 
 "Eating, drinking and carrying on..." -- Adelaide Brennan
Happy Mardi Gras!!! My ass might be stuck in my office in Los Angeles, but my head and my heart are screaming for beads and da-BLOOOOOOONS! (CUP! CUP!) 
And the Big Chief, he don't bow, he don't kneel ... Goodbye Miss Antoinette. I have sad news, though ... Miss Antoinette K-Doe, the wife of Ernie K-Doe, Emperor of the Universe (currently ruling the Cosmos from the Cosmos), passed away in her sleep early this morning at the age of 66. She now rules the Universe with him as Empress, by his side. 
This is the only halfway decent picture I had of her, taken during a cooking demonstration at Jazzfest where she made us gumbo. Man, it was good. Head on over to the Mother-In-Law Lounge today if you can -- it's open. So long, Snooks. Man, what a bummer of a week ... I had gotten behind enough on posting over the last couple of weeks, and in case you hadn't already heard, Snooks Eaglin, monumentally great and influential blues, R&B and you-name-it New Orleans guitarist, passed away last Wednesday at the age of 72.  Photo by Jef Jaisun - jaisunphoto.com I wish I had seen him more often -- he blew me away every time I did. Amazing, amazing guitarist, and a man they called "The Human Jukebox," with a repertoire of over 2,500 songs in his memory. My friend Michael reminisced in email: "Maybe some of you players out there can describe his style, I just know it was deeply funky and stingin' and I was always hypnotized just watching his hands. Also a true character, his shows sometimes broke down musically but he was always entertaining." Da Papuh said:
Michael also told us about a gig I wish I had been to:
Snooks made a bunch of records, which is great, but he could have made 250 more and we still wouldn't have gotten all the music he had in him. [ Link to today's entries ]
Oh Oscar, Oscar, Oscar ... Yeah, the annual snooze-fest was as snoozy as ever, despite their trumpeted plans to make it more hip and star-studded. Mary and Steve's annual Oscar party is always more fun than the show, with everyone bringing food and/or drink that ties in to the title, theme, setting or any horrid pun involving one of the nominated films. Me, I just took the easy and tasty way out -- Benjamin Button surely enjoyed red beans 'n rice (and were Queenie's red beans better than mine? Well, almost surely, but only hers), and we know he and his father drank Sazeracs together ("Whiskey, not brandy.") (Oh, speaking of which, stay tuned for some Sazerac Bar-related posts going up in the next couple of days.) Besides my red beans and Sazeracs, the food was pretty good (thanks to Steve for the rundown, and to LeeAnn for the pictures):
See? Much more fun than the show. (I was thrilled that Dustin Lance Black and Sean Penn won, though!) Free screen cleaner! As seen on TV! Okay, not really -- this is a web-only offer, but it's fun to say "As seen on TV!" You know how grimy your monitor gets, and it's a pain to clean it. But as you see, it never really gets it completely clean -- it gets dirty on the inside, too. I'm pleased to offer you an absolutely free screen cleaner that works from the inside, with no effort on your part, at this link. (Thanks, Wes!) [ Link to today's entries ]
Los Angeles Downtown Sub-District Cocktail Competition: Da Winnahs! It took a while -- our esteemed judge, Dr. Cocktail, was mixing all the entries himself and tasting them at the site of his current gig in Albuquerque (poor thing ... and I knew I shoulda taken dat left toin at Albakoiky). The results are in, and the idea is for these recipes to be spread around to cocktailian Los Angeles bars (especially those downtown) so that they can be made all over the city. I'm tickled as a Pink Squirrel to find out that my entry was selected as the offical Toy District Cocktail (yay!), and I'm thrilled to be in such august company -- man, what a great bunch of bartenders! Now, if y'all are going to make any of these at home (and you should, 'cause they look great), you'd better get busy -- you've got a lot of drinking to do.
Cheers! [ Link to today's entries ]
Mixology Monday XXXVI: Hard Drinks for Hard Times.
