mere 4 oz.* (!!) is not going to happen.

So.

I set about deconstructing it and, frankly, improving it. If you ever pick up these sorts of seasonings you will notice three things at the head of the ingredients list (in the USA, ingredients have to be listed in order, starting with the most abundant one) sugar, salt, and paprika. Sure, they may give them ultra-posh adjectives such as "Herne Bay sea salt" or "Peruvian sun dried paprika" but you must realize these things are cheap filler. Also there were some variants of ingredients which I thought (correctly, as my lab research shows) could be substituted or upgraded.

Thus, I gathered Numbah One Son (Numbah Two Son is more of the taste-tester) and we assembled in the kitchen, gathering our spice jars and an old coffee mill we comandeered AGES ago for the purpose of spice grinding. You will NOT believe how helpful NOS was. He has an eerily accurate palate.

But I digress.

Here is my version. It is, on purpose, NOT identical to the original, because as noted above, I believed I should change some of the things I didn't like "while I was at it." I'll note those as I go.

(This is all by volume, use teaspoons, cups, or whatever.)

3 parts granulated garlic (Usually I'd go for fresh garlic, but in these applications, it'd fall off and/or scorch. So I got a good brand of granulated. The original rub had granulated roast garlic, but I found it got bitter over the chargrill's high/dry heat so I switched...oh, make sure you use the granulated and not the powdered stuff, which often has bizarro ingredients!)

1 part EACH black peppercorns and red pepper flakes (in the original, I couldn't detect much heat from the chile seeds/ribs...but I tend to like a bit of heat, so I used flakes instead of a seeded dry chile...although next time I might experiment with a varietal such as cascabel)

2 parts each coriander seed, dill seed, yellow -- I s'pose you could try brown -- mustard seed.

Put all in a spice mill and whiz 3-4 pulses...you want a pretty good crack, but not a homogeneous powder. I like mine a TINY bit finer than spice rubs straight out of the tin...in my opinion you get better adhesion that way.

Oh, and note the lack of salt. I like salting the meat first, letting the juices flow back and forth in an osmosis ballet and then adding the spices.

What I did is get a big ol' segment of cow (pretty cheap per pound at the warehouse-type places) and then slice myself. But before doing that, I let it wet-age. If you get the beef -- do not try this with pork, AMHIK -- you can age it in the original cry-o-vac if it has not lost its seal. I've let mine go 16 weeks and the results are spectacular. The taste isn't as minerally/gamy as with dry-aged beef, but it is really tender.

Now.

What you do with your steak is salt it first as it comes up to room temperature. You will see some "perspiration" on the surface and then you sprinkle your spice rub. Then go light your charcoal fire. (Or wait 30 minutes if your BBQ grill is a gas model.) For max foodieness, I used real hardwood charcoal, but you use whatever. I also use one of those "chimney starters" so that I don't need to worry about (yuck) lighter fluid. When the coals glow, you dump 'em into the BBQ grill.

You drop the charcoal WAY to one side of the vessel. Pile it as far and high on ONE side as possible. This is key.

When the "coal side" is intolerably hot, you put your steaks on the grate. You could, if you are insufferable like I am, give them that quarter-turn for fancy-pants grill marks. The idea is to sear the outside, HARD. You want as much stuff caramelizing there as possible. This is also key. Do not peek, do not flip, etc. Let it go there. 1 minute per inch of thickness per side. So, a 2" thick steak would go 2 minutes per side. Then you slide them to the part of the grill where the coals are NOT. You want the steak to cook to your desired doneness as slowly as possible. The slower you go, the more time certain tenderizing enzymes have to do their voodoo. This is key.

Finally, take them off and cover LOOSELY with foil, let them rest 10-15 or so, so the juices -- which are trying to exit as a result of the heat, much like water exits a boiling pot -- have time to calm down and go back into the steak where they should be.

There.

-J.

* That's 110gm for the metric kids.