Oz The Gweat And Tewwible
The subject line really has nothing to do with this post at all. Just rambling on about things that I've done recently. Things that are fun and different, as opposed to normal everyday things like poopin'.
WINE! TASTY!
One of the tenets of martial arts and warfare in general is "The time to strike is when the opportunity presents itself". So, when my partner-in-crime HG and I both had a long weekend thanks to President's Day, which coincided with Valentines' Day, we said, "Hey, we should take advantage of this crazy time and do something." She might also have said something about not having 347572 vacation days a year like I do, but then again, everyone says that to me. Hi angledge, I'm waving at you!
Anyway, after considering some options, we said, "hey, wine tour!" because we like wine and, well, that was about it. So we decided to get a hotel up in the Finger Lakes and spend our waking ours sampling delicious wine.
(For those of you not in the know, the Finger Lakes region of central New York State produces a helluva lot of wine, and it is tasty. It's also a very scenic region, with the lakes and the trees and the foliage and rah bah bah WINE BY THE BARREL WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR? Also, unlike Napa Valley in California, the Finger Lakes wineries are not as snooty and price-gougy with their tastings. Plus, they have lots of tasty sweet wines, which I like better than reds. But that's just personal preference.)
We think, "Oh, it's the middle of winter, no one's going to go north and tour wineries in the land of the ice and the snow. Piece of cake!" This assumption, of course, was complete rubbish. We get to our hotel in Watkins Glen near Seneca Lake with the intent of covering one side of the lake on Saturday and the other side on Sunday. Then we learn that the long weekend was the time for the Seneca Lake Chocolate and Wine Festival. Which meant, of course, that everyone was around. But! We like chocolate, AND wine. And for $30 you could sample wines and chocolates at any participating winery for the duration of the weekend.
Our answer: "Damn straight."
The next morning (a very cool and frosty morning), we buy our tickets and head north. Chocolate chili? Tasty! Brownies, check. Cheesecake, check. Chef's Salty Chocolate Balls, wrong episode. And, of course, lots of wine tasting. And wine buying. And maybe some resampling. Fudge, check. More chocolate chunks, check. Cookies, check. More wine? Don't mind if we do.
Day One might have ended with me having no memory of how Day One ended.
Cue the second day, which started with even more coldness and frostyness. We took on the other side of the lake (after some warming coffee) and repeated the process, with some chocolate raspberry tarts and other cakes and brownies to go with our epic assault on New York's wine country. Oooh, mulled wine, now that's tasty goodness right there. Hey, did I mention how this region has sweeter wines? Well, I forgot to mention ICE WINE, which is like sweet wines on sweet sugary crack. If you've ever been to the Niagara Wine Region, you probably know a bit about ice wines, but no fear: you don't need to cross the Canuckistan Border to enjoy these tasty treats. Come to New York!
We finished up with a fancy dinner at Glenora Winery, which was tasty and, of course, winetastic. And we might have been the last people to leave. BRING US MORE SAUCE, WAITSTAFF! CROM COMMANDS IT!
(If you're ever in the region, I'd recommend this place. It was good. We almost dined at Castel Grisch, which looked really tasty too. In short, OM NOM NOM.)
For reference: the tickets that came with the Chocolate and Wine Festival had all the participating wineries listed on the ticket, and every time you went to a winery, they would mark the ticket with a stamp or something to show that you visited them already. Of the nearly 40 wineries listed, we missed four. That's about 18 wineries a day. This is because we're professionals. Kids, don't try this at home.
One would think that, after a full Saturday and a full Sunday of wine sampling, we'd be done. Nope! On Monday, just to be badass, we visited a few more wineries in the morning before driving home. Specifically, the wineries we hadn't made it to in the previous two days of chocolatey winefulness. That's called extreme professionalism.
Also, we may have come home with nearly four cases of wine. Wait, let me try that again: four cases of INCREDIBLY DELICIOUS wine.
SPORTS! MUSCLY!
Yes, you know me: I'm not super-sporty. Picked last at kickball as a kid, too nerdy for sports, rah bah bah, not my thing. Okay, fine, now I'm all grown up and I teach karate (and punch harmless wooden boards and bricks) (okay, I punch kids too, but they had it coming), but that's different. Somehow.
