Yawn. Our friends' Oscar party is always fun -- that's always due to the great people there and the great food (with awfully punny names, based on one of the nominated movies), and never due to the Oscar telecast itself, which this year was as boring as ever. Wes sent in a quote from Slate that he felt summed it up:
Yeah, that's about it. Even Rock was below his usual standards, for the most part. (ABC probably didn't let him say most of what he was planning.) There were a few entertaining (if not memorable) moments, though:
Best parts of Oscar night for me:
Ehh, it's all about the food, anyway. [ Link to today's entries ]
Quote of the day. From "The West Wing", set in a world where good people run the United States, a world into which I try to retreat as often as possible so I can forget the ugly, grim reality of the actual current presidency, just for a little while ... This scene took place just before Thanksgiving, as C. J. was explaining the White House turkey tradition to the president:
Me too. We're gonna watch it anyway, though; it's a good excuse for a party, and an annual tradition at the home of a coupla friends of ours. There'll be a big spread of food, all of which will be related to an Oscar nominee, however marginally, plus lots of hooting, jeering and making fun of people's outfits. We're not sure what food item we're bringing yet, but drinkwise I'm thinking of bringing fixins for making Aviation Cocktails, in honor of "The Aviator". [ Link to today's entries ]
Wilco, live on NPR, tonight! Starting about 9:30 ET / 6:30 PT, NPR will webcast Wilco live from the 9:30 Club in Washington, DC. Unfortunately, it's on opposite my own radio show, so I can't hear it (argh). I give you official permission to skip "Down Home" tonight. (Thanks to Robin from "All Songs Considered" for the tip!) The Cocktailian. Today Gary Regan, in his fortnightly column in the San Francisco Chronicle, takes on a classic with a bit of an Oscar tie-in. I don't know if "The Aviator" Howard Hughes' associates drank these cocktails while he was drinking from his milk bottle, but The Aviation Cocktail would have been an appropriate choice. It's a 1930s-era classic, beautiful, delicious and elegant, and you can (and should) make them often. The key ingredient, maraschino liqueur, can be a bit hard to find these days, not quite as common as it once was (behind every bar, in its day). Los Angelenos can find my preferred brand, Maraska from Croatia, at Beverage Warehouse on McConnell in Marina del Rey; Luxardo, the more well-known brand, can be had at The Wine House on Cotner and Wally's on Westwood. New Orleanians should try Martin Wine Cellar on Baronne or Vets, or Dorignac's. Everyone else, mail-order it from Beverages and More. Maraschino (ma-ra-SKEE-no) is an essential part of any serious cocktailian bar, and will open a wealth of new and classic recipes to you. Frackin' brilliant! Via Wes, VFXWorld offeres a news release:
I was not a fan of the original series. Good ideas, but (I thought) stupid execution. The new "Galactica" is far, far better than we could ever have hoped. The writing is excellent, aimed at grown-ups and succeeding brilliantly in depicting the anguish of an attack on a civilization-wide scape (out of twelve planets full of humans, only 50,000 remained alive after the Cylon attack). It's smart. It's gritty. The documentary feel of the cinematography makes it feel more real to the audience. The acting is top-notch, especially Edward James Olmos and Mary McDonnell. The effects are outstanding, given 2005 technology vs. 1978 technology (and we don't see the same four effects shots over and over again!). This show is so good that it softens the blow of "Star Trek: Enterprise" being cancelled. That show had its ups and downs, but was exponentially better this season after my old Loyola classmate (for a brief period, at least) Manny Coto took over as executive producer. I'm really sorry to see it go, but "Galactica" will go a long way toward filling that hole. (Speaking of Manny ... I've been meaning to write to him to see if I can find out why the lead character in his previous series "Odyssey 5", Peter Weller's space shuttle commander, was called "Chuck Taggart" ...) NY goes to NO. The New York Times pays another visit to the Crescent City, this time stopping at Uglesich's, Upperline, Crabby Jack's (a new place from the Jacques-Imo's folks, on Jefferson Highway) and Herbsaint. I should give Herbsaint another try. I really wanted to like it, but I really didn't. It didn't help that we went during Jazzfest and they were mobbed, but my shrimp gumbo had no actual shrimp in it, the fish was burnt on one side and raw on the other, and the meal was saved only by chocolate beignets filled with warm chocolate sauce, which is one of the three finest desserts I've ever had in New Orleans. Sazeracs in St. Louis. Via Brennan, the St. Louis Riverfront Times tells us there's a bar in that town now serving what seem to be pretty damn good Sazeracs. They're so rare outside of New Orleans that I think this warrants a mention. Erato is a nice-sounding wine bar in St. Louis that features a small cocktail menu as well, containing five wonderful classics -- Sazerac, Bellini, Kir Royale, Mojito, Caipirinha -- and one bucket of swill called the Deposition, made from vodka and Red Bull and, as far as I'm concerned, fit only for spraying on plants to kill aphids. Very bizarre. Great to know, however, where one can get a Sazerac in St. Louis. This is important information (well, if you're ever in St. Louis, at least). Hey! Robert has updated the DrinkBoy site, and I noticed that he's added my very own Hoskins Cocktail to the collection of recipes. This is the first time (as far as I know) that the Hoskins has found its way into a permanent compendium of cocktail recipes. Thanks, Robert! Fakin' bacon. Header egregiously purloined from Brennan, but it's his own fault 'cause he sent me the link in the first place. What link, you ask? Well, the lifelong dream of every red-blooded heterosexual male (or lesbian) on the planet, that's what -- hot babes come to your home and cook bacon for you. It's an idea whose time has come (although a division staffed by hot guys to cover bacon-loving gay men seems an egregious omission at this point). Delightfully clever website, but alas, to paraphrase the repeated-ad-nauseam tag line of the now-defunct AMC TV show "FilmFakers", "we're not makin' bacon ... we're fakin' bacon!" So many dreams dashed ... You melon-farming Ashcroft ... The dubbing of movie dialogue for TV and airline versions has always cracked me up. My personal favorite was way bak in high school, when I saw a TV version of Alfred Hitchcock's final film, "Family Plot". Bruce Dern was a chauffeur, driving a car with Barbara Harris in the back seat, and she said something that caused him to exclaim, "Oh, for Christ's sake" ... except that's not what we heard. What we heard was, "Of, for rice cake." I don't think any actual native English speaker in the history of the spoken language has ever once exclaimed, "For rice cake." I also loved the scene in a "Father Ted" episode where a guy at a picnic site screams at Ted, "Fup off! Fup off, you fuppin' baxter! Fuppin' fup! You pedrophile!" Bewildered, Ted asks him what he's going on about, whereupon the man points to a sign posted at the picnic site that says "No swearing." Wes' longtime favorite was in "Repo Man", when "motherfucking son of a bitch" became "melon-farming son of a buck". Again ... never in actual speech. The funny thing is, it's patently obvious to anyone with half a brain, even kids (in fact, especially kids) what they're actually saying, and what they dub into these poor actors' mouths is an insult to our intelligence. Well ... until recently, anyway. Heh. (Via Wes.)
Bein' a fuppin' Ashcroft, no doubt! The fecker. [ Link to today's entries ]
Bush chickens out of German "Town Hall". Via Kos, Der Spiegel reports that Bush's highly touted Amreican-style town hall meeting with average Germans was cancelled after he realized he couldn't pre-screen the audience or script their questions.
The German word for "yellow" is "Gelb". The German word for "chicken" is "Huhn". Oh, by the way George and Karl, the German people had quite enough of loyalty oaths back in Hitler's day. Media double standard. Via AmericaBlog, a BuzzFlash interview with communications expert and professor Mark Crispin Miller:
Remember what the right was like during the Clinton years. Can you imagine if something like this had happened under Clinton or Kerry? (Then again, as far as I know no Democratic presidents have felt the need to hire propagandists and have them masquerade as journalists ...) [ Link to today's entries ]
The Cocktailian Gazette. After some difficulties accessing the page, we now seem to be able to view this month's issue, which covers the opening of The Museum of the American Cocktail, written by its curator Ted "Dr. Cocktail" Haigh. I missed the festivities by one day (d'ohhh!), but enjoyed the museum all the same on day two. I've got a bunch of pictures from that day, which I'll post when I get them organized. Fear and loathing. Daniel sent in a reminiscence of Hunter S. Thompson yesterday, remembering when Nixon died how everyone fell all over themselves saying we'd been too harsh on him, what a great guy he was, and how he'd accomplished so many wonderful things ... and then came Thompson, whose "obituary" for Nixon appeared in Rolling Stone. Here's a taste: "Seems so clear," he added, "how much Thompson loved his country, despite its flaws."
Chocolate and ginger tartlets! Clotilde at Chocolate and Zucchini (one of my favorite food weblogs) came up with a delectable little recipe for Valentine's Day last week, and the lovely folks at NPR braodcast the recipe and her commentary as well. This looks fantastic, and I can't wait to try it. It's only got eight ingredients (and one of them is just "a dash of milk"), and even someone who's as baking-challenged as I am could do it easily. (I'm a good cook, but I suck at baking. Too much math and science!) Make sure you use the best chocolate you can find, too -- Scharffen Berger or Valrhona. Don't use Hershey's. Y'know, between all these Recchiuti chocolates we've been eating and my reading Mort Rosenblum's new Chocolate book, I think I may be writing a lot about chocolate in the near future. Quotes of the day. Where does one begin?
There are many more. [ Link to today's entries ]
As your attorney, I advise you to begin drinking heavily. Awful news ... Uncle Duke has left us. Hunter S. Thompson, one of the great journalists/writers of the last 30 years, shot himself yesterday. The fear and loathing is great today. Most of the so-called journalists working in today's mainstream media aren't fit to wash his socks.
