Christmas is over and the New Year is here. We are finally back at home, having brought our journey through the center of America to a close. It was a great trip filled with highs and lows and hours and hours in the car. We drove through six states starting from our homebase in Chicago and ending up in Louisiana, with a layover to see friends in Little Rock on the way back. We were able to pack quite a bit into just over a week. So much excitement, from our trip as well as some pre-celebrations in Chicago, that we just have to share some of it with you. Let’s take a quick look back before we move forward with a new year:
I got a few books recently, one of which, Tasting Beer, has inspired me to, well, taste beer. You should, too. Let’s have a tasting party. An e-tasting party.
We need to pick one or two beers that we can all get our hands on. Any suggestions? Any particular beer you’ve been wanting to try?
Sometime after we decide on a beer, I’ll post some general notes on tasting and anything unique about the style of beer we’ve chosen.
Tasting. Everyone can taste the beer, jot down some tasting notes, and post them as a comment.
Remember you can be a tasting novice or pro, it doesn’t matter. Heck, you don’t even have to like beer. If you think beer tastes like cardboard, let us know, just make sure you tell us what kind of cardboard it tastes like—is there lots of Sharpie-scrawl, packing tape astringency, unbalanced corrugation?
Scotch is a difficult ingredient to mix, at least for me. I think this conclusion is at least somewhat supported by the dearth of classic Scotch-based cocktails, the most common of which is the Rob Roy (bonus tip, I’m pretty sure that is an answer to a Trivial Pursuit question). Unfortunately, the Rob Roy isn’t fizzy, it’s basically a Scotch Manhattan. For my party I needed something fizzy. Luckily there is such a cocktail outlined in Imbibe by David Wondrich.
Morning Glory Fizz
3/4 Tbsp Sugar
1/2 oz Lemon Juice
1/4 oz Lime Juice
1/2 tsp Absinthe
1 egg white
2 oz Blended Scotch
In a shaker dissolve sugar in 1 tsp of water, add remaining ingredients and fill 3/4 full with ice. Shake and strain into a good sized bar glass and top with Seltzer. Note that this is a “morning beverage, which will give good appetite and quiet the nerves.”
From Harry Johnson’s New and Improved Bartender’s Manual, 1882, via Imbibe.
Do you like BLT’s? If so, you’re gonna love this. If not, you’re probably still gonna like this. I’m not crazy about BLT’s myself. I blame the tomato. I try to like tomatoes… I really do. Every time I get a sandwich, I restrain myself from saying “hold the tomato, please”, because I think “this time, this time I’m gonna like it.” And you know what always happens? I pick the tomato off. But praise the lord! I have found a tomato I can appreciate, thanks to BUST Magazine. In their Dec/Jan issue, I found this intriguing recipe, and because of my blind determination to like tomatoes, I decided to give it a try. We served these Inside-Out BLT’s at Brian’s birthday party, and they were a big hit. Unfortunately, we didn’t get a good photo (before Sarah H. scarfed them all down), so I drew a wee picture to illustrate their cuteness. Ok, ok. I helped Sarah eat them all.
“Start with 2 pints of cherry tomatoes. Cut off the top and scoop out the insides of each one. Fry a package of bacon (turkey or tempeh bacon works too) until crispy. When it’s cool enough to handle, crumble and mix with a shredded head of iceberg lettuce. Fill your tomatoes with this and top with a drizzle of mayo. These can be made up to a half hour before serving but no earlier, as they can get soggy.”
If you’re like me, you’re not afraid of a gut-filling glob of Miracle Whip and a heartier (anti-artery-er) portion of bacon. Instead of the bacon bits and shredded lettuce combo, I mixed the lettuce with a few spoon-fulls of the Miracle. Then each little tomato buddy was topped with a single chunk of bacon. Heaven, people. Heaven.