Matt Rowley is hosting MxMo this month, and his chosen theme
reflects our economic hard times as well as heis own -- he got laid off recently (eep!). Liquor, as we know, isn't cheap (not the good stuff,
I should probably do what he suggests. I have a general idea of where everything is, kinda sorta how much of it, but we've got an insanely big bar -- hundreds of bottles -- that it can get away from me. A regular dusting and once-over is a terrific idea (organizing all our stuff wouldn't be bad, either). Wesly and I have been lucky -- neither of us has been laid off, and we're pretty safe at our
respective jobs (it helps to be considered indispensible; it gets annoying when they give you a hard time about taking time off --
Matt found a great bargain in Bulleit Bourbon, one that I like a lot as well, a mere $19.99 at Trader Joe's. You can get a decent Bourbon for even less than that, and for that we turn to our old friend and relative ... Old Grand-Dad. I can hear some of you now. "Bottom shelf!" is one cry from the back benches. Well, true, it does have a bottom shelf price -- we get it at Beverage Warehouse for a whopping $9.95. Don't be fooled by the low price, though. While it's not exactly one I'd choose for sipping straight (although that's certainly doable), it mixes very well, especially in one particular favorite that doesn't get as much attention as it deserves. More on that in a bit. Old Grand-Dad is a venerable brand, dating back to 1882 and was initially made by the Wathen family distillery (who also owned The American Medicinal Spirits Company, who produced some very much-needed medicine during Prohibition). I'd read a number of reports that Old Grand-Dad was significantly better when it was made by National Distillers before 1987. Using the Google revealed a number of comments along the lines of, "My grandparents used to drink this stuff." In '87 the brand was sold to Jim Beam, and many folks have said it's not what it once was. I can't say, as I don't recall having tasted it straight prior to the change in ownership, nor was my childhood palate able to discern much of anything. The word is, though, that if you come across a vintage bottle you should snap it up. (Odd bit of trivia: the portrait of the grand-dad on the label is Basil Hayden, a renowned distiller in the 18th and 19th Centurues whose picture doesn't appear on the label of the Beam-made small batch whiskey that's actually named after him.) "Bottom shelf" is more of a reflection of its price, but flavor-wise, at least for mixing, it's better than that. There's also a bonded version (100 proof by law) that's even better, but with a higher price, and I've seen a 114 proof version but haven't tried that one as yet. As my sipping Bourbons tend toward the higher-end stuff, I realized I had never actually tasted Old Grand-Dad neat. I decided to pour a shot of the regular 86 proof product into our lovely Riedel Bourbon glasses to give the straight stuff a sniff and a sip, and see what we're up to here. 
Nice color, with caramel, oak and a little vanilla on the nose, plus a touch of spice from the rye content in the mash. More caramel and vanilla and oak on the palate, and a significant amount of alcohol heat but not too bad, long finish. Not my first choice for a sipping whiskey by any means, but certainly sippable, especially on the rocks. Best of all, for $9.95 per 750ml bottle it's a significant bargain if Buffalo Trace, Maker's Mark or Bulleit (all bargains themselves) are still stretching the budget too far. All that to say, while it's drinkable straight it's far better when mixed, and Wes and I tended to keep it around primarily for one drink of which we're rather fond -- the venerable Whiskey Sour. Along with the Old Fashioned, this was one of the main drinks I grew up around and was one of my dad's favorites (along with what the family called a "Highball," consisting of Seagram's V.O. and 7UP). It was the one I tended to get sips of most often, and is underrated by a lot of cocktail folks, I think. Very refreshing, very tasty, a classic. And Old Grand-Dad makes mighty fine Whiskey Sours. You don't really need a high-end Bourbon for these, although you certainly could if you wanted and if you can afford it. But in keeping with tough times, this $9.95 whiskey is really all you need. Simple syrup for your cocktails is cheap to make too, just a cup of sugar to a cup of water, and shake the hell out of it until it's dissolved (and a splash of vodka as a preservative). I wanted something a bit more complex than a regular sour, though, so given the Carnival season in full swing I decided to pull this drink out again. I've posted it before (and to my chagrin I note that I posted it only four months ago ... I really do have no proper sense of the passage of time), but it's a good example of cocktail frugality, if not quite as frugal as the Whiskey Sour. In case you missed it the last time I posted it, here's the Falernum recipe I use:
I did finally remember where I got this recipe -- a site called Mr. Lucky, which has a small cocktail section (which doesn't seem to have been updated in ages).