Die Prinzessbohnen sind nicht salzig. Brian alerted me to a new film coming out soon, which I've never heard of and which looks completely delightful. From Germany comes Schultze Gets the Blues, the tale of an accordionist in an oom-pah-pah band who hears a zydeco song on the radio, falls in love with it and travels to Louisiana to find the music that's captivated him so. I can't wait to see this! Bonbons du jour. Working our way through our Recchiuti Confections box ... We tried a couple this weekend: Rose Caramel: "Delicate rose geranium oil swirled into light, buttery caramel. Cast in a white chocolate couverture and capped with bittersweet chocolate." Very unusual, and again, very intense. The caramel was a lot thinner than I expected (which is, I suppose, what he meant by "light"), and almost dripped out of the white chocolate shell onto my hand. (Eat these carefully.) I'd tasted rose geranium before -- a friend of ours used some leaves from his rose geranium plant to make an infused simple syrup that was lovely. To have that flavor in a caramel ... well, take that syrup and raise it to a few powers of ten. Wow. Next, Lemon Verbena: "Fresh lemon verbena infusion blended in extra-bitter chocolate ganache. Enrobed in pure bittersweet chocolate." Sounds simple, but oh so complex. If you've never tasted lemon verbena, it's not dissimilar to lemongrass; lovely, perfumey lemon flavor with none of the sourness or acidity. Imagine that infused into a ganache ... oh my. It was wonderful. Again, it's blissful torture to only have one of each in this box.
Chocolate for wine lovers. A Los Angeles ChowHound reports that the San Francisco Chocolate Factory makes a line of chocolate that's specifically meant to be paired with specific varieties of wine. ChowHound Jamie has tried them all and says that "the chocolate, while not spectacular, went well with the intended wines." Six 3.5-ounce tins of little chocolate buttons with varying percentages of cocoa solids, for pairing with Port, Zinfandel, Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Syrah and and Pinot Noir, in a nice box, for 40 clams. Interesting, if not quite as interesting as the fabulous chocolates I've been writing about in the "bonbon du jour" posts.
[ Link to today's entries ]
My heart's tonight in Ireland. I'm so bad with remembering dates, unstuck in time as I usually am, but Wes reminded me today that last night was the one-year anniversary of reaching one of my life's dreams -- seeing Planxty in Dublin. (My JAYsus, the time is just speeding by.) I enjoyed looking through the pictures, and re-reading my journaling of that day. The Live 2004 album is playing as I write, and I think we'll probably have it on all day today. That opening twinkling of Dónal's and Andy's bouzouki and mandolin, Liam's bubbling tin whistle, Christy's ethereal and sublte keyboard backing never ceases to make my scalp tingle, as it is at this moment. The strings just shifted into overdrive, and my heart starts to pound. Liam kicks in the drones, then lets loose full on the pipes, and as Andy said in his song, the tears well in my eyes. Buíochas mór le Dia. Here are a few links, in case you missed them last time around:
The Planxty Reunion, from Tara Records.I'm sure I said it last year, but I'll say it again -- if you're a fan of music, not just Irish music, you need to buy all their albums. There aren't that many, so it's not going to set you back too much. Here are the titles:
Planxty (a.k.a. "The Black Album", 1972)Do what I say. Trust me.
Bonbon du jour. Working our way through Recchiuti Confections' Black Box, after a lovely (and cheap!) meal at El Huarache Azteca in Highland Park. (We'll get to the bonbon after dinner.) Me: Especial No. 3: Tres Tacos, two pollo and one al pastor (pork marinated in an achiote and chile paste with cumin and vinegar, then rotisseried or barbecued, which is one of the best feckin' things on the face of this planet). Simple as can be -- just soft corn tortillas tossed on the grill, two per taco, and filled with meat. Nothing else, just meat; you embellish as you choose. I decorated mine with a sprinkling of onion and cilantro and drizzled some of their three superb salsas (deep, complex and hot roasted red chile, medium-hot salsa verde from tomatillos, and a thick, creamy and damned spicy avocado salsa). Trying feebly to be WeightWatchers-friendly tonight, I removed one of the layers of tortilla, thereby saving myself three points (hey, they add up). Didn't matter, really; the flavor was concentrated in that meat, and the tortillas, tasty in their own right and part of the overall flavor of the taco, worked in this case primarily to get that delectable meat up to my mouth without it ending up in my lap. Wes: Costillas de puerco, which is chunks of pork sparerib on the bone, stewed for what seems like hours in a thick, spicy, tomato-based red gravy. I'm not entirely sure, but I think it's entirely possible that this may well be a Platonic dish. The layers of flavor in this sauce, made by hardworking Mexican family in their tiny hole-in-the-wall restaurant with zero atmosphere, a smidgen of decor and some of the best food in the city, would put to shame many of the efforts of French sauciers with tall hats, little moustaches and bad attitudes (as Mario would say). The chunks of pork are cooked on the bone for maximum flavor, and they're still a little fatty, but that fat is like butter; it melts away in yoru mouth, and isn't chewy like the fat on an overcooked roast of beef. It's served with some yellow Mexican rice and pinto beans sprinkled with cheese, but these trifles are almost entirely disposable; you only really want a little of the rice to help soak up all that marvelous gravy, and unless you need some fiber from the beans they're skippable (perfectly good, but superfluous). On the side (as if any one really needed anything on the side) he had a huarache, a signature specialty of this joint. It's a shoe sole-shaped thick corn cake like a sope but not quite as thick, delightfully crisp on the outside and chewy but not too heavy on the inside, topped with any of the offered meats (Wes wisely chose al pastor), decorated with more onion and cilantro and drizzled with a generous amount of Mexican crema (unpasteurized cream, like a pourable crème fraîche). They were out of horchata, so we settled for some aguas frescas of melon and hibiscus -- excellent, and not too sweet. We were stuffed afterward, and all that together set us back the princely sum of $13. I love Eagle Rock and Highland Park. We decided to forgo a cocktail before dinner so we could make it to El Huarache before they started running out of things (and, sadly, had already run out of the especiales del día, like fish and shrimp soup, and a spinach dish called something like huauzontli). An after-dinner digestif was Plan B, and when we got home we ended up with a shot of Booker's Bourbon, enjoyed neat. Heady stuff -- barrel strength at about 126.8 proof, aged 7 years. Layers of honey and nougat and nuts and vanilla, yummers. But there's chocolate to talk about, and I digress ... Today's bonbon was Sur de Lago: "A kiss of extra-bitter chocolate ganache sits atop a pure Sur de Lago chocolate disk. Topped with crushed Sur de Lago cacao nibs and enrobed in pure bittersweet chocolate." Intense, intense, intense. In this case, extra-bitter meant extra-intense, with none of the almost-have-to-spit-it-out bitterness of Scharffen Berger's "Extra Dark" (which at 82% cacao is almost inedible as an eating chocolate, and seems better for melting and baking). The nibs provided an even further little extra jolt of bitter cacao, but by comparison the "extra-bitter" ganache was sweet, although it wasn't actually sweet. The depth of flavor of that Sur de Lago chocolate from "below Lake Maracaibo in Venezuela, where the best chocolate comes from," as Mort Rosenblum said, is amazing. We had already finished our Bourbon (which would have gone well with chocolate, but we didn't want to overpower these), and cleansed our palates with water when we removed the Black Boxes from The Chocolate Closet downstairs. Fortunately, we only just noticed, Chef Recchiuti says in the little booklet/map packed inside the box, "The flavor subtleties of each confection come forward when tasted at room temperature (approximately 62-71°F). To fully experience each confection's character and bouquet, we recommend a pairing with still spring water." Well, it was plain old tap water in this case; close enough, I hope. We'll obey Chef next time and pull out some Arrowhead. Goddamn, I could eat a whole box of just these Sur de Lagos. I'm beginning to think I could say that about every chocolate in this box, even though we've only tried two so far.
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The end of an era? We knew this would be happening soon, but via Michael comes some more definitive-sounding word: Anthony and Gail Uglesich will apparently be closing Uglesich's Restaurant for good after this year's Jazzfest, and possibly before; Anthony's having some health problems. If they remain open for Jazzfest, Anthony says it'll be with a limited menu. It makes me sad, but I wish them all the best and hope they can finally relax in their retirement.
Bonbon du jour. The other night we opened our Black Boxes from Recchiuti Confections. Wes gets to choose which ones we eat, since it was his present, and as the first one he chose Star Anise and Pink Peppercorn: "Fragrant star anise and crushed pink peppercorn infused in semi-sweet chocolate ganache. Enrobed in pure milk chocolate and tipped with Venezuelan white chocolate." Oh. My. It was good. The anise flavor was there but beautifully subtle, infused into the chocolate ganache. I'm guessing that he infuses the cream with which he then makes the ganache ... you know what ganache is, right? A mixture of (usually) equal parts melted chocolate and heavy cream. It's the basis for truffles, icings, soufflés and much more. Anyway ... the pink peppercorn was even more subtle, a little spicy perfumey bite in the background. Rosenblum was right -- these chocolates aren't as sweet as one might expect, and therefore the flavor of the chocolate and the beautiful infused flavors isn't overwhelmed by cloying sweetness. We're going to try to make these last a while, 'cause otherwise we'd eat most of the entire box in a day or two. Yeesh.