However, that doesn't mean I can't appreciate sports. For instance, the Olympics. I might rant and rave about the lameness of ice dancing and figure skating as sports, but I'll watch skiing and bobsledding and speed skating and even hockey when it's Olympic time. Yes, my fellow Cornellians will probably chide me for never having gone to a college hockey game EVAR. I confess; mea culpa. I only watched Olympic Hockey, because it's the Olympics, and that's something special. Even years ago, I watched the very first Dream Team utterly murder everyone at the 1988 (?) Summer Olympics, and I'm less of a basketball fan than I am almost any other sport.
However, HG is a major tennis fan. She knows the players. She knows their stats. She knows things of which I don't even know that I don't know. And when she sat and watched the Australian Open, I sat and watched and learned a great many things. I even, dare I say, got interested in tennis. Someone is going to tell me that I'm only interested in Eastern European women in short skirts, and while that's a fair statement, I watched because I really was interested in the games themselves.
And then somewhere during the games there was an ad for the Billie Jean King tourney in Madison Square Garden. "Hey, that's like... right here!" Which it was. Sort of. Well, in comparison to Australia, it was pretty damn close. "We should go!"
I've been to MSG exactly once ever. (Not counting using Penn Station which exists underneath the Garden.) Like I said, I don't do sporting events. But hey, I'm open to strange new experiences. Like professional tennis.
Cue the beginning of March, which finds us in the Garden, not too far from the court itself. In fact, we're sitting next to the commentators' booth. Spitting distance, literally. And who's there? Well, okay, being a tennis noob I had no clue, but HG was quick to inform me: "Holy shit, that's Lindsay Davenport!" Which it was. I didn't realize at the time that she was a former mega-pro; I had only seen her as a commentator during the Australian Open. Now I know that she's bad-ass.
Meanwhile, the tennis starts happening, with Kim Clijsters, Svetlana Kuznetsova, Ana Ivanovic, and Venus Williams duking it out. Naturally both of us have forgotten to bring a camera, and my camera phone wasn't really up to snuff, so all I got were a bunch of shots of tennis players' butts. Someone's going to make fun of me for that, and I have no defense. So be it.
And then before the finals they changed commentators. HG pointed out that it was the networks switching out. So Lindsay took off and was replaced by someone even a complete and utter noob like myself recognized: John McEnroe. There he was, sitting fifteen feet away, doing his commentator thing. I wish we could have hacked into his mike to hear what he was saying...
And Venus Williams takes the win, and gets a check for $400,000. Yowza.
Despite me not being a sporty kind of guy, this was actually a lot of fun. A short evening, exciting matches, and plenty of gin and tonics made it completely worthwhile. Mmmmm, everything's better with gin and tonic.
MOVIES! BLOODY!
For HG's birthday I asked her, what do you want to do? She didn't want to go out anywhere special, or have a special dinner, or get presents.
"I want to sit and watch all the Saw movies back to back."
Having only seen one "Saw" movie, and being someone who will give most movies a try, I accepted her challenge. And so, we have Saw I through VI in a few easy steps. I am about to spoil the entire series for you, so be warned.