They came up with the idea of replacing the simple syrup in a Whiskey Sour with falernum, giving the drink a more complex and
brighter flavor profile and a nice dose of the Caribbean (New Orleans being the northernmost Caribbean port, as some say). I did a
The final bit of frugality for this drink was picking a free lemon off the tree in our front yard (which is bearing beautifully even in mid-February; I love fruit trees that bear all year long). It astonishes me to go into a big chain supermarket like Ralph's and see lemons selling for anywhere from 79¢ to 99¢ APIECE. What absurd price-gouging. At the smaller Latino markets in Highland Park near where we live, or even at the Super A supermarket, lemons tend to go for 99¢ a pound or less; limes are often selling for 3 pounds for 99¢. Do your best to find small produce markets in your neighborhood -- this is a good idea for most of your produce, not just for the citrus. We find fantastic quality stuff for a fraction of what you pay at the supermarket. Local farmer's markets are also a great value. Even better ... I'd strongly urge any cocktail fans to plant one lemon and one lime tree if they have room for it. A regular supply of free citrus for your drinks is a very good thing. And if you're actually paying nearly a buck PER lemon, the tree will pay for itself very quickly. So, apologies if you feel this is a rerun, but you really should try it if you haven't already. 
The cost of the whiskey in this drink? About 79¢. The cost of the falernum ... um, too much math, but I'm guessing about 40¢. The lemon? FREE! (My favorite price! Free food from your yard, yay!) Enjoy this drink for about $1.19. It's nice to serve these in a pretty sour glass, but I could really go for a double-size one of these on the
rocks in a go-cup on a parade route. Speaking of which, if you're sipping one of these and missing Mardi Gras and the parade season leading up
to it, you can get the next best thing to being there. Fix yourself a Mardi Gras Sour, order a King Cake from
Randazzo's, put on some
great New Orleans music
The green torment (and their stupid frakkin' spammers). I have to apologize for being in the middle of an extreme lazy-bastard period for the last couple of weeks. It happens periodically, then I usually get over it and move on. When one of my friends said last night, as we were tippling Black Feather cocktails, "Come ON! I'm so bored at work!" ... well, I knew I had to get my ass in gear. In the meantime, let me engage in the (for me) rather unusual act of the public shaming of an alcoholic beverage. Several days ago a comment appeared in the "Battlestar Galactica" props auction topic extolling the alleged virtues of a new product called Le Tourment Vert, which describes itself as an absinthe; a recipe was also provided, which looked like the Chambord signature corporate recipe called the "French Martini" -- vodka, Chambord and pineapple juice -- except with the addition of Tourment Vert. When two other comments, both in inappropriate topics, arrived within 30 minutes, all from the same IP address, I just thought "Idiot spammers," and banned them. Turns out there was more to it than that, but my lazy-bastard period precluded any further investivation. More on that in a bit. 
Rarely, if ever, has a spirit been so appropriately named as Le Tourment Vert -- it translates from French as "The Green Torment." It's an apt description of what this stuff does to you. It's made in France, 100 proof and has a color ... not found in nature. (The appearance of the ingredeints FD&C Blue Lake and Yellow dyes on the label are a fairly obvious clue that the color doesn't come from its botanicals.) I tried a 50ml taster a while back and it was one of only two spirits I've ever poured down the drain (the execrable Absolut Kurant, that classic Robitussin-flavored vodka, being the other). Let's clear one thing up very quickly -- Le Tourment Vert is not absinthe, certainly not in the way we've come to understand and appreciate what absinthe is over the last 150 or so years (i.e., an anise-forward herbal spirit which includes grand wormwood, or artemisia absinthium among its botanicals, along with green anise and fennel). Although there are many variations and unique characteristics among the many brands of contemporary absinthe now available, when you sip it you still know you're drinking absinthe. This is not unlike the fact that there are perhaps millions of gumbo recipes, all different, each unique to the gumbo cook, but when you take that first spoonful you know you're eating gumbo. When you take that first sip of Tourment Vert, your first instinct is to swish, rinse and spit. Or perhaps gargle. The flavor profile of this spirit is more along the lines of Scope, and/or Listerine, with, as Marleigh put it, the fresh, delicate touch of Aqua-Velva. It does have one thing going for it, though -- a very pretty bottle. (With all respect and admiration toward my friend Brooks' grandmother, "It's a pretty bottle, so hush" doesn't cut it in this case.) The best, and most generous, description of Le Tourment Vert is as a mint-flavored herbal liqueur, and it is most certainly not a proper absinthe. If you like that sort of thing, go right ahead and drink it. I have to warn you, though, it's really terrible stuff. Besides making a mouthwash/aftershave-flavored product and marketing it as an absinthe, perhaps the next worst decision made by the makers and distributors of this product is to hire a public relations