Which celebs make the best wine? Seems to be a trendy thing now, but there are more and more celebrities making wine these days. Of course, Francis Ford Coppola is the winemaker emeritus of this group, and his stuff is pretty darn good. But now there people from Sting to Emeril Lagasse to Olivia Newton John (!) and Jerry Garcia (I miss Jerry) making wine now. Yep, dead celebs are getting into it as well; there are Elvis wines too (Blue Suede Chardonnay, Jailhouse Red Merlot and Blue Christmas Cabernet). We can only presume that Elvis and Jerry's participation is via, er, spiritual inspiration. Odd, though ... I never associated Elvis with wine, only with fried peanut butter, banana and bacon sandwiches, and I would have thought that Jerry would have preferred a spliff to a Sauvignon. Apparently some of these celeb wines are quite good, and others, not unexpectedly, are bad bad bad. ("The thin, medicinal Jailhouse Red Merlot is bad enough to start a jailhouse riot.")
Don't panic! I must be the last person in the blogosphere to see the new trailer for the movie adaptation of "The Hitchhicker's Guide to the Galaxy" (okay, I've been busy). Unfortunately it was only available as an "exclusive" on the Amazon.com home page, and now it seems to have vanished from there; there's only the old teaser on the official movie website. Annoying. [UPDATE: I found a much better copy of the trailer, high-quality Quicktime instead of Flash and downloadable to boot. Woo!] I thought the trailer was pretty intriguing, actually. The look of the film is great -- they had a budget, unlike the old BBC TV miniseries, which had a budget of about £12 and which I liked despite its cheesiness -- and most of the casting seems strong. I've seen Martin Freeman before, and he'll do a great job as Arthur (although it's hard not to see Simon Jones in that role, as he was so perfect in both the radio and TV series). I've always really liked Sam Rockwell, and he seems to be able to pull off the zaniness you need to play Zaphod. Alan Rickman is perfect as the voice of Marvin the Paranoid Android, and as Peter Jones is sadly no longer with us, I can't think of anyone better for the voice of the book than Stephen Fry. My only potential qualm was with the casting of Mos Def as Ford Prefect. I really like him as an actor, but for playing Ford ... well, he's not English! Then again, neither was Ford; he wasn't from Guildford at all, but from a small planet in the vicinity of Betelgeuse. The director of the film thought he was perfect, and commented that Mos is from another planet himself, so perhaps he'll be suitable as well. We must also remember that Douglas Adams wrote the screenplay, and was involved in the pre-production up until hsi death (there's an interesting FAQ I found that helps to quell people's fears about the adaptation). When my friend Zack wrote to tip me off to the trailer's existence and to express his reservations about it looking too "epic and actiony", I told him not to worry too much. It's the job of the trailer editor to sell tickets and get people's asses in the seats, and they have a tendency to edit lots of exciting bits together to make the movie look exciting. I suspect this was the studio's marketing department's take on this, making it look epic and actiony to appeal to Joe Moviegoer. True fans of the books such as we will need no piffling trailers to get us to the theatre to see this; I've been looking forward to it since they first announced the production. Speaking of trailers, it was once my lot in life to pay my dues by working at the dreaded Cannon Films, the movie company owned by Israeli producers Menahem Goland and Yoram Globus, and the homes of grade-B to grade-Z schlock like "American Ninja" (Parts One through Twelve, or so it seemed), "Death Wish" (Parts Two through Seventy-One, or so it seemed), lots of other direct-to-international-video crapola and a handful of truly good movies (through no fault of their own). One thing Cannon had going for them was one of the best and most talented trailer departments in the industry. Those folks could take any Cannon piece of shit and for two minutes make it look good enough at least to get someone to buy a ticket, which is really all that mattered. So, don't be fooled by a trailer. I'm confident that the people behind this film will do justice to Douglas Adams and his wonderful writing, because if they don't I won't rest until I see the lot of them fed to the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal after listening to several hours of Vogon poetry.
O freddled gruntbuggly, thy micturations are to me (Okay, okay, I'll spare you further torture.)
Quote of the day. From the BBC's h2g2 site:
And now we have the World Wide Web, the only thing I know of whose shortened form - 'www' - takes three times longer to say than what it's short for ...(Nine times if you're on dialup.)
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Getting closer to Jamaica, mon. Okay, last night I tasted the last batch of pimento liqueur. It's ... close. It's a little heavier than the real thing from Wray & Nephew, but flavorwise it's all there -- pure allspice, sweet and with the spicy characteristics of the rum used as the base. It was a little heavier than I expected, though, and maybe the next batch should be made with light brown sugar instead of dark brown sugar. This isn't definitive just yet, but if you want a decent homemade pimento liqueur to add a few dashes or teaspoons to cocktails that call for it, this'll do rather well for the moment.
Jamaican Pimento Dram (Allspice Liqueur) No. 3This will almost fill two 750ml bottles (we use the ones they sell fizzy French lemonade in, because of that nifty resealing rubber-lined ceramic stopper), so you can cut the recipe in half to makes less, unless you want to give some away.
New Springsteen album! This one sounds exciting. Via Michael:
The rumor mill has this being very much in the vein of The Ghost of Tom Joad, though with a bit more instrumentation from some E Street Band members as well as other musicians. "The Hitter" and "Long Time Comin'" date back to the Tom Joad tour; they're both very good.Gawd ... I haven't seen The Boss in concert since I was about 19. It's about time I saw him again, and I'd love to see him in a stripped-down, low-key manner. 'Course, I wanna see the E Street Band tear it up too ...
Exactly how much money will Bush screw you out of? As the wise old owl once said, "Let's find out." Senator Charles Schumer of New York provides a nicely designed, handy-dandy actuarial calculator of Social Security benefits -- what you'd normally get, and what you'd get if Bush's disastrous privatization plan is passed. My own annual percentage cut would be 14%; i.e., under the Bush privatization plan my Social Security benefits would be 14% less than if he just left it alone. (Oh, and for those niggling grammarians who are upset at the wording of this post's header because ending a sentence with a preposition is something up with which they will not put, I'll happily rewrite: "Exactly how much money will Bush screw you out of, the lying bastard?" There.)
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The Cocktailian. 'Cause, you know, sometimes we really, really need a drink. Like now, and until 2008. I'm thrilled to post the latest edition of Gary Regan's fortnightly exploration of cocktails with The Professor, because it features a drink created by a friend of ours. Daniel Reichert of Vintage Cocktails came up with a lovely, lovely drink called the Jamaica Farewell, and when he sent me the recipe a couple of weeks before last Christmas he reminded me (and all of us) that rum is something to keep you warm on cold winter nights, and mustn't be confined to the summer. (That Cadenhead's 12-year-old Jamaica rum I had the other night attests to that ... good Lord, mon. My aged rum fanatic period is coming ... and there goes my money, honey.) Gary, as he often does, published an adapted version of Daniel's cocktail -- still quite good, but lacking one ingredient that was originally specified. This is unsurprising, because the aforementioned ingredient is, as we've noted in the past, extremely difficult to obtain, and Gary wants people to be able to make these cocktails with relative ease. The drink calls for a small amount of pimento (Jamaican allspice) liqueur. Here's Daniel's original recipe:
Jamaica Farewell CocktailGary suggests kicking up this drink with Appleton Estate 21-year-old rum, and that'll certainly make it more special. However, to make it truly special ... that teaspoon of pimento liqueur transforms the drink, lifts it be an exponent or two and carries you off to the beaches of Montego Bay. I'll be finishing my lastest batch of pimento liqueur tonight, and I'll let you know tomorrow morning how it turned out. Now, let's everybody sing along with Harry ...
Down the way, where the nights are gayYah, bredda ...
On bullshit. Let's just cut through the bullshit, shall we? In an age in which we are inundated with bullshit and governed by liars and bullshitters, we're well overdue for a philosophical examination of bullshit. Such an examination was actually written 20 years ago, by Princeton philosophy professor Harry Frankfurt. "On Bullshit" was originally written for an interdepartmental seminar in 1986, and its enduring popularity has prompted Princeton University Press to publish it as a standalone book, one whose no-bullshit title prompts the staid New York Times to publish an unintentionally funny review that bowdlerizes the title and refuses to come right out and mention the subject of the book. In this excerpt from the article I have restored the term to its original cutting glory.
"One of the most salient features of our culture is that there is so much bullshit. Everyone knows this. Each of us contributes his share. But we tend to take the situation for granted. Most people are rather confident of their ability to recognize bullshit and to avoid being taken in by it. So the phenomenon has not aroused much deliberate concern, nor attracted much sustained inquiry."One of the problems facing this country today is that we are governed by lies, which are then covered up and publicly spun via bullshit, layer upon layer of it. Worse, a simple majority of the American public is, in fact, being taken in by the bullshit. Maybe they should all read this essay. Janet Eisner, in her review in the Philadelphia Inquirer (a paper not too timid to print the book's actual title), said:
I think Americans crave authenticity and truthfulness; we're just afraid to admit it. So political candidates who exude honesty and straightforwardness -- Howard Dean, John McCain, for instance -- capture the public imagination until they are beaten down by the cynical status quo.Right now, not much.
Compassionate conservatives supporting our troops. I read this yesterday, but have been in relative disbelief until today. Here's the Bush administration's latest act that makes one want to pound one's own head against the wall:
White House Turns Tables on Former American POWsBushCo wants them to get nothing. Nada. And to think that at the same time, these American servicemen and servicewomen were brutalized and tortured by the then-Iraqi regime in violation of the Geneva Conventions, which our new Attorney General described as "quaint", and which our own government and their advisers now think can be easily tossed aside in their "war on terror" because "everything's different now." The word "irony" doesn't even come close. It's not in the ballpark; I'm not sure it's even in this galactic cluster. As Oyster pointed out in his post on the topic, "If we paid these victims of torture in full from the funds currently earmarked for the new U.S. embassy in Iraq, we'd still have about $400 million to build and staff the place ..." To use Molly's expression from yesterday, I think I am neurochemically incapable of being more angry at and more disgusted with this administration. It's painful to think of the further depths to which they will sink.
