It's Cherry Season Again!

And they are $1.27 a pound at Sprouts through Wednesday.

Once again, I baked Smitten Kitchen's Cherry Cornmeal Upside Down Cake. I'm taking it to lunch at my mom's house. I really love this cake. An Oxo cherry pitter makes pitting 3 cups of cherries a snap, and the only tricky part is doing a quick wash of the bowl in order to use the mixer to whip the egg whites. It's a deceptively simple cake that tastes very sophisticated. Great with tea.

Cooking Light had a great feature on cherries this month. I've got a batch of the bourbon cherries in the fridge at the moment; next Saturday I'll break out the gingerale and make fancy, fruity cocktails. I used honey whiskey instead of the bourbon. Frankly, I think it has a bit of an aftertaste in most drinks and wanted to use it up. I think cherries improve almost everything. I will also be making a variation on the goat cheese, cherry and roasted pistachio salad featured in that issue. But first I have to purchase more cherries!

Links

Why are there fewer cycling women in NYC? Danger and fashion.

Looking for an intelligent tv program to glom onto? Canada's Intelligence has been called its version of The Wire. I've seen all the episodes on Netflix streaming--it is a great show ended too soon.

How To Talk To Little Girls. Basically, please try not to make the first words out of your mouth a compliment about how cute or pretty she is. Ask some questions. Maybe pick up a book with her.

I can't stand Marketplace Money. Whenever I listen to it, I feel like throwing something. In this piece, Tess Vigeland displays her ignorance by admitting she actually took Zillow's estimates of home prices seriously even before it recently reworked its algorithm. Having lived in a place where Zillow was wildly inaccurate, I have to wonder what rock she lives under. I don't find Zillow at all accurate.

At least they sound a little shocked at the people they dug up for a story about people who bought too much house, stripped the equity and defaulted, but now think they should get another mortgage.

Why Did Wild Nail Polish Go Mainstream?

"And that's why you should learn to pick your battles" is just masterful comedy writing.

For the holiday, How To Make A Pimm's Cup. Okay, it's inappropriate to make a quintessential British drink on the 4th of July, but it is delicious.

And once you are all tipsy, play a paperback game.

Unhappy Hour--Let's Host One!

Last weekend it was 95 degrees, and it's still running about 5-10 degrees above normal. I made myself a Pimm's Cup with blood orange, cucumber, lemon and Gala apple. I like Pimm's Cups because it's like sangria, but for one.

I have started to head out to happy hour (or unhappy hour, as I like to call it) with coworkers. On Mondays, Havana Cafe has $3 mojitos. Thursdays we go to Stockyards, which has $4 drinks and free sliders and chips and salsa. But I am thinking about stocking my bar in order to host myself now that I have a futon.

I currently have Maker's Mark, and plan to buy a big bottle of vodka from Costco and some of the new Jack Daniels Honey Whiskey, as well as laying in some ginger ale. But what else? The Cosmo Girl's Guide To The New Etiquette circa 1971 (it was my mom's!) has 4 and a quarter pages on drinks you should mix for a man, including a French 75 and a Zombie, and says you can get away at with a minimum of Seagram's 7, vodka or gin, and sweet vermouth (I guess the men the Cosmo Girl wants all drink martinis), but times have changed.

What's stocked in your bar? What are your signature drinks?

Books In Bars: Roosevelt Tavern

Because I like to go out and drink sometimes, but have no one to go with, I give you a new series: Books In Bars! Because some bars are not great for the reading.

I am not sure why I keep going back to the Roosevelt Tavern to read. True, I almost always grab the comfy armchair in the front room by the window. However, the place is entirely lit with tealights. No, really. So when I go I am reading by the light coming through the windows, and since the Roosevelt opens at 5pm that means in winter there's little light. Plus, they don't do mixed drinks--the menu is beer, wine, and three soft drinks.

Okay, I know why I go back there. The menu.

Unfortunately, they don't have a website, only a Twitter account. But they have great food--a tomato soup and grilled cheese combo that leaves you stuffed. A big handmade pretzel.* The "Holy Moses", a roast beef and cheese sandwich on toast served with griddled onions. $3 pasta dish every Thursday night.