I’ve got weddings on the brain! Between the Crate & Barrel Ultimate Wedding Contest we entered, my sweet baby Gracie’s upcoming nuptials and all the wedding season commercials/shows on tv, I can’t seem to escape it. Like many a daydreaming schoolgirl, I’ve already started planning ours, even though we haven’t even set a date yet. Below are some of the lovely, handmade things I’ve picked out from Etsy — a mix of sweet and quirky. For those of you just joining us, Brian and I have entered the contest (mentioned above) to win $100,000 and the aid of a talented wedding planner to create our dream wedding. We need a lot of votes to win, so if you haven’t already voted, please take a few seconds to do so! Vote for us here.
EDIT: If you’ve voted for us, you can now enter our giveaway to win a stunning embroidered necklace from Marañón, a featured seller on Etsy. Enter here.
4. Gold Paper Bowl from Up In The Air Somewhere – On the reception tables, filled with small pebbles and a tea light. Might need to see how flammable they are though…
2. We Make Sense Poster from Things by bubbo-tubbo — I want to have this printed on rectangles of cotton (preferably recycled or eco-friendly material) for reusable napkins that our guests can take home.
6. Big Dots and Bunting Teapot from Ninainvorm — Because you gotta offer your guests a little after-dinner cup of tea, right? Really, I want all the plates to be from Nina, too.
11. Porcelain Pie “Tins” from Lorena Barrezueta — We’re thinking the food will be “picnic fair”, so I think these would make cute serving dishes for the potato salads and such.
When creating our cocktail menu, one of the ways I found inspiration was through perusing menus from established bars and restaurants. This can be particularly interesting, because while you may know which ingredients are used, it’s still up to you how to put them together.
I took one drink from Mark Peel and Audrey Saunders’ (recently in trouble for raw egg whites in NYC) new LA bar/restaurant The Tar Pit — The Old Cuban. For the preparation I stuck pretty close to a traditional mojito, just substituting aged rum and champagne for white rum and soda.
In a 16-oz mixing glass, gently muddle together:
1 large sprig spearmint
3/4 oz simple syrup
Add:
Half a spent lime hull,
1 oz of lime juice
2 oz aged rum (I used Angostura 1919)
3 oz sparkling wine
Since I was the only one making cocktails at our party the other night, service was slow. Luckily we had a really nice punch to keep people sippin’.
In this video, Jim Ryan, the “Brand Ambassador” for Hendricks Gin, walks you through how to make Over-Under Winter Punch. Now you’ll have to get past Jim’s post-ironic retro mustache, but if you can, the result will be a fantastically pleasant punch. I didn’t have a liter of Hendricks on hand, so I blended some Tanqueray and Dry Fly. Worked great.
Results from last weekends cocktail trials are in and surprisingly, one of the most popular cocktails was one I created myself: the Pink Slip:
2oz Tanqueray (works well with white Rum, too)
3 basil leaves
2 tsp raspberry syrup
3/4 oz lime juice
ginger beer
a dash or two of grenadine
Add raspberry syrup, lime juice, and basil to a fizz glass. Muddle. Fill glass 3/4 full with cracked ice. Top with ginger beer. Then top the whole thing off with a little bit of grenadine for a bit of a color boost!
A note on ingredients: You’ll benefit by making some of these ingredients yourself:
Raspberry syrup is really easy. Start with a rich simple syrup. Simmer a 2:1 mixture of sugar to water in a small pan until it is clear and not cloudy. Let it cool and poor over a bunch of raspberries (frozen will work fine). Let the syrup and raspberries sit out overnight before straining out the berries. You should be left with a sweet red berry syrup.
For the ginger beer, I used Audrey Saunders recipe, which is equally easy. If you use housemade ginger, you’ll want to add a little seltzer to give it a sparkle.
How do you know if you’re an overachiever? If, for your fiancé’s birthday party, you’ve made a canopy of streamers that covers your entire ceiling, using strips of magazine organized by dominant color and arranged in rainbow order, then it’s probably a safe bet.
