Date: 2008-05-07 21:20 Subject: Those who dare Public Music: Otis Redding—Just One More Day Tags: food, mixology, nick is doing something impractical

“You know,” said robertcalvin, “my favorite thing about martinis is the gin-soaked olives. If they sold jars full of them, I’d just get drunk on that.” “Shit yes,” said 2ce. Here are the lessons they subsequently learned:

• You can’t just use a martini’s worth of gin on nine or ten olives, even if you’re giving it two hours to soak. I’m not sure what the ideal ratio would be; one might be able to get five olives per martini. Maybe.
• Related to this, don’t add any olive brine, because you want the gin to be as concentrated as possible. Yes, I know you or one of your co-conspirators likes “dirty” martinis, but trust me, this one is going to be pretty filthy as-is.
• Go ahead and give it more time than you think it’ll need. They were markedly improved by the time we got to the last few.
• Use good olives. (Mine were kind of so-so.)
• It turns out that the failure mode isn’t as good as either plain olives or proper gin-soaked olives, so limit yourself to small batches until and unless you perfect this.

As you can tell, we had decidedly mixed success. Further experimentation will be necessary.

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Date: 2008-05-03 00:45 Subject: Focus Public Music: Coyote Bones—Lightweights Drinking Tags: mixology, mozilla

If you ignored my advice and are using Firefox nightlies -- and happen to be doing so on Mac -- you'll want the bug 406730¹-compatible GrApple theme,² because it is pretty sweet.

Also, I just mixed my first Manhattan. I think I like these. But I need some bitters and some lemon slices, and a 3:1 ratio is way too much vermouth. Also, it turns out that a small metal tea-thermos makes a pretty good cocktail shaker.
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1. I swear, this is the most drama I've seen in Bugzilla since the multiline tooltip bug.

Me, I'm in the camp that says it's a crucial feature -- FF3 needs either a working de-focus effect (even at the cost of weird behavior elsewhere) or a total backout of the Proto theme and a reversion to FF2's thin-bar window design.

2. At least until the Proto³ changes roll through. And always remember to add

.searchbar-engine-image {
margin-left: -11px !important;
margin-right: 2px !important;
display: -moz-box !important;
background-color: #fff !important;
}

to your userChrome.css when using a GrApple theme.

3. I guess they're calling it "Firelight" now?

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Date: 2007-07-25 18:58 Subject: (no subject) Public Music: The Be Good Tanyas—It's Not Happening Tags: adventure, mixology

Crap, that was exhausting. But I got rid of some difficult-to-destroy items, which = victory.

(Not the real routes I took. Couldn't use the freeway, used one of those bridges that don't show up on the map, and misplaced Cedar Ave for a while and had to backtrack. Also discovered the single foulest traffic light in the cities.)

(Also, I was totally going to go to Trader Joes afterwards, but first my iPod ran out of power, then I ran out of water, and then I noticed the little voice in the back of my head saying, "Hey, we can totally do this anyway. I don't feel too tired; do you feel too tired?" And that's the voice that means the heat is about to start Getting To You, so I went straight home.)

( Hmm, I haven't done any mixology here in a while.  )

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Date: 2007-04-16 22:44 Subject: Reptilian assistance Public Music: Gomez—Rie's Wagon Tags: mixology

Put some salt in the bottom of the salsa jar. (Probably about 1/8 of a teaspoon. I dunno.) Add about a finger and a half of orange juice, and swirl until dissolved. Add the rest of the orange juice you'll be using--taking into account that your next step is to add 2/3 that amount of water--then add water.

--

Hey, Spring is here. I give it about a week and a half before it turns into Summer.

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Date: 2006-05-24 11:41 Subject: Give me land lotsa land Public Music: Beck - Halo Of Gold Tags: alcohol, mixology

Aaron and Steve, my neighbors in the next building over, are endearingly sketchy. Remember how I mentioned all the people doing dodgy shit in the abandoned halfway house across the way? When I left them tonight, they were working on unbolting a grating so as to access a hypothesized underground tunnel into the building, because their old way in got boarded-over. They claim they're going to make a zombie movie in there.

Here's the iced tea that's in my fridge right now:

If not precisely easy, being green is at least pretty feasible tea
Brew up a liter of yerba maté; pour it into several mugs to cool.
Brew up a liter of dragon well green tea, but before you pour the water onto it, grate a piece of peeled ginger whose size is somewhere between the last joint of your index finger and the last joint of your thumb into the leaves. (Adjust downwards if you don't have tiny girly-hands like me.) Let it cool in whatever glass or ceramic containers remain in the kitchen.
Once it's all cool enough to put in plastic, pour most of each mug of maté into the pitcher (leaving behind the slurry of dust and sludge at the bottom of each one), then pour in all the green tea. Fridge.

Here's my new (tonight!) drink:

The "Grassland"

• 4-6 ice cubes
• 1/2 shot lemon juice (the good, organic, unsweetened stuff in the glass bottle)
• 1 shot rye whiskey
• 10-12 fl. oz. "Green is feasable" tea

Put it all in an empty 16-oz salsa jar in the order listed, and you're in business. Dry, mellow, cooling, and unassuming—exactly what I want when I come home at 10 and it's still 70 degrees out there. I'm wondering if it might be improved by brewing some whole spices in with the tea; maybe some cumin seeds or cardamom pods.

I just got turned on to rye a little while ago, and I'm still on my first bottle of it*, but man, new favorite. Sis, you would be totally with me on this. Plenty of flavor, but with no counterbalancing flaws. (Most of the Bourbons and Irishes that I've had have some weird twinges to them keep me from drinking them on a regular basis. I haven't really explored Scotch much.) Plus, as any fule kno, rye is the hippest grain.


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* The Jim Beam one, with that great yellow label. Makes it look SO much dodgier than it is.

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