The problem with browsing through cocktail blogs is that I invariably find someone else who is posting delightful, well informed information and my list of places to read increases. The Handy Snake is one of those, and I earlier wrote about Kurt’s Manhattan Special. Being a big fan of the tasty manhattan, I tried it out and was intrigued enough to recreate it with some slight modifications. Mainly, I don’t like drinking mine on the rocks, so I just reduced the amounts and ended up changing the proportions a hair. If you’re interested, I really recommend you check out the original.

The Manhattan Special

1.5 oz rye whiskey
.4 oz sweet vermouth
.3 oz Benedictine
2 dashes of Angostura bitters

Shake with ice and strain into a cocktail glass. Garnish with a cherry.

Note that Kurt makes a good point about wanting a strong rye to take on the Benedictine. I always like Wild Turkey in my Manhattans, and it serves well in this case.

What’s up with the .3 and .4oz measurements? I tend to make a Manhattan at 3:1 rye to sweet vermouth, but that’s too weak if you then add Benedictine. You could certainly just do 1/4 oz each of vermouth and Benedictine, but I liked it better with a hair more than that, and adding more vermouth than Benedictine. The end result is a very soft and sweeter Manhattan. It’s handy for those times when you want a Manhattan, but aren’t really looking forward to it standing up and socking you in the mouth for the first few sips. Of course, I think that’s part of a good Manhattan’s charm, but this is nice to have in the recipe book. Thanks, Kurt!

Manhattan Special

Yes, there’s a cherry there but I shook it instead of stirred the drink. This also dilutes it a hair more, in addition to making it colder quicker, which I think works well in this case.

04. January 2007 · 2 comments · Categories: To Do

Somehow I’m back in class already, and spent most of today reading about negotiations. It’s actually interesting reading, which is a nice change for my MBA books, but after five hours my eyes were fogging over and my concentration was shot. I went to check the mail, only to see the mailman delivering it. This happens to me pretty much anytime I check for the mail before 5pm. I’m not sure if they’re watching my door or have decided it’s a nice place to camp out. Shockingly enough, this post isn’t about mail but about alcohol. I decided to quickly browse through a cocktail blog or two. This sort of browsing always ends up taking longer than the mail delivery.

I’ve also created a new category, “To Do.” I hate to fill the cocktails area with untested cocktails, but I also need to be sober for my class tonight.

From Art of Drink:

Feliz Natal Cocktail

1 part Port
1 part Amaretto
2 parts Creme de Cacao
1 part Cherry brandy
½ part Brandy

Instructions: Stir all ingredients together in a rocks or old fashion glass with a couple of ice cubes and enjoy!

I miss my holiday cocktail party. Maybe next year!

From CocktailDB:

The Blinker

1 1/2 oz rye (4.5 cl, 3/8 gills)
1 oz grapefruit juice (3 cl, 1/4 gills)
1/4 oz grenadine (6 dashes, 1/16 gills)

Shake in iced cocktail shaker & strain
Serve in a cocktail glass (4.5 oz)

From The Handy Snake we have:

The Manhattan Special

2 – 2.5 oz rye whiskey
.5 oz sweet vermouth
.5 oz Benedictine
2 dashes of Angostura bitters

Stir with ice and strain into a small rocks glass over fresh ice. Garnish with a cherry.

Of course, this then leads me to want to:

  1. Make my own maraschino cherries. See the Manhattan Special article, plus eGullet forums and The Splendid Table.
  2. Make my own grenadine. I’ve had the foul stuff from the store for years, and disdained any drink that called for it. At some point I should make my own, and The Cocktail Chronicles has (have?) some suggestions.

That’s all for now, back to the book. Right after I check for the mail…

02. January 2007 · Comments Off on The injustice of our list of sex offenders · Categories: General, Linky

Consider yourself spared from one of my long rants on the fear-mongering that has helped our society decide that permanently branding sex offenders and banishing them to remote rural areas is a good idea. When I was most of the way through it, I accidentally closed the tab. Anyhow, the Atlanta Magazine online has a post, “Why Is Genarlow Wilson in Prison?” that is horrifying, recommended reading. A teenager in Georgia had consensual oral sex with a 15 year old (he was 17 at the time) and as a result is in prison for 10 years and will be a registered sex offender for the rest of his life. The jurors convicted him of “aggravated child molestation” since that’s technically what happened, although they had no idea about the repercussions of it, including a mandatory 10 year sentence. The kid who was convicted did well in school, was voted homecoming king and had no criminal record. The girl he had oral sex did not want to press any charges (it was consensual). His life is now drastically altered, and no matter what he does he is publicly branded and a social pariah forever. The laws need to change, there is no justice here.