Calling Rev. Niemöller. Via Lyn, a chilling observation from Digby:
We are disappearing people, rendering them to friendly governments that aren't afraid to put the electrode to genitals and threaten with dog rape. And we are building our own infrastructure of torture and extra legal imprisonment. It is a law of human nature that if you build it, they will come. This infrastructure will be expanded and bureaucratized. It's already happening. And when they decide, as Professor Yoo has already decided, that an election is a sanctioning of anything the President chooses to do in the War on Terror, it is only a matter of time before internal political enemies become a threat.Read it all.
Questions for the Secret Service. U.S. Representatives Louise Slaughter and John Conyers have written letters to the director of the Secret Service (and to Plame case U.S. Attorney Fitzgerald) about the Gannon affair -- how he got into the White House with a false name and no credentials, and how he got access to classified CIA documents. An interesting MeFi comment, in a post that emphasizes that this story is not about the sex or anyone's sexual orientation, says this:
There's still very little of this in the regular "mainstream" media, and it's just mystifying. Or wait... enraging. I still know where Lewinsky bought her stained dress. Gannon is ten times more salacious/explosive, and they keep trying to snuff out his story. If you ever needed a case study of Republican control of US media then my friend, you have it.It's about someone with a false name and no credentials getting access to the President and the White House press room so that he could lob softball questions. It's about Secret Service and FBI failure to vet this guy (and I'm not sure what's worse, if they knew and let him in anyway, and if they didn't know and let him in ignorance). It's about why this guy among all others got leaked classified documents about the Valerie Plame case. There are so many different things going on here one hardly knows where to begin. In the New York Observer Joe Conason writes (read now, 'cause it rolls into the pay archive soon):
Imagine the media explosion if a male escort had been discovered operating as a correspondent in the Clinton White House. Imagine that he was paid by an outfit owned by Arkansas Democrats and had been trained in journalism by James Carville. Imagine that this gentleman had been cultivated and called upon by Mike McCurry or Joe Lockhart.or by President Clinton himself. Imagine that this "journalist" had smeared a Republican Presidential candidate and had previously claimed access to classified documents in a national-security scandal.In a sign that the media (at least the print media) might just be starting to do their jobs, this editorial in the Salt Lake Tribune (not known to be a particularly liberal paper, as far as I know) chimes in:
Grigori Potemkin was an 18th century Russian general who is said to have built sham villages to impress Catherine the Great with his administration's good work. In an America hypnotized by Faux -- sorry, Fox -- News, President Bush and his Svengali, Karl Rove, have proven how easy the trick is.They only focused on the preferential access issue, and not on the potentially more explosive questions about access to the classified Plame documents, but it's a start. A real press secretary, like C.J. Cregg, would never have let someone like this into her press room.
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Valentine's din-dins. We started off with just a tantalizing peek and intake of aroma ... I got Wes some chocolates from Recchiuti Confections, which according to Mort Rosenblum (author of Chocolate: A Bittersweet Saga of Light and Dark) are "the best chocolates in the United States." From the L. A. Times Food Section article I linked to a while back:
"[Chocolatier Michael Recchiuti is] in Burlingame, near [the San Francisco Airport], and he makes the best chocolates in the United States. Most American chocolates are too sweet. The rule in the U.S. with almost everything is 'if a little is good, more is better,' so they use too much sugar. The trick to making good chocolate is to be subtle. That's why the French, who are relative latecomers to chocolate-making, now make the best chocolate in the world. They understand the secret of subtle blending."I can't wait to taste them. Rosenblum says to eat them first thing in the morning, on an empty stomach and before coffee or tea, to truly appreciate them. Dinner was at Xiomara, a Cuban/Nuevo Latino place we've been wanting to try for ages. Chef Xiomara Ardolina's cooking has had a great reputation, and when we finally got a look at the menu my knees got weak. (Duck ropa vieja, Nicaraguan-style skirt steak with huitlacoche and Cabrales blue cheese mashed potatoes ... ay!) There was a special five-course prix-fixe menu for Valentine's, and while we didn't see it beforehand we were so excited by the look of the regular menu that we were up for anything. (No pictures, sorry; I didn't feel like photographing food on Valentine's Day.) We started with "Xiomara's Mambo", their own take on the Mojito. We were already looking forward to it, as its reputation preceded it, and when the waiter described it as "the best Mojito in the city" we immediately ordered two of them. The secret? Instead of sugar or simple syrup, Xiomara's Mojito is made with freshly pressed sugar cane juice. The complexity of flavor that this gives to the drink is amazing -- hints of honey, vanilla, nougat, nuts were in there, and it was far less sweet than so many people make Mojitos. "These are dangerous," Wes said. Nodding, I said, "I could drink these all night." We resisted the temptation, though, because we had other plans for imbibing over the course of the evening. I was also a little worried about knocking something over if I had had more Mambos; Xiomara's nifty tall glasses for serving them are angled like the Leaning Tower of Pisa. They look really cool, but for a klutz like me it'd be a cinch for me to make a huge mess. First course: Traditional Lobster Bisque, with lobster wonton and salmon caviar. The bisque was perfect -- lobstery and creamy, and that hint of brandy in the background. (I wonder what it'd be like to flame an aged rum in this instead of brandy ... hmm.) The wonton was tasty but I would have preferred it to be crisper. That's the danger with deep-frying when everybody's getting the same thing; some items have to be made in advance, and a fried wonton doesn't hold very well. Minor quibble, though, and the wee spoonful of salmon roe atop the wonton helped quell my quibbling. Second course: Crispy Goat Cheese Salad with Smoked Bacon and Beets, with old red wine vinegar dressing. Lovely salad, with red and yellow teardrop tomatoes and a pretty standard mesclun mix. The bacon was cut into about a quarter-inch dice, with a good smoky flavor and a nice chewiness to it and provided a good balance to the ball of crumb-coated, deep-fried goat cheese that topped the salad. Altogether pleasant. Third course: Pan Seared Sea Bass, with stir-fry vegetables and a ponzu sauce. This was the only disappointment of the meal, although the disappointment was slight. The flavor was lovely, actually; I love ponzu sauce, and it went well with the fish. It was the texture of the fish that wasn't working for me; sometimes it felt underdone but some bites felt like overcooked crabmeat. It was weird; I'd never had bass that was like this before. It tasted great, but I'm not sure what was up with the texture issues. The wine helped a lot -- 2002 Sacred Hill Sauvage Sauvignon Blanc from New Zealand. I love Sauvignon Blancs, and I could really taste the peach and lychee they talk about in the tasting notes. Fourth course: Rack of Lamb, served on a boniato, chestnut and ginger purée in a cherry vanilla sauce. This was spectacular, the crowning dish of the meal. Fortunately it wasn't a whole rack, but three perfectly-sized little chops with rosy pink interiors, just like I like 'em. That mash was amazing too -- I'd never had boniato before. It's a Cuban sweet potato, with a white rather than orange flesh and not nearly as sweet as a standard sweet potato or yam. The chestnut added richness and nutty intensity, and the hint of ginger cut right through that. Marrying all that with that fantastic sauce ... ohhhhhh. When I took in the aroma of the plate at first it almost smelled like a lamby dessert, but the sauce wasn't overly sweet. The cherry flavor wasn't overly jammy, adding a fruity depth to the lamb jus-based sauce, and the vanilla was like perfume. There were a few vegetables alongside (baby bok choi, julienned carrot and red sweet pepper), and the whole thing was tied together by the wonderful wine they served with it -- a 2001 Lynmar Russian River Valley Pinot Noir. The cherry notes of that wine zeroed right in on the complementary flavors in the sauce, and the spice was even further seasoning for the lamb. It was a huge pour, too, and I was delightfully giddy by the end of that dish. Fifth course: Crunchy Hazelnut Chocolate Mousse Heart for Two, with raspberries and vanilla sauce. It looked big. It was big. A big chocolate hawt. Filled with chocolate. Hoo-boy ... fortunately, the chocolate shell was very thin, and the mousse was as light as a cloud. Lovely gianduja flavor, and so light it practically vaporized when it hit the tongue. Half a hawt turned out to be just right, light as it was, and sauce spoons provided to help get every drop of the vanilla crème anglaise. "Do you think we should get a dessert wine?" I asked Wes, actually meaning one of the six we were considering for a wine tasting we're planning in a couple of months, when a voice from the next table piped up, "Are you kidding? Of course you should!" (We had been chatting with the couple at the table next to us on and off.) Well, who am I to argue? Dow's 20 year old tawny Port finished us off, or so we thought. The nice couple next to us wanted to keep chatting, and didn't want to leave, so they very kindly offered to buy us another drink. (Yeesh ... a Mojito, two glasses of wine plus Port. Maybe I should call in sick in the morning and sleep in.) They had some lovely after-dinner spirits on the menu, but I was finding myself intrigued by aged rums instead of the usual whisk(e)ys or brandies. We ended up with a rum of a brand name I had only associated with Scotland -- Cadenhead's. Turns out they make rum too (and goes to show how little I know about rums at this point), and this one came from Jamaica -- a 12-year-old and another very generous pour. This stuff was outstanding, the kind of thing that threatens to turn me into an aged rum fanatic. Hmm, I'd better start reading The Ministry of Rum. Three hours, forty-five minutes. As a dinner should be. I couldn't recommend Xiomara more highly, despite my little quibble over the fish. Big holiday occasion nights like this are always really hard for any restaurant to pull off anyway (by the way, do yourself a favor -- stay home and cook for Mom yourself on Mother's Day). We can't wait to go back to Xiomara and start diving into the regular menu.