agency who thought it would be a good idea to spam the comments section of cocktail weblogs, especially those in which they were discussing other absinthes, with plugs for this stuff. As I haven't been discussing absinthe lately, apparently they felt the Battlestar Galactica topic would suffice. As I mentioned earlier, I got slimed last week. I contemplated a post to a drink writers' mailing list to which I belong, but as I was still overcome by the tidal wave of laziness I didn't do it. Over the last week lots of my friends' blogs have been getting the same treatment, far more so than here, to wit: Marleigh, Paul, Darcy, Blair, Gabriel (whose post title was my favorite: "Spam this, bitches"), Stevi and a whole bunch more, no doubt. So! If there are any P.R. interns or beginners or even longtime professionals, take a lesson from this. Comment spamming to promote your sad, pathetic product is bad, and in this case it has backfired quite spectacularly. This is insulting to the world of many good people who are doing good work to promote good products. I've had some great communication with P.R. people who know how to approach the cocktail blogging community, and the ones who take us seriously and treat us with respect are the ones who will reap the rewards ... as long as their product is good. I'm happy to sample anything you want to send me, as long as you're willing to accept my honest opinion of it. In many cases my approach tends to be that if I don't like it I won't write about it, unless it's truly egregiously offensive in some way. (In the cast of the green torment, it's in multiple ways -- a bad product, badly marketed.) Here's what you've wrought: Le Tourment Vert? Frak off. (Their product is nasty. Don't buy it.) Cashmere Agency? Frak off. Did you really think we were that stupid? If there's anyone in my readership who'd like a bit of advice about starting on the path of appreciation of true, well-made absinthe, I have a few recommendations, but I'll save that post for when I open the brand-new bottle of Absinthe Marteau I just received ... I'm very excited! [ Link to today's entries ]
Squiffy, Zozzled, or just plain drunk? Thanks to my friend Louise, who was kind enough to type this in and send it to me, I'm able to share with you a brief essay by Edmund Wilson called "The Lexicon of Prohibition," written in 1927 and later compiled in a book called American Earthquake. It offers dozens of descriptive terms for drunknenness, in increasing order of drunkenness, and they're a hoot.
I think I have been describable by most of those adjectives at one time or another, although I've never heard myself referred to as "featured" or "organized." I'm rather fond of many of the euphemisms I've picked up in Ireland -- bolloxed, banjaxed, langered, trousered, gargled and elephants. I've definitely been elephants. Everything is better with bacon, as we know ... even websites! Why I drink. And how. (And how!) Our friend Paul Clarke blogs in today's New York Times about his approach to drinking, and makes many great points. I especially like the one from G. K. Chesterton: "The dipsomaniac and the abstainer are not only both mistaken, but they both make the same mistake. They both regard wine as a drug and not as a drink." I also strongly agree with the idea he discusses of exposing your kids to sensible enjoyment of alcoholic beverages during childhood, both by example and with occasional participation (kids getting a bit of wine with dinner, for instance). Paul raises the excellent example: "it was not lost on me during my secular Bible Belt upbringing that some of my hardest-drinking friends -- whose relationships with booze were often of the vomit-in-the-shrubbery, loss-of-all-personal-control variety -- were from religious homes in which alcohol was seldom if ever served." Felix, Felix, Felix ... sigh. (CAUTION! "Battlestar Galactica" spoilers ahead, if you're behind!) There are many people who are shocked with the turn of events on the Galactica last week, with much vitriol being spewed on various blogs and boards about sensible, cuddly yet sweet-no-more Felix Gaeta. He's been through a lot, and in light of the last four years of his history plus his sincere belief that an alliance with the beings that annihilated the human race is treason you really do understand why he's doing what he's doing, even though you know it's wrong. There's a good analysis on io9.com about how and why he went bad. As they pointed out, whenever Felix "challenges the Man," thinking he's doing the right thing, even on legitimate moral grounds, it always makes things worse. We'll find out how it all goes tonight. I fear Felix won't survive the episode. January Looka! entries have been permanently archived. [ Link to today's entries ]
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at least), and Matt wrote a 
and ... um, throw some beads up in the air and
catch them. (Extra points if you stomp on your own hand or knock over one of your own children to get them.)| Several of my friends and loved ones (and a few kind strangers) contribute regularly to this weblog, providing links, comments and sometimes lots more. Thanks to Wesly Moore, Mike Luquet, Mary Herczog, Steve Hochman, Dave Schmerler, Nettie DeAugustine, Diana Schwam, Andy Senasac, Michael Yasui, Steve Gardner, Michael Pemberton, Steve Kelley, Barry Kelley, Eric Labow, Tom Krueger, Greg Beron, Sean Burke, Shari Minton and Barry Enderwick. |
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