James Bond Cool

Here's Jule acting cool in the computer room. He and Caleb and Patrick are watching "Santa Claus 3" tonight, which has to be one of the most retarded movies ever made. A good opportunity for me to do this, I guess. I'm hoping I'll have the energy yet after supper to watch a movie of my choice, and hoping that I won't be disturbed more than a little. Caleb sat through "The Proposal" with me last week, and laughed, and even followed the story. I'm embarrassed to say that I watched "G.I. Joe" yesterday with them from beginning to end. Jule was fascinated by the warheads that released destructive green powder on the Eiffel Tower. I at least had the pleasure of cuddling with him for two hours.

Tonight I made a Vesper, named after a James Bond villain, and drank only a sip. If I understood the recipe correctly, the Vesper contains vermouth not poured off, and gin and vodka. Blech. Then I was bored, and baked banana muffins, and boiled water to make instant espresso, which I cooled off in the freezer and used in two additional cocktails: an espresso martini, and a Vochacino. Both contain vodka and kahlua and espresso and sugar syrup; the Vochacino benefits from the addition of cream and cocoa powder. The dusting of cocoa powder over the top was a nice touch. I made Pat try both as well and we agreed that the Vochacino was the best.

I'm compiling a "to make again in the future" list: so far it's the Vochacino, Chi Chi, and Holy Water - which I wish I could drink every day before supper, actually. Maybe starting in a year, if my stomach still has a lining?

"Children Should Never Mix Martinis"

So I screwed up the French Martini, I think; Sourpuss probably isn't an acceptable substitute for Chambord, though both are raspberry liqueurs. One sip of that and I decided I might as well be drinking a plain old vodka martini, so I made that next. Has the whole adult world known this before now, that the vermouth is added then poured off, leaving only the flavored ice?? That's an important concept, that up until now I've somehow missed. According to Cocktail Genius, "children should never mix martinis, they always use too much vermouth." Children and Mennonites.

Despite my cautious pouring off of vermouth, the plain vodka martini is also unpalatable. I eat the olives, then dump it.

My stomach has been bothering me a little, so a day without much alcohol probably won't hurt. I've started stealing Nexium samples from the clinic. I'm really not keen on taking it, because I should really take a multivitamin as well if I do, and multivitamins tend to upset my stomach. I think it's being on an SSRI that's the primary problem - but without that, it seems, I'm a wreck.

This book contains recipes for 300 cocktails, supposedly, but the last chapter, "pure & simple", is all non-alcoholic and there are 23 recipes there, and I'm not going to bother with those. So that means 277 drinks, and if I do that over the course of a year, that's only 5.3 drinks per week. If I make two some days, like today, and consume less than half of each, that's only three or four drinks per week, which is about what I normally do. Of course if decent red wine is open I have a hard time resisting that, so that would be in addition...

I'm quite enjoying this, though, and have made a grocery list for Winnipeg next week: every flavor of vodka, kumquats, pomegranate syrup, and so on. I'm hoping I can find some vodkas in tiny sizes. I haven't checked Atikokan's LCBO yet; I will this week, just in case, and I'll buy my final couple of Christmas gifts at Voyageur Books or The Enchanted Florest, and two rubber chickens for the kids' stockings, and I'll be ready for Christmas.

Maiden's Blush

Jule took this photo on the train last summer, in the dining car, travelling to Vancouver.

I made and chugged a "Maiden's Blush" while getting ready for the hospital Christmas party this evening: gin, triple sec, grenadine, and lemon juice. Rather blah, not much to it. One to forget. Much like the hospital Christmas parties. We have dinner at the Legion, perogies and cabbage rolls and turkey, all very fine, but not amazing like when Berdina Bingham was alive and baking buns - no one can match her buns. Then it's usually a live band. One year the band played The Red Hot Chili Peppers quite competently, which was exciting, and another year we skipped out early to go to the Nite Club, and that was rather fun too. It could have been a small town bar anywhere, only populated by Atikokanites! This year the band was In Denial, four fifty-somethings playing Men at Work and The Rolling Stones, and the old people bopped up and down, and that was that.