Yep, just like we said: they're big bugs. A new study has concluded that it's highly unlikely that lobsters feel pain when they're cooked. Its primitive nervous system and tiny brain are similar to those of an insect. Not that this ever worried me, mind you -- it's basically like a big crawfish. As a Louisianian I've boiled millions of those little bugs in my day and eaten them with glee. It's just that as someone who was once loudly and rudely accused of being a "murderer" by a nutty PETA-vegan acquaintance who shrieked his accusation across a crowded café when he overheard me describing the lobster dish I had prepared earlier that week ... well, it makes me snicker. (If you're still out there somewhere, E., you're an ill-mannered wingnut.) I'm still planning to cook some butter-poached lobster in a few weeks. We hope to have a full report.
How to cut. I thought my knife skills had gotten pretty good after my initial training in culinary classes years ago, and with all the practice I've had since then, but it's always good to pick up some more tips. Peter Hertzmann, on his excellent site À la carte, has a handy-dandy chart of proper knife techniques for cutting all kinds of things, complete with diagrams for both right- and left-handed users. Pretty nifty! Now get some good, sharp Japanese knives, find some recipes that call for lots of slicing and dicing (plus some julienne fries!), and have at it.
Quote of the day. From Digby's site, via Orcinus, a comment left by Molly in New York City:
The Right figured out a while back that they don't have to grift everyone in this country -- just the dumbest 50%, plus one. When you're running a con, the last thing you want is for someone to sit your mark down and explain what's going on.Neiwert also talks about how the fight over the election of Washington's Democratic governor (by 129 votes, which means, like, she wins) and the relentless attacks from right-wing radio and the right-wing blogosphere "is in fact representative of Republicans' larger effort to remake America into a one-party state. The whole idea, it seems, is to attack relentlessly, barraging the public with a steady drumbeat of misinformation and wild speculation, all designed to undermine the legitimacy of the Democrats." Read the whole post, and the links from it. David Neiwert is doing some of the best political writing out there right now.
Gannongate. Yesterday John Aravosis blew the Jeff Gannon story wide open (link not necessarily safe for work). Apparently this man who obtained two years' worth of White House press passes with unbelievable ease and received confidential documents about a crime that seemed to emanate from the White House is, in fact, a prostitute. How lovely. The Poor Man actually finds this to be proof of the existence of God:
Think about it: what are the chances that a media whore like Gannon would turn out to be an actual whore? It's impossible. It boggles the mind how infinitely unlikely this is. It's like if you found someone pirating CDs, and it turns out he actually had a peg leg and a parrot on his shoulder and sailed around the Caribbean saying "Arrrrrr!" and plundering booty. You wouldn't believe it. But there it is: impossible, but true. Impossible truths are miracles, and only God can work miracles. Ergo, God exists. Q.E.D.Well, let's not start a theology debate, but it is pretty damned unlikely, isn't it? And it begs so very many other questions. As is his singular talent, Digby puts it in perspective for us:
I personally have no problems with the Bush White House needing to blow off some consensual adult steam. It's a stressful job. If gay hookers are going to help them relax then who am I to argue? I'm a liberal. I have nothing against gays or hookers.Remember the axiom that made everything all right for the last for years ... IARIYAR! (It's all right if you're a Republican!) What boggle my mind are all the right-wingers who keep saying "Move along, nothing to see here" and "There's no story here" and "I fail to see what the story is, except for the persecution of a brave man who asked questions that made Democrats look bad." What planet do these people live on?
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Gannon/Guckert's Greatest Hits. Via Steve ... Keith Olbermann at MSNBC put together clips of James Dale "Jeff Gannon" Guckert at work in the White House press room. Funny stuff ... if it wasn't so scary.
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Look out, Coca-Cola! Your days are numbered. The next big thing that'll wipe you off the face of the earth will be ... Armenian tarragon soda! Well, okay ... maybe not. I'm figuring the behemoth Coca-Cola Company is safe, but I'm definitely going to start stocking this stuff around my house. My friend Robb turned me onto this via a post on his journal. He works in Glendale near a bunch of Armenian grocery stores (Glendale having the largest Armenian population outside Tbilisi, apparently) and was oddly fascinated enough by this stuff to actually try it. He brought me some last weekend, and we cracked it open right away.
 If you live in an area with Armenian or Russian markets, see if you can find this stuff. I can find out some specific places from Robb if you're in SoCal and want to find some (or maybe Robb might just fill us in in the comments); if you're an adventurous Chowhound you'll want to. I highly recommend this stuff.
Darkly compelling. I meant to post this last week and forgot, so read it quickly before it disappears into the bowels of the Los Angeles Times' pay archive. Longtime Paris-based AP correspondent Mort Rosenblum has covered "war and peace, genocide and terrorism, floods and famines, coups and coronations, elections, earthquakes and epidemics, the rise of the Asian economy and the fall of communism." His new book is about "poverty, slavery, exploitation and corruption, economics, war and peace" ... in short, it's all about chocolate.
... Rosenblum, who's also written 11 books, on topics as varied as olives, journalism and French nationalism, says he's never taken on an assignment as challenging or as satisfying as his newly published Chocolate: A Bittersweet Saga of Dark and Light.A few years back during my intermediate pastry class we had a blind chocolate tasting -- we tried about 18 different kinds of chocolate over the course of one evening, making detailed tasting notes and drinking lots of water to cleanse our palates between each taste (it's a lot harder than it sounds). Hershey's came out at the absolute rock bottom of our ratings. Which one came out on top? Seems our class agreed with Mr. Rosenblum's opinion:
Rosenblum isn't any more favorably disposed toward Mars' chocolate, so I ultimately found his account of the Hershey-Mars battle somewhat less riveting than his report on the struggle between French-based Valrhona, which he says makes the best chocolate in the world, and the Italian firm of Amedei.The book's on its way. I can't wait to read it.
Boggling news item of the day. Holy crap ... the US media isn't touching this one yet, apparently. The BBC is reporting that Pakistan, our anti-terrorism ally in the Coalition of the Willing, is funneling money directly into the coffers of al Qaeda.
Pakistan says it has paid 32m rupees ($540,000) to help four former wanted tribal militants in South Waziristan settle debts with al-Qaeda.More links and further coverage are available at this DailyKos link. I cannot believe that there isn't a single mention of this in the American media (then again, given the nonexistent job they're doing, I suppose I can. Hey, let's cover the Michael Jackson trial instead!)
Condi lied, Condi lied, Condi lied lied lied. Newly declassified documents demonstrate that when she claimed in March 2004 that "no al-Qaeda threat was turned over to the new administration," she lied. The document, written January 25, 2001 by then-counterterrorism adviser Richard Clarke, clearly states among many other things, "We urgently need such a principals-level review on the al-Qaeda network." (Image of the declassified document, plus more coverage at dKos.) From The National Security Archive's story:And she will get away with it, too. Why? Because the amoral Republican Congress refuses to clean their own house. Because our print media has completely abrogated their duties. Because the majority of the American public seems not to give a shit, which boggles my mind more than almost anything else. You KNOW that if anything like this had happened during a Democratic administration the Republicans would be howling for blood.
Quote of the day. Via The 2 Millionth Weblog, who notes that in this quote Josh Marshall not only exposes Bush's absurd claims about Social Security in one paragraph, he does it in one sentence:
As we've discussed here many times, President Bush's gloomy predictions about the demise of Social Security are premised on a 21st century of anemic economic growth while his claims for private accounts are based on a 21st century of robust economic growth.Here's the Post article Josh links to as well.
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Live music from Jazzfest for sale! Man, why didn't I notice this before? Maybe because it's too new. You can now buy selected live performances -- entire sets -- from last year's New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival. They're available on CD or, for less money, as high quality (192-256 kbps) FLAC, AAC/MPEG4, WMA9 or MP3 files for which you can download cover art. You can check setlists before you buy, and listen to some pretty damn good sounding samples from each track. Artists available so far are Troy "Trombone Shorty" Andrews and Orleans Avenue, Los Vecinos, Galactic, John Mooney & Bluesiana, Astral Project, Amanda Shaw & The Cute Guys, Rockin' Dopsie Jr. & the Zydeco Twisters, Big Chief Monk Boudreaux & the Golden Eagles Mardi Gras Indians, Terrance Simien & the Zydeco Experience, Dirty Dozen Brass Band, 007, Irie Dawtas, Lafourche Legends: A Tribute to Vin Bruce, Allen Toussaint, Tab Benoit, Clarence "Gatemouth" Brown, Anders Osborne, Lil' Band O' Gold, The Radiators, Eric Lindell, Chris Smither and a 2-disc compilation. This is a fantastic thing, and something I wish had been available years ago. My only potential qualm is that until now the only way you could get live Jazzfest material was on WWOZ's semi-annual fundraising CD compilations, which are marvelous. I hope this doesn't cut into 'OZ's ability to put these out and fundraise. There were problems over the last few years with the live broadcasts from the Fair Grounds that 'OZ has done for many years -- some new contract-with-the-Devil that Festival Productions signed with Acura threatened to interfere with that. A warning to Jazzfest -- don't fuck with the locals, cap. I'll write more on this subject later.