We’re back in sunny San Diego, and happy to be so. It was delightful to see our friends and family, but Ohio really is a gloomy place this time of year. We had a great time over the holidays, and much thanks to the many kind folks who hosted and entertained us through a whirlwind ten days.

I ended up sneaking a few hours of walking around Columbus a couple of days before our scheduled arrival (during a trip from one set of parents to the other). Wandering about in the chilly, grey, familiar streets made me smile and the gloomy, urban isolation was much needed. Columbus is a remarkably easy city to live in, and certainly as we cast our minds forward to what happens after grad-school (now less than a year to go!), it is by far the strongest midwestern option. There are a surprising number of really good restaurants, bars, art galleries and fun things to do and consume in a small, walkable area. We have friends there, and family two hours or less in either direction. The housing prices are also reasonable, which translates to ridiculously low in comparison with here. These are all attractive.

On the other side, Columbus is just so small. It seems a little limiting, and dear lord do they get a lot of grey days. Even when the sun shone, it was weaker than it is here. Obviously, San Diego is going to win the weather comparison with most places, but the larger city is non-trivial. Our apartment right now requires driving to anything interesting, and that’s a big negative. There are some neighborhoods here, and moving into one of the few seems a necessity. Southern California is really addicted to its cars and urban sprawl, things that really get on my nerves. I spent today (my only day here and between classes) limited to what I could walk or bike to since I don’t have a car and didn’t get up early to take Christy to and from work. I had plenty to do here, so the main problem with this was getting a hair cut at the only local option, one which speaks mostly Vietnamese (the diversity in this place is great) and when that is put together with me being fairly clueless as to how I want my hair to look, the result is the shortest haircut I can remember. I snapped a photo, which is the one thousandth shot I’ve taken with this camera (the first was taken 2006/06/30, so that’s about about a thousand in six months):

Short hair!

It’s good to be home. Happy 2007, everyone!

21. December 2006 · Comments Off on …for they are all there but one – I, Ardenstone – Last of the Students. · Categories: Me, Me, Me, Me

While my fellow MBA students are rejoicing in being done with classes, I am grinding out one last gigantic project. Our adviser sent out a, “congratulations on finishing, now enjoy your holiday!” note that about caused me to jump out my window in exasperation. If you are contemplating being a full time student at an MBA program, especially any MBA program that considers itself somewhat competitive, let me let you in on a little secret: you will have no life until you are done. You see, there’s this thought that some of the value of an MBA program is to test, push and develop your time management skills. One of my professors described this as, “giving you more work than you can possibly do on your own.” Now, this isn’t because it’s hard work, although there is a lot of challenging material, especially if you’ve never taken statistics and haven’t thought about economics since high school (<ahem>). It’s simply that the mass of work thrown at you is intentionally vast. Consider yourself warned.

As such, when you do show up to your first semester all happy and positively oozing with confidence and eagerness, for the love of all things holy do not take an extra class. My girlfriend barely knows who I am anymore. It’s a good thing I have no friends in this city, because I certainly couldn’t meet with them on any regular basis. One of the main reasons for this is that my extra class (yes, the one you really, really shouldn’t take) was a web design class that I enjoyed a lot. More than the vast majority of my MBA classes, frankly. This isn’t a huge surprise, I’m a computer nerd so this is sort of what I do. However, it was also a ton of work. The professor had no difficulty in assigning lots and lots of practice, all of which I think is the best way to learn these skills and none of which I really had time for. Especially the last project, which consists of a website either built from the ground up or re-designed, a paper discussing what choices were made and why, and a presentation. The site is done, and I just finished the first draft of the paper. All 52 pages of it. For a three credit class on top of my “real” classes. Midway through the semester, I heard that 10 credit hours was full time. I later heard that 9 graduate credit hours is considered full time. I’m taking 19. This is why I am a complete moron.

For those of you with free time to do things like read and listen to music, I recommend browsing Pitchfork’s Top 50 Albums of 2006. I’ve only looked at the top 10, and have already realized some bands I like actually put out new albums recently. I’m going to listen to so much good music. In 2008.