Driving home I thought about how lovely it is, though, to live in a town, how there are so few of us here that we keep showing up in each others' lives, at work, at the grocery store, everywhere. I could lose my job, my spouse, whatever, but I'd still be part of this town, if I cared to stay. I could get old here, check into the Extended Care Wing at the hospital, lounge all day in my geri-chair overlooking a snowy field, swallowing pills delivered by kids whose ear infections I once treated. I'm sort of looking forward to it, actually.

The forest, snow-tipped spruce and pines and bare-branched maples, glows against the black velvet of the sky on cold, clear nights like tonight. There is depth there. There are lakes beyond, and islands, black bears, moose, wolves. We are here in our cave, warmed by wood fires and feather duvets. Really, I'm quite lucky.

Holy Water

Oh my God, this is good. Why have I never heard of this? Vodka and rum and triple sec, tonic water and grenadine and the rind of a whole lemon. It shouldn't be good, but it is - sour, but not too sour; potent, but not sharp.

For the first time since I started this project, I've wanted a second drink. I woke up this morning NOT nauseous, probably because I had no alcohol yesterday, and Christmas party week is coming up, and so I suppose I shouldn't, but - yum.

Supper is pretty much ready: roast chicken and mashed potatoes and cognac carrots. I also made 144 Ukranian scuffles today, and garlic shrimp per Jamie Oliver for lunch, so I'm feeling very domestic and accomplished.

I was going to say something about Morocco and the Garden of Eden, to go along with the Holy Water theme, but I forget what. Fez, Morroco - Tripoli - where U2 wrote much of "No Line on the Horizon" - is on my list of places to someday visit. Also Cadiz, Spain, near Gibraltor, a surfing town and the Land's End of Europe. Also Greece. Okay, that's irrelevant. Lots of other places I want to go, too. Okay, I'm a bit drunk, and the chicken's got to be done by now.

God bless you all...

Concoctions Containing Coconut Cream

So I now know what I once only suspected: that I prefer a Chi Chi to a Pina Colada.

And also: it is possible to create quite nice crushed ice using ice cubes and a blender.

For a while, when I was eighteen or nineteen, I thought Chi Chi's were delicious and asked for them at restaurants like The Keg, and O'Riley's in Medicine Hat, where we used to eat brunch in forest green upholstered booths surrounded by nostalgic war posters and Marilyn Monroe memorabilia. Then I was knocked down a few times by waiters who told me there was no such thing, and didn't I mean a Pina Colada?

One of the happiest days of my life was the day after final exams at the end of my first year of medical school. My Gross Anatomy group met at Wendy's house, where we made Pina Coladas and watched "Grease", singing along and dancing on the furniture. We were kids, in our early 20's, but also medical students, and successful ones, having made it through our first year. We were capable of dissecting dead people, of interviewing old men with heart conditions, of memorizing the cranial nerves; and of making Pina Coladas from scratch.

The primary difference, I now know, is that Chi Chi's contain vodka as opposed to rum. Chi Chi's are whiter, fluffier, more like candy. I made virgin Pina Coladas for Caleb and Jule last night but they weren't too thrilled with them; Jule asked for milk instead, Caleb for water. They watched "Up" for the second time. I woke up with a migraine and nausea again this morning. I felt better after a cup of coffee and a mandarin orange. I think something's wrong with me, though. I've lost ten pounds in the past three months without eating well or exercising any more than usual, my temperature regulation seems to be off, and I have this weird rash on my neck since yesterday. Probably nothing, as usual, and I'm trying not to be a hopeless hypochondriac, but I might ask for a TSH.