[BEGIN SPOILERIFFICNESS]
So there's this guy named Jigsaw. No, wait, his name's John. He kills people. No, wait, he challenges them to be better. Except later when he really does kinda kill people. He had a wife named Jill. She ran a drug rehab clinic. They almost had a baby but then one of her druggies hurt her and they lost the baby and John went off the deep end and started devising ways to truly "rehabilitate" people. These methods involved very elaborate Rube Goldberg-esque traps that forced people to sacrifice in the extreme if they were to survive. Oh, I should mention that John has cancer. Real bad. Also, he's an engineering genius, which explains how all his traps are FUCKING AWESOME. And he made a creepy puppet. So he traps some folks, and with his tricksy traps attracts the attention of this one cop, Mark, who tries to copycat him to get back at the guy who killed his family. But the cop is sloppy and John says he'll teach him to get better and so Mark becomes his disciple. So John is really like a Sith Lord, only with fewer lightsabers and more CRAZY AWESOME. And another cop (hey, it's Danny Glover, only this time he's the crazy one) is trying to find Jigsaw because Jigsaw rigged a trap that killed his partner. And a druggie girl, Amanda, from Jill's clinic got "rehabilitated" by John and was better and became his other disciple. Only she was the reason that John and Jill lost their baby. John's doctor gets put to the test and nearly survives. Detective Matthews gets put to the test and suffers for THREE ENTIRE MOVIES SO BAD I ACTUALLY FELT SORRY FOR HIM AND THEN HIS HEAD WENT SMOOSH because SWAT Commander Rigg just couldn't follow directions and kills John's lawyer. John's health insurance agent gets royally fucked (well, really, his whole company gets fucked, but not as spectacularly as he does) by having GALLONS OF UNDILUTED HYDROFUCKINGFLUORIC ACID PUMPED INTO HIS BLOODSTREAM. Mark starts selling out the cops who get too close to John's case. The FBI comes in to investigate. John's cancer goes over the top and so he kidnaps a doctor to help him and at the same time puts Amanda to the test, indirectly, and she fails but she fails on purpose because Mark is blackmailing her and she kills the doctor and the doctor's hubby kills her and then he kills Jigsaw and then FBI Agent Strahm kills him and then gets trapped in a head box but survives by GIVING HIMSELF A TRACHEOTOMY WITH HIS OWN FUCKING PEN. Mark gets the credit for killing Jigsaw and his apprentice Amanda and rescuing a little girl but Amanda told the girl before she died that Mark was a bad man. Meanwhile Strahm and the FBI keep looking for clues and get close to figuring out Mark is the bad guy and so Mark kills them all. Meanwhile Jill gets John's stuff from his will, which includes a box of secrets and instructions and stuff, and she arranges his final tests, which include testing Mark, but Mark doesn't know that. And so after Mark kills all the FBI guys and CRUSHES POOR STRAHM TO PULPY JUICY BITS, Jill puts the snappy face thing on him and takes off, but Mark is way too smart and escapes by RIPPING OFF HALF HIS FACE, which sets him and Jill up for a showdown in Saw VII, which is supposed to be the real no kidding final chapter.
Also, people wear pig masks.
[END SPOILERICIOUSNESS]
It's like six movies that are all overlapping and flashing back and simultaneous and stuff. Really, the only way to watch them IS to watch them back-to-back so you can keep everything in your head. It makes sense that way.
It's not as goretastic as some "torture porn" or "slasher" movies. In fact, if you're an engineer, it'll make you feel good about yourself. Sort of.
BOOZE! DRINKY!
So, in case some of the previous stories didn't clarify, I like a bit of a drink now and again. In fact, right now is looking pretty good. Again.
There, much better. Now, what was I saying? Oh yeah. Tasty beverages. Some things are wonderful things. The abovementioned cases of wine, for instance. Great for dinner. Or for an evening of movies. Or for breakfast. Beer as well - not your common run-of-the-mill lagers like Budweiser and MGD, but rather things of a less common nature. Porters and stouts, Belgian ales and lambics, things you don't always find with ease. And then the harder stuff - my favorite drink remains a well-crafted gin and tonic, using Martin Miller's London Dry Gin, a large twist of lime, and bubbly tonic water. But I'll give many drinks a try, from rum and coke to vodka martinis to mudslides to hand-crafted concoctions with no name whatsoever (like the time we invented the Flaming Coconut Monkey: 1/2 shot 99 Bananas, 1/2 shot Malibu Coconut Rum, layer of Bacardi 151, ignite, shoot, repeat).
However, some might notice an omission from my palate: whisky/whiskey/scotch/whatevertheycallit. Okay, things that taste like black licorice (anise? I think?) are utterly nasty and to be avoided at all costs. Whisky et al are not as nasty, but I simply have no interest in their taste. Nothing doing; doesn't grab me. I guess that makes me an uncultured swine. No, that's not true; many other things make me that.
HG loves good whisky et al, but respects my lack of desire for this drink, and acknowledges that Johnny Walker is not exactly quality scotch. The burning! The horror!
Which wouldn't be a problem, except for the fact that I own, no lie, nearly twenty bottles of the stuff. Between Johnny Walker Red/Black, Chivas Regal, Dewars, and a few others, I have GALLONS of whiskey/whisky/scotch/whatnot in my liquor cabinet. Taking up space. Waiting without hope of being consumed, because even mixing it with stuff does not dilute the nasty.