The people watching is good too.

So, despite the fact that this bar fills non of my needs, I keep returning. Am I a sucker? Maybe. But dinner for less than $10 on a Thursday night is nothing to sneeze at. Neither is a happy hour that runs until 7pm.

*I am on Satan's Own Psychiatric Medicine (TM), which causes intense carb cravings. And my cravings have taken the particular form of soft pretzels. I LOVE THEM. I am in search of the perfect one, and the Roosevelt's come close. It just needs to be a touch more buttery.

Maybe You Should Make This

Grapefruit Bourbon Sours. I made it with 1 part honey syrup to 1 part bourbon to 4 parts juice. Delicious, and perfect for brunch.

Salty Lemonade: ORT For First World People

I'm trying to clean out my kitchen and used these limes I bought 2 weeks ago for Salty Limeade. I had to use a lemon to fill up the juice, but whoa. The author is right; this is very refreshing. Your mouth puckers but then the sweetness hits and carries the flavor throughout your whole mouth. I'm inside in the a/c, but this should be a staple in a thermos for treks and picnics.

I'm interested in this because I walked from Central and Pierce down to Lincoln and South Central to go to The Duce yesterday. Because I am crazy (it's at least a mile and I did it in 97 degree heat). Doing such things lower my inhibitions, and I wound up having 2 alcoholic beverages (a salty dog and a mimosa) before 12pm, which made me loquacious to the cabbie and my mom and incapacitated me until at least 6pm. Very out of character. Indeed. I actually ate halibut at the cooking demonstration that my mom and I went to at Whole Foods. I don't eat fish, unless I am drunk.

The Duce is totally hipster Disneyland, and maybe not doing so well, but they have an awesome bar. Hand squeezed juice for your cocktails! Lovingly made right in front of you!

You Know It's Fall When...

Kerry is sitting outside watching the weather with a Salty Dog and a serving of Belgian chocolate mousse and and strongly wishing for a cigarette. Indulging multiple vices at once is my efficient use of resources.

'Tis depression season, people.

Down Where The Drunkards Roll

I love my family, but my word. I average about 1 drink a month, with all sorts of rules. No drinking in the middle of the day. No drinking away bad feelings. No drinking alone. No drinking in bars alone (yes, I saw The Accused at an early age). Stay away from drunk people. I'm wired for problems, so this is how I protect myself. I also don't like beer or most wine, and only care for mixed drinks and cider. So keeping my tastes expensive and hard to fulfill is another good way to keep myself sober.

Oh, except that I have the same emotional difficulties drinking usually covers up but I use other behaviors that don't necessarily raise a red flag--the eating, the impulsive buying, burying my head in reading, isolation, obsessions, paralysis.

It's shitty being high-functioning. I kind of wish I could just develop a drinking problem because people notice that and it has a set path of treatment. But no, I don't like the simple, do I? I like the long cut.

Oh, well.

First it was the $8 a bottle Whole Foods sangria my mom and I discovered. In the 3 weeks I was in NJ, we polished off 3 bottles together. It's really good--I have fond memories of sangria from my teen years when my parents had a 70's revival and started making sangria and would let us have some. Sangria=wine and fruit salad. How can you resist?

Now Dusie has taken up drinking again--she gave it up 6 years ago when she quit smoking, but the current c&w songness of our lives has taken a bit of a toll. That and the pool being green (it's now blue, and did not crack on my watch). The official drink of The Marlboro Mesa is Planter's Punch.

Dusie Makes Some Planter's Punch

Take a tumbler and put 3-4 ice cubes in it. Pour in a 1-2 fingers of Bacardi Coconut Rum. Top with orange juice. Float grenadine on top, and watch it sink and look all pretty like a sunset.

Voila! Perfect every time. She drinks these because she says it brings back fond memories of the epic gambling trip she and The Don took to Puerto Rico when she was 18, when he used her powers as a craps virgin for profit, and let her have a pre-dinner drink. She was such a lightweight she was stumbling on the sidewalk. Honestly, I think that it's sort of sweet. I'm a little envious.