Also, my whole family's been a bit worried about our livers since my grandfather died, at age 71, of autoimmune hepatitis that progressed to cirrhosis, complicated by bladder cancer that he developed while taking azathioprine. As far as we all know, he didn't drink much. He did take a lot of tylenol for back pain, having broken his back twice, once when he was kicked by a horse as a young man, once crashing his plane, which kept him going, kept him working until two weeks before his death. No one's sure what, if anything, triggered his illness. I remember the day I learned that something was wrong: we were living in Winnipeg, Caleb was young, and I was laying on the floor in my spare bedroom working on a presentation on hypereosinophilia syndrome, when Grandpa called. He asked what bilirubin was, and what it meant if it was elevated. My right lower quadrant hurt. I listed all the things I could think of. It was maybe three years later, that he was dead. He was more like a father to me than either of my actual fathers; I miss him lots.

Black Russian

I have only a couple of minutes before picking up Caleb from Cubs, so this will be short. Yesterday I was again lazy and instead of making a Chi Chi from scratch which was my plan I went for the Black Russian, which was kind of blah without Coke and as I'd just shoved a bunch of caramel corn down my throat I didn't feel like Coke, so after a few sips I converted it to a White Russian, which was much nicer.  Then Patrick opened white wine, to go with the fish, so I had a glass of that (Jackson Triggs, I think, Chardonnay), and was nauseous during the night, and sweaty which I often am lately, and was sure that I must have a lymphoma.  This morning, though, it occurred to me it might have something to do with the combination of vodka, kahlua, 10% cream, white wine, and caramel corn.

I now know that "one measure" of liquor is 15 mL, which is half an ounce (thanks, James - if you're right), so it seems I've been making everything double strength so far.  Hopefully the Chi Chi, with its ingredients properly portioned, will be as delicious as I remember from Medicine Hat College days... I have a fresh pineapple and everything.  Should be interesting with prime rib and roast potatoes.

Post-call White Russian

Ah, the White Russian. I used to think kahlua with milk was good, until I tried it with vodka and cream.

It snowed today and so far the snow has stayed. Global warming has delayed our winters and our springs, but at least we still receive a pile of snow each winter, and can ski and toboggan and all of that. There's nothing worse than frigid weather without snow.

I drank a White Russian with lunch, the most delicious pasta I've ever had, which I'm proud to say I invented: small shells, salmon mixed with a bit of mayonnaise, avocado, arugula, olive oil, white wine vinegar, sea salt, and pepper. Then I fell asleep. I did not make perogies. I did manage pork chops and mashed potatoes and salad for supper, before hockey and karate and an invigorating walk in the dark snowy town, small plaster houses drenched in Christmas lights, TV's on in living rooms, cats perched on sofa-backs peering out front windows. I listened to the first half of No Line on the Horizon and thought about the meaning of U2's 360 Degrees Tour. They are preparing us for their departure, assuring us that they don't need us anymore, and we don't need them. They open with "Breathe": "There's nothing you have that I need - I can breathe." And they close with "Moment of Surrender": "At the moment of surrender to vision over visibility, I did not notice the passersby and they did not notice me." For "With or Without You", instead of singing to a girl on stage, Bono flings the steering wheel mic around, plays with it, rants at it, that stupid inanimate thing stuck to the ceiling. He can't have us anymore - he's decided, or has been told, by Ali, or God. He is moving away, "getting ready to leave the ground".

I am post-call, after a quiet weekend.

Screwdriver & Cape Codder

I hate vodka. Vodka with orange juice, vodka with cranberry juice, yuck, yuck, yuck. It all tastes like a cheap drunk, like Vodka Specials in Regina bars when that was all I knew how to order, eighteen years old and trying to make up for lost time. No one outside of Saskatchewan seems even to have heard of these things: vodka with 7-Up and a splash of lime. I wish tonight I'd stuck with wine.

Planning to make perogies on Monday, after a weekend on call. And to drink with that... Chi Chis? Maybe will skip ahead to the White Russian instead.