Oh, but wait! This looks like a job for CULINARY SCIENCE! Feel free to try this at home, kiddies, because it works:
Step 1: Bacon. Buy a pound of bacon from your local supermarket. Then make that bacon. Eat the bacon, because wasting that would be a crime. Save the grease and oil and fat.
Step 2: Pour all the bacon remnants into a big measuring bowl. You should have quite a bit of grease and oil and stuff.
Step 3: Take one (1) 750ml bottle of whisky/whiskey/scotch/blahblahblah. Pour 1/2 to 2/3 of this bottle into the measuring bowl containing the bacon juice. Put the remaining liquor somewhere else, because you'll need the bottle.
Step 4: Let the bowl sit out at room temperature for an hour or two. Then cover and stick in the freezer.
Step 5: Come back tomorrow. Remove the bowl from freezer. At this point the bacon fat has congealed into a solid disk floating on top. Remove that and discard, unless you have a use for congealed bacon fat with whiskyish aftertones. I don't want to know.
Step 6: Pour the bowl through a sieve into another bowl. This will capture all the larger particles.
Step 7: Using a funnel and a coffee filter, pour the sieved liquid back into the original empty bottle. This will take a little time. The end result will be a bottle of whisky/whiskey/scotch/something that has been infused with bacon flavor. You may taste it and recognize how bacon has managed to make it much better.
BUT WAIT! IT DOESN'T END THERE! Okay, it might, if you're a person who loves both bacon AND whisky. In fact, you're probably not even reading anymore, because you're in the kitchen trying to do everything I just told you to do. And I respect that. But still!
Step 8: While the liquid is slowly being filtered, go to the store and buy some lemon-limeade. Regular lemonade might do the trick, but the lime helps, I think. Refrigerate.
Step 9: After you've tasted your baconated beverage, try this: in a glass with ice, try one part baconated whisky/whiskey/scotch/stuff against 2-3 parts lemon-limeade. KAPOW! Somehow the lemon-limeade brings the bacon flavor out first, and in full force, and simultaneously tones down the harshness of the drink. It's a win!
Now, don't do this you your bottles of extremely old and extremely expensive whisky/whiskey/scotch/hoohah. Those are probably just fine without meddling. This is for the cheap generic stuff that could fuel your car engine. Let bacon do the talking, because there's nothing that it cannot do.
WINE! TASTY!
One of the tenets of martial arts and warfare in general is "The time to strike is when the opportunity presents itself". So, when my partner-in-crime HG and I both had a long weekend thanks to President's Day, which coincided with Valentines' Day, we said, "Hey, we should take advantage of this crazy time and do something." She might also have said something about not having 347572 vacation days a year like I do, but then again, everyone says that to me. Hi angledge, I'm waving at you!
Anyway, after considering some options, we said, "hey, wine tour!" because we like wine and, well, that was about it. So we decided to get a hotel up in the Finger Lakes and spend our waking ours sampling delicious wine.
(For those of you not in the know, the Finger Lakes region of central New York State produces a helluva lot of wine, and it is tasty. It's also a very scenic region, with the lakes and the trees and the foliage and rah bah bah WINE BY THE BARREL WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR? Also, unlike Napa Valley in California, the Finger Lakes wineries are not as snooty and price-gougy with their tastings. Plus, they have lots of tasty sweet wines, which I like better than reds. But that's just personal preference.)
We think, "Oh, it's the middle of winter, no one's going to go north and tour wineries in the land of the ice and the snow. Piece of cake!" This assumption, of course, was complete rubbish. We get to our hotel in Watkins Glen near Seneca Lake with the intent of covering one side of the lake on Saturday and the other side on Sunday. Then we learn that the long weekend was the time for the Seneca Lake Chocolate and Wine Festival. Which meant, of course, that everyone was around. But! We like chocolate, AND wine. And for $30 you could sample wines and chocolates at any participating winery for the duration of the weekend.
Our answer: "Damn straight."
The next morning (a very cool and frosty morning), we buy our tickets and head north. Chocolate chili? Tasty! Brownies, check. Cheesecake, check. Chef's Salty Chocolate Balls, wrong episode. And, of course, lots of wine tasting. And wine buying. And maybe some resampling. Fudge, check. More chocolate chunks, check. Cookies, check. More wine? Don't mind if we do.
Day One might have ended with me having no memory of how Day One ended.