If I had any reservations about Arizona being the promised land, they were allayed when I learned of the existence of the BevMo!. The BevMo! (the exclamation point is part of the name) is a liquor superstore, but better than any Spirits or Buy-Rite I've ever been in. First off, it's really big and bright and clean. I was awed by the selection, especially the rotating stand of 50 types of liquor, all in little airplane bottles and priced from $2-5. They had Pimm's! And Babycham! Who can resist "The Happiest Drink In The World?" And the artwork!



That's not all--they have a shopper's card. For every $250 you spend, you get 5% off your next purchase. Pitiful, I know, but a stroke of brilliance in my opinion.

I predict a fall, but it will be a fun tumble.

Sorting Through The Memories

I threw out most of the last of my alcohol tonight. I gave the Romance Heroine a bottle of sloe gin and a large bottle of regular gin, but I had some cheap sherry and vermouth (which goes bad) that went down the sink. I paused at the bottle of Gordon's Citrus Vodka because I remembered the circumstances under which it was purchased. In May 2000, I drove to Baltimore to go to Dusie's graduation, and I hit the hotel at a point which no one in my family was there so I couldn't get into the room. I was rumpled and hot and cranky. And no one had a cell phone then, so I was out of luck. I wound up walking over to the nearest strip mall to get something to read and eat, and thank heavens there was a liquor store because I could tell already that I was going to start running out of patience right quick. Later that night I was in the room with Aces and had it with some awful citrus soda. More recently I have mixed the vodka with homemade lemonade, still warm. Ambrosial.

The next day I had to help Dusie cover her tattoo with fancy makeup so my Dad wouldn't see it. Strangely, that was a pretty good graduation. Aces graduated the next year in North Carolina and that was an even better trip. My mom had found a state park near Durham (I think it was Pilot Mountain State Park) that had cheap, cool cabins. However, I had no clue which cabin, and no way to reach them so my dad was waiting out by the front sign for me to show up.

Later we picked up Aces and went out to dinner, which lead to frantic phone calls between Dusie and my Dad since we were in different cars.

"What do you see, Dusie? "

"Trees, Daddy! I see trees!"

Ah, the strip malls of Winston-Salem and the joys of rural development. We took our leftovers to feed Aces' favorite ferals out by the dumpster at the donut place. The next day I suffered through the graduation, and it's the last one I will ever have to attend if I don't have kids. Thank goodness.

In Honor Of Various Economic Indicators...

Like the Starbucks Eggnog Latte, but despair of the cost (and if you feel vaguely guilty about the fat content too, you'll like this. I try not to be a "good food"/"bad food" agonizer, but really--some things do make me pause, and not just to revel in the deliciousness)? Brew up 4 cups coffee. Pour 2 cups into your mug, and add 1 cup lowfat eggnog. If you think it needs a little something something, stir in a little bourbon, brandy or sugar. More eggnog too if you need some. Maybe scrape a little nutmeg on top.

See! Is like an eggnog latte, but you don't leave the house! Which is good, because after a day of snow and blowing, you can't!

Fuck! I gotta go shovel.

Summer Reading Means Summer Drinking

I don't drink much for various reasons, but for some reason when it's over 85 degrees (and preferably over 90), I thirst for a cocktail. Ah, the joys of living without air conditioning. I think the evolution of the habit is due to the fact that when it's very hot, light reading is a necessity. And what could be lighter than P.G. Wodehouse? In between the hijinking, Wodehouse characters are always having a tipple.

I made Lime Rum Shrub last week, with a slight modification--I only had 2 cups or so of rum, so this is heavy on the sugared lime juice. It's ready to drink, but it's not hot enough, blast it!

Other cocktails for summer? I like this Gin, Tea & Lemon Fizz, but the name is uninspiring. The Presbyterian is wonderfully evocative, but I wonder what's in a Catholic? Or an Episcopalian? But anyway, a twist on the classic bourbon and gingerale is always welcome. I like mine with no soda, and a lemon or lime twist plus the maraschino cherry.