Quote of the day. A truly mind-boggling utterance from the so-called President of the United States, The Gadflyer. Paul Waldman says, "In case you missed it, this exchange took place in one of President Bush's pseudo-events touting Social Security privatization, in Omaha on Friday," and he was speaking with a woman of late middle age who was invited to the event:
THE PRESIDENT: Good. Okay, Mary, tell us about yourself.I am speechless. Paul Waldman again:
Yeah, it's the Democrats who are out of touch with regular people. Here's something somebody should have clued you in on when you were summering in Kennebunkport: when somebody works two or three jobs, it's not because they've got can-do American spirit. It's because their first job doesn't pay enough for them to make ends meet, and they're faced with a choice between running themselves ragged or seeing their kids starve, you goddamn idiot.How in the good Christ does he get away with this shit? (Oh yeah, that "liberal media.")
Quote of the day, part deux. From Jonathan Weiler, also in The Gadflyer:
[The Bush Administration's] conception of democracy as nothing more than electoralism is so impoverished that by itself it should scarcely merit the appellation "democracy." Jon Stewart summed this up well following the President's state of the union address. After showing Republican members of Congress holding up painted fingers in solidarity with Iraqis who bravely voted on January 30, Stewart commented that those members of Congress also showed solidarity with Iraqis by "shitting into buckets in unlit shacks." Quote of the day, part trois. Busy day for quotes today. Via Atrios:
Having worked in the White House, I can assure everyone that not only would it be impossible to get a White House pass using an alias, it is impossible even to get past the gate for an appointment using an alias. Thorough FBI background checks are required for the former and a picture ID is necessary for the latter. Therefore, if Gannon was using an alias, White House staff had to be involved in maintaining his cover.Washington Post White House reporter Dan Froomkin doesn't think so, but faults Scott McLellan for calling on the wingnut more than the wingnut for using a pseudonym and weaseling his way into the White House press room. As for the allegations into the personal life of the "reporter" -- if he's parroting the BushCo party line, lifting White House press releases wholesale for his "articles" and writing his own articles which further an anti-gay agenda, then turns out to own Internet domains relating to male prostitution ... well, I think that it's not beyond the pale to note that particular bit of hypocrisy. The main point is that this man seemed to pass the vetting procedure far too easily, was frequently called upon to throw softball questions and was the only person to whom classified documents were leaked.
Ouch. Via Wes, this commentary by Rev. Madison Shockley of Pilgrim United Church of Christ in Carlsbad and Rev. Kelvin Calloway of Second AME Church in Los Angeles lash out at black ministers who betray their own people by kowtowing to the GOP:
It is a sad beginning to Black History Month when a group of black preachers have so forgotten the past that they agree to be tutored in "moral values" by Republican operatives in sheep's clothing.Read the rest.
Ho-hum. Is it just me, or are the Mardi Gras photo contest winners at NewOrleans.com really pretty dull? I did better stuff back when I was in college (the last Mardi Gras that I photographed extensively) and tanked on supersweet Hurricanes. I'll have to dig around and see if I can find that old stuff. Any of y'all got any good Mardi Gras photos?
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Ashes to ashes, dust to dust ... Let's just hope that's not what the inside of your head feels like after all your Mardi Gras revelry. I got seriously depressed at work yesterday morning, wondering what the feck I was doing there, and why didn't I take a day off, so I called in one of my relief staff and took off at lunchtime. True relief came in the form of a "Zeek" poor boy from Uncle Darrow's, a Creole restaurant that's not at all far from the day job. The Zeek must be particular to owner Norwood Clark's family, and it climbs to the very pinnacle of evil genius: perfectly fried shrimp and catfish, piping hot, piled up on a poor boy loaf that's also piled with creamy, cold potato salad. The juxtaposition of hot and cold, spicy and sweet, crispy breading and soft potatoes, the tang of the mayonnaise, mustard and pickles in the salad, is out of this world. Nowadays given my propensity for smaller portions (and my smaller stomach, actually; I really can't eat as much as I used to since I dropped the 35 pounds), I wouldn't have finished my Zeek. Last time I barely ate more than half. This time there was nothing left but crumbs. Man, I needed that. That was accompanied by the best gumbo in town (other than my own, of course), and my friend Shari had a perfectly lovely fried oyster poor boy (next time I'm gettin' me one of those but with half shrimp, if I can stand to pass up the Zeek). The day was finished off with leftover red beans 'n rice and Hurricanes from the other night ... a very fat Fat Tuesday. Not a lot of revelry, but I needed the comfort more than the revelry. To cap it off, NPR did a really nice review of "Doctors, Professors, Kings and Queens" yesterday on "All Things Considered"; Michelle Mercer had some lovely, quotable comments:
[The box set] unfolds like a night out on the town with a born and bred New Orleans local. [...] On a good night in New Orleans, just about everything in music happens. The rest is up to you.Odd thing was, they kept referring to it only as "The Big Ol' Box of New Orleans" and not by its actual title. (I sent a nice letter to NPR in hopes that they'd mention that later on when they read letters.) Still, anyone who did a search on that subtitle would probably find it online, and apparently people did -- sales have spiked up unbelievably on Amazon and Barnes and Noble (#31 and #39 in music sales, respectively). Yay! Anyway, I fervently hope you had a happy, safe and fun Mardi Gras (unlike some fun-hating sticks-in-the-mud).
All on a Mardi Gras Day. One description of what sounds like a near-perfect time on the big day was written by New Orleans writer Poppy Z. Brite in her journal yesterday:
Up and out at 9:30 to see the Rex parade ... dressed in black long johns with skeleton bones painted on them and my new, supremely awful Nixon mask, much like the one Peter Boyle wore in Where the Buffalo Roam ... as we walked along the neutral ground, I found a huge soup bone presumably discarded by one of the real skeletons who run through the streets at dawn ... wrapped it in beads and used it as my sceptre all day ... shook it at Rex and he gave me a thumbs-up ... Red Dog tallboys at 10:00 AM ... walked up to St. Charles ... "Mr. President! Mr. President!" ... posed for dozens of people who wanted their picture taken with Nixon ... posed with two Elvii, a big one and a little one ... scared some children ... more tallboys ... spent an hour talking to three old black men about dogs and football ... "Awmygawd! Nixon's a girl!" ... tons o'beads from the truck parades ... nightmarish Portapotties ... Mardi Gras Indians on the side streets ... stopped off at Fat Harry's to see if Chef Tory from Commander's Palace was there (last year he was hanging out at the bar dressed as a cow, and his wife was a cowgirl) ... he wasn't, but some young people took my picture and insisted on buying me a kamikaze shot ... things got blurry ... we never made it to the Crescent City Steakhouse for the symbolic "last meat" ... watched the Meeting of the Courts on WYES ... today my right arm is sore from hefting that bone.The key to helping Mardi Gras be fun for everyone is basically "be nice", and don't act like a jerk. Then we all get to have fun.
Quote of the day. Also from Poppy's journal yesterday:
Reason #5,944,023 Why I'll Never Become a CatholicNot only do I like her writing, but I think I like her too. (I can't wait to get started on The Value of X and Liquor.)
Another right-wing GOP stooge outed ... in more ways than one, apparently. The big news about this one, though, rests on why this unqualified, inexperienced would-be "journalist" who hid behind a pseudonym was allowed in the White House press room, four rows away from the president. Could it be because they wanted him there? From Media Matters for America:
Talon News "reporter" Jeff Gannon's softball questions often steer White House press secretary Scott McClellan away from more difficult inquiries raised during White House press briefings; on several occasions, McClellan has turned to Gannon for his questions after other press corps members have asked pointed questions on controversial topics. In reviewing White House press conferences from the past year, Media Matters for America has noted numerous instances in which Gannon's lobs -- leading questions that often include false assumptions favorable to the Bush administration -- have allowed McClellan to move to friendlier turf, away from having to answer questions on such issues as the proposed Federal Marriage Amendment; the Bush administration's relationship with former Iraqi National Congress leader Ahmad Chalabi; the growing trade deficit with China; and President Bush's Texas Air National Guard record.Here's what New York Representative Louise Slaughter had to say in her direct request for an explanation from the president:
Dear Mr. President:Why don't they just get it over with and start referring to their Ministry of Propaganda? It's getting that bad. UPDATE: It looks as if Rep. Slaughter will be calling for a congressional investigation within 48 hours, so that we the people may find out why an individual from a partisan political organization with no credentials as a reporter and apparently operating under an assumed name was able to land a coveted spot with the White House press corps. I'd certainly like to find out why that happened, wouldn't you? Kos adds the bottom line:
A potential male prostitute gets White House credentials using a fake name, provides McClellan a welcome ideological lifeline during press conferences, and somehow gets access to classified CIA documents that outs an undercover CIA operative.More from John Aravosis at AmericaBlog.org:
Just imagine if some guy with alleged ties to male prostitution were given unprecedented access to the White House, and given a White House press pass that didn't even have his real name on it in order to throw fake softball questions at the press briefings to help make the president look good.Curiouser and curiuouser ...
Ammunition. Via Rick ... next time someone says "we need less governmental control over big business", whip this one out:
W.R. Grace Accused of Hiding Cancer RiskIs this what President Gobshite had in mind when he referred to "frivolous asbestos claims" during the Scam of the Union address?
Oh, great ... Via Steve (a guy with 35,000 CDs) to me (a guy with a mere 5,000 CDs):
CD-eating fungus discoveredMake mental note: when traveling to Belize (or anywhere equally sultry), bring only the iPod and leave the CDs behind.
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What are you doing here? Go away and have fun.
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The "Weekend Edition" piece. I only caught a little of it (Gawd, I can't stand to listen to myself on the radio), but from the feedback I got from friends, apparently the piece was really good. I was astounded that they gave us so much time ... fifteen minutes! As host Sheilah Kast told me last Thursday, "it'll be a slow news day on Sunday, so we might go for a double-length piece." Turns out it was more like a quadruple-length piece. Thanks to Sheilah and to supergenius producer/editor Ned Wharton for all their great work. You can hear the NPR story about "Doctors, Professors, Kings and Queens: The Big Ol' Box of New Orleans", and a bit about Mardi Gras and Louisiana music in general, on their online archive via RealAudio or Windows Media.