Cue the second day, which started with even more coldness and frostyness. We took on the other side of the lake (after some warming coffee) and repeated the process, with some chocolate raspberry tarts and other cakes and brownies to go with our epic assault on New York's wine country. Oooh, mulled wine, now that's tasty goodness right there. Hey, did I mention how this region has sweeter wines? Well, I forgot to mention ICE WINE, which is like sweet wines on sweet sugary crack. If you've ever been to the Niagara Wine Region, you probably know a bit about ice wines, but no fear: you don't need to cross the Canuckistan Border to enjoy these tasty treats. Come to New York!
We finished up with a fancy dinner at Glenora Winery, which was tasty and, of course, winetastic. And we might have been the last people to leave. BRING US MORE SAUCE, WAITSTAFF! CROM COMMANDS IT!
(If you're ever in the region, I'd recommend this place. It was good. We almost dined at Castel Grisch, which looked really tasty too. In short, OM NOM NOM.)
For reference: the tickets that came with the Chocolate and Wine Festival had all the participating wineries listed on the ticket, and every time you went to a winery, they would mark the ticket with a stamp or something to show that you visited them already. Of the nearly 40 wineries listed, we missed four. That's about 18 wineries a day. This is because we're professionals. Kids, don't try this at home.
One would think that, after a full Saturday and a full Sunday of wine sampling, we'd be done. Nope! On Monday, just to be badass, we visited a few more wineries in the morning before driving home. Specifically, the wineries we hadn't made it to in the previous two days of chocolatey winefulness. That's called extreme professionalism.
Also, we may have come home with nearly four cases of wine. Wait, let me try that again: four cases of INCREDIBLY DELICIOUS wine.
SPORTS! MUSCLY!
Yes, you know me: I'm not super-sporty. Picked last at kickball as a kid, too nerdy for sports, rah bah bah, not my thing. Okay, fine, now I'm all grown up and I teach karate (and punch harmless wooden boards and bricks) (okay, I punch kids too, but they had it coming), but that's different. Somehow.
However, that doesn't mean I can't appreciate sports. For instance, the Olympics. I might rant and rave about the lameness of ice dancing and figure skating as sports, but I'll watch skiing and bobsledding and speed skating and even hockey when it's Olympic time. Yes, my fellow Cornellians will probably chide me for never having gone to a college hockey game EVAR. I confess; mea culpa. I only watched Olympic Hockey, because it's the Olympics, and that's something special. Even years ago, I watched the very first Dream Team utterly murder everyone at the 1988 (?) Summer Olympics, and I'm less of a basketball fan than I am almost any other sport.
However, HG is a major tennis fan. She knows the players. She knows their stats. She knows things of which I don't even know that I don't know. And when she sat and watched the Australian Open, I sat and watched and learned a great many things. I even, dare I say, got interested in tennis. Someone is going to tell me that I'm only interested in Eastern European women in short skirts, and while that's a fair statement, I watched because I really was interested in the games themselves.
And then somewhere during the games there was an ad for the Billie Jean King tourney in Madison Square Garden. "Hey, that's like... right here!" Which it was. Sort of. Well, in comparison to Australia, it was pretty damn close. "We should go!"
I've been to MSG exactly once ever. (Not counting using Penn Station which exists underneath the Garden.) Like I said, I don't do sporting events. But hey, I'm open to strange new experiences. Like professional tennis.
Cue the beginning of March, which finds us in the Garden, not too far from the court itself. In fact, we're sitting next to the commentators' booth. Spitting distance, literally. And who's there? Well, okay, being a tennis noob I had no clue, but HG was quick to inform me: "Holy shit, that's Lindsay Davenport!" Which it was. I didn't realize at the time that she was a former mega-pro; I had only seen her as a commentator during the Australian Open. Now I know that she's bad-ass.
Meanwhile, the tennis starts happening, with Kim Clijsters, Svetlana Kuznetsova, Ana Ivanovic, and Venus Williams duking it out. Naturally both of us have forgotten to bring a camera, and my camera phone wasn't really up to snuff, so all I got were a bunch of shots of tennis players' butts. Someone's going to make fun of me for that, and I have no defense. So be it.