Christmas tends to sneak up on me anyways, but in the warmer, sunnier climate of San Diego, combined with me being heads down buried in schoolwork for the last few weeks, it’s been startling to see Christmas lights up at houses. Still, it was pretty cold and rainy today, so it was as close to December in Ohio as it’s been. The morning and early afternoon were a delightful few hours spent with friends who were in town. It was fun to see them all, and just hanging out in a coffee shop and over sushi was a wonderful break from schoolwork.

Later in the afternoon, we tried to get in the Christmas spirit. By “we” I mean Christy, Bryan and Amber who came together at our apartment and made Christmas cookies. And by “Christmas cookies” I mean like 200 of the things. I can’t believe how many sugar cookies and buckeyes (much less the mint-chocolate-chip-brownie-cookie-things) were produced in a span of 5 hours. Of course, I spent the time working on my website assignment for one of my classes, but I enjoyed the Christmas Music (I have a several hour mix left over from previous years when I used to throw a holiday cocktail party. That was back when I had 1) a house 2) time and 3) disposable income) and munching on a few tasty cookies. It still doesn’t feel quite like the holidays, but it was fun to have a house full of friends, music and good food while the rain came down on a grey day outside. Merry Christmas everyone!

The Frosting Station

(and for those counting, we’re up to 5 rainy days now. I fear it’s about to increase dramatically)

it is difficult to study when all one really wants to do is sleep or play Winterbells.

update the next day – while I stand by the above statement, and am fully convinced that this semester is exactly two weeks too long, even if you’re not completely zoned out, Winterbells is a really neat game. Orisinal is a pretty site, and hosts a lot of small, simple games with beautiful graphics in soft, pastel colors. Most of the games don’t do a lot for me, but I love that they’re taking video games in a different direction, and all the games show the results of being lovingly crafted with wonderful attention to quality. Winterbells is the first game I find really entrancing. Guiding the bunny as he hops from bell to bell can feel a bit like flying at times, as the snow flakes turn to stars and the music continues to drift in the background. I am reminded of a friend of mine describing how she sometimes had lucid dreams where she would be able to guide herself as she flew through whatever dream city or scape she encountered that evening. I love that image.

Anyhow, a game is fairly quick, with a decently long one running less than two minutes. Give it a try, I think you’ll like it. If you’re the competitive type, my high score is 33,283,440 (because what experience can’t be codified by numbers these days?).

This is theoretically a bit of a trendy drink these days, but I hadn’t heard of it until National Repeal Day when I noticed it floating about the internets. Christy sent me to BevMo tonight to pick up some wine. Sending me unsupervised to a liquor store with decent selection is a poor financial decision, but I managed to contain myself to just picking up some Pisco. It’s an interesting spirit, it’s actually a brandy based on muscat grapes and has a fairly unique flavor. Not something I need to drink straight, but I had purchased it for a Pisco Sour anyways.

DeGroff’s recipe:

Pisco Sour

1½ oz. Pisco Aba
3/4 oz. Fresh Lemon Juice
1 oz. Simple Syrup
Several drops of Angostura Bitters
One Small Egg White

Shake all ingredients (thoroughly!) with ice and strain into a small cocktail glass. Sprinkle a few dashes of Angostura Bitters on the foam created by the egg whites.

Ok, the thoroughly bit is my addition, but it’s important. Do your hands hurt? If you pause do you see layers (plural) of ice on the shaker? Ok, you’re almost done. You need to destroy the egg, and in the process produce a foamy drink to float the bitters on.

I often enjoy DrinkBoy’s take on cocktails, and I actually made his first before trying DeGraff’s. DeGraff has a lot more simple syrup and bitters in it, which rounds out the drink and keeps the Pisco from being quite so vocal. I liked it better, and so did Christy, so that’s what is posted above. Finally, a tragic admission, I didn’t have fresh lemon juice which means I used that crap out of a plastic lemon and it’s blatantly obvious in the drink itself. Do yourself a favor and use fresh lemon juice.

The drink is fun, and the egg whites give it an enjoyable texture. The bitters form a nice, orange-brown color, and the bitters and Pisco end up giving it a different flavor up front than at the end. It certainly seems like a summer drink, which perhaps makes sense given its Peruvian (or Chilean, depending on who you ask) origins. I’d love to muck with it and a fresh lemon, although after making two I ended up using more fake lemon “juice” to play with the Combustible Edison mainly due to the fact that it’s fun to play with fire. That and I love me the Campari.

Variations at:
The Art of Drink
DrinkBoy
DC Drinks
and, of course, Wikipedia

Update: picture of the Pisco Sour (v.1)

Pisco Sour I