Funny, in a sad way. Via Fred, Ken Capobianco writes in the Boston Phoenix on being a freelance arts writer over 40 in a retracting economy:
Don't let anyone tell you differently: in this economic climate, especially at this time of year, the term "freelance arts writer" is a euphemism for "unemployed." Ad sales are down. Papers are relying on staff reporters. There's very little to write about because there are so few shows and new record releases, and there are simply way too many writers to fill the void. So I've been living close to the vest (note to Bill Safire: just what does that mean?) and watching the bills pile up. [ Link to today's entries ]
The waiter you stiffed has not forgotten you. I've been following a newly-discovered weblog of late, entitled Waiter Rant. At first I found him a little grating, but as I continued to read I found him to be an excellent writer, putting a lot of humanity into his tales of what it's like to make your living waiting tables in a fairly high-end restaurant. He can get cranky (and who could blame him?) but he's a good person, and tries to be the best person he can even in the midst of some astonishingly abominable treatment by some of his customers. I swear, I don't know what it is with some people. Are they that small and petty, do they thrive on the power they must feel when they abuse the staff in a restaurant, someone whose job it is to help them derive pleasure from their meal and their entire dining experience? I do not understand people who behave that way, and frankly I don't want to know them or be around them. The venerable old Golden Rule pretty much applies here. Lots and lots of waiters are weblogging now, and the New York Times ran a piece the other day on the phonomenon. Some are better than others (in fact, some are so poorly written that I gave up on trying to read them pretty quickly), and the aforementioned Waiter Rant is currently my favorite. Some of them bear reading, though, if for no other reason to help you think twice before you behave like a jerk to your server when you go out to eat. If he or she is openly rude, hostile, lazy, insulting, whatever ... that's one thing. But if the kitchen gets something wrong, it's not the server's fault. If you didn't make a reservation and had to wait a half an hour for your table, it's not the server's fault. If you're having a bad day, it's not the server's fault. I read the venting on these weblogs, and just when I thought some people's behavior could not get any worse in a restaurant, up comes another story that tops it. Don't be one of those stories. The bare minimum tip is 15%, and really, don't tip less than 20% unless the service was only minimally acceptable. Service would have to be truly awful for me to tip less than 15%, and I can count the number of times I've had to do that in the last several years on one hand. That's how it works in the U.S. If you don't like it and don't want to cooperate, well ... try working for tips sometime.
Hey Iraq! Welcome to democracy! Via DailyKos:
[Here's a]nother troubling, yet not absolutely shocking, [bit of] news about the new rules forced on the newly liberated Iraqi population... according to provisions signed by CPA Iraqi farmers are not allowed to save their seed from one year to another. Instead they are required to apply for new licenses every time and buy new seed from (surprise) ... Monsanto.God bless the American way, eh? We'll be closing all the family-owned shops in Baghdad when the Super Wal-Mart opens, too.
[ Link to today's entries ]
I'm gonna be on NPR! This morning I went over to NPR West in Culver City and was interviewed by Sheilah Kast for a spot about the "Doctors, Professors, Kings and Queens" box set that'll run this coming Sunday on "Weekend Edition Sunday", two days before Mardi Gras. I was startled by how nervous I was. I've been doing radio for 17 years, but today I was never so nervous since my very first day on KCRW in May of 1988. (Probably that little fecker inside my head who kept saying, "NATIONWIDE radio, Chuck! You're on NATIONWIDE radio now!" I kept feeling as if my brain was going to shut down, and who knows if anything I said made any sense. My grammar was even fleeing from me; I even once said "farther" instead of "further" ... ah well, you wince and move on and hope they'll cut it out. Thank Gawd it wasn't live. We were at it for nearly 40 minutes, and it'll probably be cut down to a three- or four-minute piece, so I'm really curious to see what they end up using. I can only hope that NPR's legendary audio editors use all their powers and all their skills to keep me from sounding like an awful feckin 'eejit. I'm not sure at what point in the show it'll run, but if you listen to "Weekend Edition Sunday" this coming Sunday, February 6, you'll hear it, or at least a promo that'll give you an idea of when you can expect it. So, if you're outside the L.A. area and you never managed to surf over to KCSN's web site to listen to my own radio show, and you're the tiniest bit curious as to what your favorite (or second favorite, or seventy-eighth favorite) weblogger actually sounds like (not like an babbling, fumbling idiot, we can only hope), then tune in if you dare!
Congratulations, America! You are now a nation of torturers, having confirmed as your chief law enforcement officer a man who wrote the torture justification memos, defined torture so narrowly that you could do anything other than kill someone or cause "major organ failure" and it wouldn't under his definition qualify as torture, and advised the president to declare our current wars exempt from the provisions of the "quaint" Geneva Convention because otherwise we'd likely be guilty of war crimes. This isn't even to mention minor trifles like hushing up Bush's drunk-driving arrest. This is now the senior government official responsible for upholding the laws of the land. Your senators, who represent you in our government, seem to say on your behalf that you condone this. This is where our country is now. Are you proud? Is this what you voted for? Is this the America you know? We, ladies and gentlemen, are fucked.
Quote of the day. From Duncan Black, a.k.a. "Atrios".
It is not partisan for anti-torture Democrats to oppose Gonzales. It is partisan for anti-torture Republicans to support him.Republicans crow on and on about how Gonzales is the American success story who worked his way up from nothing. Yeah, that's great. I congratulate him for his personal success. However, he still advised the White House on how to get away with torture. Some are even making not-so-veiled accusations of racism; i.e., if you oppose Gonzales you're anti-Hispanic. No, if you oppose Gonzales you're most likely anti-torture. To paraphrase Paul Simon, I wanna look down and spit on the ground every time their names are mentioned ...
Kennedy letter claims "smoking gun" against Gonzales. This is what every Senate Republican (and five Democrats whom I will work toward seeing that they never hold public office again) voted for when they voted to confirm Alberto Gonzales as Attorney General. Read it all. Curt Matlock writes at DailyKos.com:
Senator Edward Kennedy stood on the floor of the Senate on Tuesday to denounce torture and to denounce Alberto Gonzales. Kennedy later released from his office a letter, Kennedy Urges Senate to Deny Gonzales Nomination Over Torture Policies, detailing his objections to Gonzales and providing evidence of a "smoking gun" regarding Gonzales efforts to provide a legal rationale for subverting international law and inoculating against later war crimes charges.Read this post and its analysis of Sen. Kennedy's letter, and make sure you read all of the original letter at Sen. Kennedy's website. It's amazing. There's more great commentary from Digby:
The idea that al Qaeda is some unique form of evil that requires we cast out all norms of civilization is simply mind boggling (Indeed, I get the feeling that it illustrates nothing more than ego run amuck -- some kind of competitiveness with the Greatest Generation.)I'm ashamed of my country today.
[ Link to today's entries ]
King Cake time! Time's running out for you to get your traditional dessert for Carnival season -- after Mardi Gras day (next Tuesday!), there ain't no more King Cakes. Sure, there are a few bakeries who do them year-round, but it's just wrong to have King Cake when it's not Carnival season. Last year we got one from Chef Jean-Luc Albin at Maurice French Pastries (one on Carrollton, one in Metairie). It was pretty good, a chocolate Bourbon pecan filled one that we enjoyed, although it had too much white icing and not enough purple, green and gold sugar. I finally caved on the filled King Cakes and stopped shrieking "They're not traditional!" like some deranged Ignatius J. Reilly clone (as I am as slow to accept change as many typical New Orleanians), but there are some traditions about which there is no discussion -- I want colored sugar on the cake, and lots of it. The ones I remember best from my childhood were the really old-school, very traditional (i.e., dry) King Cakes from the late McKenzie's Bakeries (which most people hated), and the really good ones from the late, lamented Lawrence's Bakery. Lawrence Aiavolasiti, a.k.a. "Mr. Wedding Cake" had a family-run bakery on Elysian Fields for years with an enormous picture of himself propped up on the roof. For most of my life, I must admit, the sight of Mr. Wedding Cake's picture scared the shit out of me, mostly because Lawrence's Bakery was right across the street from my pediatrician's office. Dr. G (who's still around and from what I heard still practices a couple days a week) was great, but a visit to his office usually meant that I'd be getting some enormous needle stuck in my tiny, sickly little body. Mr. Wedding Cake suffered from the juxtaposition, unfortunately. But I digress... This year I wanted to try one I hadn't tried before. Fortunately for my taste-testing needs (and unfortunately for my diet) there was not one, but there were TWO King Cakes in my office today, one from Manny Randazzo's* and one from Haydel's. Of course, I had to try them both. Two not-so-big pieces later there was so much sugar in me I thought I was going to have a seizure. (* - I went to high school with a guy named Manny Randazzo. I don't think this is him, because he's a court reporter now, but I'd imagine it's someone in his family. Unfortunately the site's FAQ didn't include the question I really wanted answered, which was, "Hey, you're not the same Manny Randazzo that Chuck went to school with, are you?" It's obviously a deficient FAQ. Anyway, I'm digressing again.) Both were traditional, non-filled cakes. Here are my brief tasting notes:
Randazzo's: The more moist of the two, VERY sweet, with a cinnamon swirl and a pronounced almond extract flavor. Quite tasty. Lots of gloppy white icing on top and not so much colored sugar (I don't like it when they do that).Both were good. I think I'd have to choose the Haydel's cake because of the sugar/icing issue, despite that last subtle (if not entirely imagined) perception. I didn't get the baby in either piece.