And then before the finals they changed commentators. HG pointed out that it was the networks switching out. So Lindsay took off and was replaced by someone even a complete and utter noob like myself recognized: John McEnroe. There he was, sitting fifteen feet away, doing his commentator thing. I wish we could have hacked into his mike to hear what he was saying...
And Venus Williams takes the win, and gets a check for $400,000. Yowza.
Despite me not being a sporty kind of guy, this was actually a lot of fun. A short evening, exciting matches, and plenty of gin and tonics made it completely worthwhile. Mmmmm, everything's better with gin and tonic.
MOVIES! BLOODY!
For HG's birthday I asked her, what do you want to do? She didn't want to go out anywhere special, or have a special dinner, or get presents.
"I want to sit and watch all the Saw movies back to back."
Having only seen one "Saw" movie, and being someone who will give most movies a try, I accepted her challenge. And so, we have Saw I through VI in a few easy steps. I am about to spoil the entire series for you, so be warned.
[BEGIN SPOILERIFFICNESS]
So there's this guy named Jigsaw. No, wait, his name's John. He kills people. No, wait, he challenges them to be better. Except later when he really does kinda kill people. He had a wife named Jill. She ran a drug rehab clinic. They almost had a baby but then one of her druggies hurt her and they lost the baby and John went off the deep end and started devising ways to truly "rehabilitate" people. These methods involved very elaborate Rube Goldberg-esque traps that forced people to sacrifice in the extreme if they were to survive. Oh, I should mention that John has cancer. Real bad. Also, he's an engineering genius, which explains how all his traps are FUCKING AWESOME. And he made a creepy puppet. So he traps some folks, and with his tricksy traps attracts the attention of this one cop, Mark, who tries to copycat him to get back at the guy who killed his family. But the cop is sloppy and John says he'll teach him to get better and so Mark becomes his disciple. So John is really like a Sith Lord, only with fewer lightsabers and more CRAZY AWESOME. And another cop (hey, it's Danny Glover, only this time he's the crazy one) is trying to find Jigsaw because Jigsaw rigged a trap that killed his partner. And a druggie girl, Amanda, from Jill's clinic got "rehabilitated" by John and was better and became his other disciple. Only she was the reason that John and Jill lost their baby. John's doctor gets put to the test and nearly survives. Detective Matthews gets put to the test and suffers for THREE ENTIRE MOVIES SO BAD I ACTUALLY FELT SORRY FOR HIM AND THEN HIS HEAD WENT SMOOSH because SWAT Commander Rigg just couldn't follow directions and kills John's lawyer. John's health insurance agent gets royally fucked (well, really, his whole company gets fucked, but not as spectacularly as he does) by having GALLONS OF UNDILUTED HYDROFUCKINGFLUORIC ACID PUMPED INTO HIS BLOODSTREAM. Mark starts selling out the cops who get too close to John's case. The FBI comes in to investigate. John's cancer goes over the top and so he kidnaps a doctor to help him and at the same time puts Amanda to the test, indirectly, and she fails but she fails on purpose because Mark is blackmailing her and she kills the doctor and the doctor's hubby kills her and then he kills Jigsaw and then FBI Agent Strahm kills him and then gets trapped in a head box but survives by GIVING HIMSELF A TRACHEOTOMY WITH HIS OWN FUCKING PEN. Mark gets the credit for killing Jigsaw and his apprentice Amanda and rescuing a little girl but Amanda told the girl before she died that Mark was a bad man. Meanwhile Strahm and the FBI keep looking for clues and get close to figuring out Mark is the bad guy and so Mark kills them all. Meanwhile Jill gets John's stuff from his will, which includes a box of secrets and instructions and stuff, and she arranges his final tests, which include testing Mark, but Mark doesn't know that. And so after Mark kills all the FBI guys and CRUSHES POOR STRAHM TO PULPY JUICY BITS, Jill puts the snappy face thing on him and takes off, but Mark is way too smart and escapes by RIPPING OFF HALF HIS FACE, which sets him and Jill up for a showdown in Saw VII, which is supposed to be the real no kidding final chapter.
Also, people wear pig masks.
[END SPOILERICIOUSNESS]
It's like six movies that are all overlapping and flashing back and simultaneous and stuff. Really, the only way to watch them IS to watch them back-to-back so you can keep everything in your head. It makes sense that way.
It's not as goretastic as some "torture porn" or "slasher" movies. In fact, if you're an engineer, it'll make you feel good about yourself. Sort of.