I'm realizing that if I actually go on with this I'm going to be spending a fair bit of money stocking my liquor cabinet. Vanilla vodka, lemon vodka, berry vodka, cranberry vodka, cucumber vodka, pepper vodka, orange vodka, sake, Chambord, Polish vodka, Zubrowka Bison Grass vodka, melon vodka, creme de cassis, strawberry vodka, apple brandy, Pisang Ambon, raspberry vodka, honey vodka, Russian vodka... and that's just the first chapter. And where, I wonder, will I obtain kumquats, and passion fruit syrup, and Mirabelle plum puree, living, as I do, in the bush? I suppose I could grocery shop in Winnipeg at Christmas, instead of visiting with my grandmother and those cousins I rarely see.

Oh, the sacrifices. Surely I will be pleased to have accomplished such a feat, though, in the end?? And just think, I will never have to apologize for not owning cucumber vodka again...

A Mennonite Girl Learns to Mix Drinks

Like much of the world, I have been inspired this past year by "Julie & Julia" - the blog, the book, the movie - wherein a depressed 30-something New Yorker decides to cook her way through Julia Child's "Mastering the Art of French Cooking", 300-and-some recipes, in a year, and blog about it. I too wanted to come up with a project, something that I could tackle nearly every day, something new, something ambitious, enjoyable, educational, that I could also write about. Tonight, after several glasses of Castillo de Almansa Reserva 2005 (quite good), while flipping through Cocktail Genius by Allan Gage 2004, it came to me. Over the course of the next year, I will make every one of the 300 cocktails in this book, and never again will I have to say, "I think a mimosa is orange juice with champagne, but I'm not sure." I will be able to order Highland Slings with confidence in cocktail bars all over the world, serve Mayflower Martinis to guests, and welcome myself home with a Body Shot after a tough day at work.

As a Mennonite girl, I was not raised in a home that was comfortable with the regular consumption of alcohol. There was a bottle of kahlua in the cabinet that Mom would occasionally break out, splashing a little on her ice cream if she was in an adventurous mood. I sometimes snuck a few sips to my room. Other families served wine with supper and sat around drinking rum and Coke while playing cards on a Friday night - not ours. At my grade twelve graduation party I had to bum sips of beer off my friends while nursing my thermos of hot chocolate and pretending to be drunk. Of course I have learned lots since then, in the past (ahem) eighteen-or-so years, but now, before I get old, maybe it's time to get serious, get organized, become a connoisseur.

Tonight I will begin at the beginning, as I happen to have all of the ingredients on hand, at Chapter 1, "Vodka". I don't like vodka very much. I recently discovered gin, which combined with tonic water and a wedge of lime is just about perfect. However, according to Cocktail Genius, vodka's "versatility and mixability... has made it a firm favorite in bars all over the world", and I am looking forward to exploring its potential as a base for all manner of fruity concoctions.

The cocktail is called a Caipiroska. I muddle a segmented lime with brown sugar and sugar syrup, which I've become adept at cooking up, as it's an ingredient in the raspberry gin punch that I fell in love with last summer. I do not have crushed ice. I do not have ice - so I am making some while writing this. My kids are at karate, accompanied by their father, and my undisturbed time is limited. I sew Jule's grey Webkinz kitty's mouth back on while I am waiting, then log on and slowly, slowly, on our slow high-speed internet upload a photo of a sunset in our backyard, because it is pink and lovely and makes me want a cocktail.

I break up half-frozen ice cubes with a fork and add them to my tall blue glass, which is supposed to be a old-fashioned glass, whatever that is. Then 2 measures of vodka. Is that the same as 2 ounces? Whatever... a couple of shots of vodka should do. The final result is really quite sour. Did he really mean an entire lime, chopped up? Who is this Allan Gage anyways? What are his qualifications?

I have homemade guacamole and salsa, though, which should go well with this. It is all very reminiscent of Mexico, nice for a cold snowless November night in Canada. Oh wait - vodka, I think, is Russian.

I have a long way to go.