Quote of the day. From an unnamed New Orleanian, from a comic strip by Bunny Matthews entitled "F'Sure! Actual Dialogue Heard on the Streets of New Orleans":
First guy: "When I was a kid at St. Rita's, I got da King Cake baby five pawties in a row. Ma momma almos' died."I had that cartoon on my fridge when I first moved out here, and when my L.A. friends would look at it with bewilderment and not laugh, I'd try to explain it but usually ended up just saying, "It's a New Orleans thing. You wouldn't understand." Feel free to use the latter explanation if you're bewildered and not laughing.
Mmmm, blood oranges. Today's Los Angeles Times Food Section features an article on blood oranges, which I absolutely adore. Beautiful color, wonderful sweetness, and far less acid than a common navel orange, these beauties are great for savory or dessert dishes, and make great drinks. The article gives some nifty-looking recipes for blood orange marmalade and a blood orange sangría, but c'mon ... is the best cocktail they could come up with a "Blood Orange Blossom"? The orange blossom, which is basically "gin and juice", has got to be near the bottom of the barrel cocktail-wise, and was originally invented during Prohibition to cover up the flavor of awful homemade "bathtub gin". Do something more interesting than that, for gawd's sake. I came up with something off the top of my head one day that's better than a bloody Orange Blossom:
CacciaviteTry a Campari and blood orange juice. Try something with Charbay's Blood Orange Vodka (but the cocktail ideas on their site are boring) ... maybe 1-1/2 ounces blood orange juice, 1-1/2 ounces bianco vermouth (that's sweet white vermouth, not the dry; Martini and Rossi Bianco is a good one) and an ounce of Charbay blood orange vodka. Hmm, that sounds kinda good. Might have to try that one soon. You might also wanna try my recipe for Blood Orange and Rosemary Sorbet, which is really fantastic.
Scam of the Union. Josh Marshall:
If we're not mistaken, tonight's State of the Union address (aka, the kick-off of the Bamboozlepalooza Tour) should knock the Fainthearted Faction and the Conscience Caucus into utter turmoil. And pretty much every member of Congress is going to be asked by some reporter somewhere what they think of President Bush's Social Security phase-out plan.Don't buy it. I don't know if I'll be able to bear to listen tonight. The mere sound of his voice sets my teeth on edge, and the sound of his voice uttering an hourlong tissue of lies and jintoistic flag-waving will be even worse. We'll need a big, big drink tonight.
Ignorance is ...? Here's the mind-boggle of the day, via Wes:
Bush tells CBC he's 'unfamiliar' with Voting Rights ActThis makes the Republicans' attempts to recast themselves as the "party of civil rights" even more laughable than before. He's such an empty suit ... that is, he would be, if he weren't so goddamn dangerous.
Morons. You do not own their courage. Via Atrios:
In the latest sign that the G.O.P. is intent on politicizing everything Iraq-related, Congressional Republicans are reportedly planning to show up at tonight's State of the Union address with purple ink on their fingers to send the message that they support Iraqi voters.As Charles Pierce of Newton, Massachusetts wrote in to Eric Alterman at MSNBC:
You do not own their courage.Damn right.
[ Link to today's entries ]
January's gone. At this rate it's beginning to feel like I'll be dead of old age by Mardi Gras after next. Is one officially an old fart when one starts saying things like this? Oh, and apropos of nothing, this month's tag line was a quote from our friend Gregg, who said that when he was trying to describe the flavor of Laphroaig Scots whisky (the really smoky one).
Flavor of the day: Szechuan peppercorns. Or Szechwan peppercorns, or to give it the proper Pinyin, Sichuan peppercorns. Or just say huajiao as they do in Sichuan province, and mispronounce it by getting the tones wrong.
I'd never cooked with them and was keen to do so, until I read a while back that they were now illegal in the United States. Apparently the imported huajiao carried a bacteria that is harmless to humans but that destroys citrus trees, and the USDA has this annoying tendency to be disinclined to allow significant portions of our agriculture to be destroyed. (A necessary tradeoff, we suppose.) But dammit, what about my peppercorns? A new heat-treating process apparently now renders them harmless (and only reduces the potency of the spice in a very minor way), so now Sichuan peppercorns are once again available Stateside. As soon as I read that, I immediately ordered some from Buffalo Creek Spices (who appear to be out of them now). They were waiting for me at work a couple of weeks ago after I got back from New Orleans. I could tell as soon as I walked into my office; the intense aroma of the spice (bolstered by the pound of Jamaican allspice it was packed with) filled the whole room. The Sichuan peppercorns were triple-bagged, and it was easy to see why -- if they hadn't been they'd be smelling them down the block. I was curious, so I tasted some immediately -- I took a small pinch of the hulls, crunched them up for a few seconds and let the peppercorn pulp rest on my tongue for half a minute or so to take in the flavor. Aromatic, perfumey, flowery. A bit of lavender, and that lemon is definitely in there. Woody, barklike quality to the spice flavor. I can see that hint of anise too, and ... ooo, pretty peppery. Then ... um, what's all this? Tingling. Numbing "that'd be the 'ma' part", certainly. Then what I felt was the full force of the spice directly on my tongue, even after I swallowed them, and for several minutes afterwards. It was not unlike having a large pile of those little fizzing candies called Pop Rocks on my tongue, except I had nothing on my tongue except the residue from the Sichuan peppercorns. Tingle, sizzle, snap crackle pop. Wow. One uses this in far less concentrated doses in food, of course, but it still imparts subtler levels of that peppery tingle to dishes. I'm goig to start using them right away, and here are a couple of interesting looking dishes I came across, but the one I really want is Iron Chef Chen Kenichi's reicpe for Ma Po Do-fu (Pork and Tofu with Hot Bean Paste and Sichuan Pepper). First off, make a Sichuan salt and pepper blend. Take a few tablespoons of Sichuan peppercorns and roast them in a hot skillet for a few minutes until they become aromatic (be careful not to burn them), then grind them in a mortar or spice grinder, strain to remove large pieces of husk, and mix with a slightly larger quantity of sea salt. Store in a tightly sealed jar.
Millionaire's ChickenHere's another one, Salt and Pepper Shrimp, adapted from Jeffrey Steingarten's book on an eGullet post, but the author seemed to be more delighted with the fact that he was cooking with a then-illegal ingredient than with the flavor of the dish.
Here's to cheap vodka. I don't drink much vodka, actually -- not the plain stuff, at least. I favor flavored and infused vodkas, and mainly use the plain stuff for homemade infusions or for the few very cocktails we make that call for it. There are subtleties apparent in different vodkas, but by definition vodka is "tasteless and odorless." I also boggle at the fact that vodka has for years on end been the most popular spirit in this country, and has supplanted gin in many cocktails that originally and properly called for gin. Next time a bartender makes me a Martini with vodka without asking me, I may just have to slap him around (okay, given the fact that I haven't struck another human being in anger since 1975, I'd probabably just send it back). The New York Times food and wine section held a blind taste test of 21 vodkas recently, including expensive "super-premium" brands. Which one came out on top? Good ol' $13 Smirnoff. In this era of small batch Bourbons and artisinally made spirits, it's interesting to note in the article that "vodka does not necessarily benefit from artisanal manufacturing."
In the United States almost all vodka producers buy neutral spirits that have already been distilled from grain by one of several big Midwestern companies like Archer Daniels Midland. The neutral spirits, which are 95 percent alcohol or more, are trucked to the producers, where they are filtered, diluted and bottled. In our tasting only one brand, Teton Glacier Potato vodka, was distilled by the producer. Another producer, Hangar 1, distills a portion of its spirits and buys the rest.The Times article also has a nifty interactive feature with the tasters discussing how the tasting went, with comments on six of the vodkas they tried. There's an interesting thread on eGullet about the article as well, including some illuminating comments:
"A friend in the beverage industry was once given a tour of the Smirnoff distillery. The same company, of course, bottles Popov, which sells for a lower price. 'I've seen where you make the Smirnoff,' my friend said at the end of tour, 'but where do you make the Popov?' His guide merely chuckled."While it'd be interesting to taste many different vodkas made of different bases and note the subtle differences, I don't have the interest or budget for that. I want more distinctive flavors in my spirits, and I couldn't be less interested in a vodka on the rocks or, God forbid, vodka tonic or vodka and soda. Give me something complex and multi-nuanced any day. If you're just going to mix vodka into a cocktail, I think we can dispense with the "Garbage In, Garbage Out" excuse for using high-end spirits in cocktails (one which I tend to go with most of the time). All the "microscopic" subtlety of flavors in a vodka is going to be wiped out once you mix it. I'd say use Smirnoff for mixing, and if you like to sip chilled vodka, try something else. I must confess I've been wanting to try the Wyborowa Single Estate vodka, but primarily for its really cool-looking Frank Gehry-designed bottle.
Technology is your friend. We're here to help! It's a little amazing to think that in the 21st Century there are still communities in the United States with no telephone service. Naturally, one of the last would have to be in Louisiana. The future comes a-marchin' in, though, in the tiny northern Louisiana hamlet of Mink, about 25 miles south of Natchitoches -- yesterday they finally got telephones. With technological innovation comes its down side, though, as the AP reported:
It didn't take resident Elaine Edwards long to find out that having a phone can be a mixed blessing. Fifteen minutes after hers was installed, a telemarketer called.Let's hope Bellsouth also gives them Privacy Manager and Caller ID, too.
January '05 Looka! entries have been permanently archived.
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