BOOZE! DRINKY!
So, in case some of the previous stories didn't clarify, I like a bit of a drink now and again. In fact, right now is looking pretty good. Again.
There, much better. Now, what was I saying? Oh yeah. Tasty beverages. Some things are wonderful things. The abovementioned cases of wine, for instance. Great for dinner. Or for an evening of movies. Or for breakfast. Beer as well - not your common run-of-the-mill lagers like Budweiser and MGD, but rather things of a less common nature. Porters and stouts, Belgian ales and lambics, things you don't always find with ease. And then the harder stuff - my favorite drink remains a well-crafted gin and tonic, using Martin Miller's London Dry Gin, a large twist of lime, and bubbly tonic water. But I'll give many drinks a try, from rum and coke to vodka martinis to mudslides to hand-crafted concoctions with no name whatsoever (like the time we invented the Flaming Coconut Monkey: 1/2 shot 99 Bananas, 1/2 shot Malibu Coconut Rum, layer of Bacardi 151, ignite, shoot, repeat).
However, some might notice an omission from my palate: whisky/whiskey/scotch/whatevertheycallit. Okay, things that taste like black licorice (anise? I think?) are utterly nasty and to be avoided at all costs. Whisky et al are not as nasty, but I simply have no interest in their taste. Nothing doing; doesn't grab me. I guess that makes me an uncultured swine. No, that's not true; many other things make me that.
HG loves good whisky et al, but respects my lack of desire for this drink, and acknowledges that Johnny Walker is not exactly quality scotch. The burning! The horror!
Which wouldn't be a problem, except for the fact that I own, no lie, nearly twenty bottles of the stuff. Between Johnny Walker Red/Black, Chivas Regal, Dewars, and a few others, I have GALLONS of whiskey/whisky/scotch/whatnot in my liquor cabinet. Taking up space. Waiting without hope of being consumed, because even mixing it with stuff does not dilute the nasty.
Oh, but wait! This looks like a job for CULINARY SCIENCE! Feel free to try this at home, kiddies, because it works:
Step 1: Bacon. Buy a pound of bacon from your local supermarket. Then make that bacon. Eat the bacon, because wasting that would be a crime. Save the grease and oil and fat.
Step 2: Pour all the bacon remnants into a big measuring bowl. You should have quite a bit of grease and oil and stuff.
Step 3: Take one (1) 750ml bottle of whisky/whiskey/scotch/blahblahblah. Pour 1/2 to 2/3 of this bottle into the measuring bowl containing the bacon juice. Put the remaining liquor somewhere else, because you'll need the bottle.
Step 4: Let the bowl sit out at room temperature for an hour or two. Then cover and stick in the freezer.
Step 5: Come back tomorrow. Remove the bowl from freezer. At this point the bacon fat has congealed into a solid disk floating on top. Remove that and discard, unless you have a use for congealed bacon fat with whiskyish aftertones. I don't want to know.
Step 6: Pour the bowl through a sieve into another bowl. This will capture all the larger particles.
Step 7: Using a funnel and a coffee filter, pour the sieved liquid back into the original empty bottle. This will take a little time. The end result will be a bottle of whisky/whiskey/scotch/something that has been infused with bacon flavor. You may taste it and recognize how bacon has managed to make it much better.
BUT WAIT! IT DOESN'T END THERE! Okay, it might, if you're a person who loves both bacon AND whisky. In fact, you're probably not even reading anymore, because you're in the kitchen trying to do everything I just told you to do. And I respect that. But still!
Step 8: While the liquid is slowly being filtered, go to the store and buy some lemon-limeade. Regular lemonade might do the trick, but the lime helps, I think. Refrigerate.
Step 9: After you've tasted your baconated beverage, try this: in a glass with ice, try one part baconated whisky/whiskey/scotch/stuff against 2-3 parts lemon-limeade. KAPOW! Somehow the lemon-limeade brings the bacon flavor out first, and in full force, and simultaneously tones down the harshness of the drink. It's a win!
Now, don't do this you your bottles of extremely old and extremely expensive whisky/whiskey/scotch/hoohah. Those are probably just fine without meddling. This is for the cheap generic stuff that could fuel your car engine. Let bacon do the talking, because there's nothing that it cannot do.