An Ethical Dilemma

This picture is probably a month old, I realize now that I've posted it. We have much more snow now. We are cocooned in, between droopy frozen spruce trees and the cedars out front. It has been cold, 20-something below - though nothing like that one winter in Saskatoon, when for more than a month the temperature did not once rise above 30 below. That was almost unbearable. I've nearly forgotten now what it's like to feel that you may not actually make it from the car to the hospital without freezing solid.

I've been trying not to let this project slide, as I tend to do with self-administered tasks, when I get busy and tired. I did make three drinks in the past week or so; I just haven't written about them. There's not really much to say. One was a Sea Breeze, vodka with grapefruit and cranberry juice; it was followed the next evening by an Arizona Cooler, replacing the vodka with gin. I am glad to have discovered that grapefruit juice and cranberry juice taste good together, with or without the addition of alcohol, and that I prefer them with vodka over gin. I would rather have been drinking hot chocolate, though. My cafe-au-lait was just the thing this morning, warm and it reminded me of breakfasts in France, alongside Jamie Oliver's "USA-stylie" blueberry pancakes.

Tonight I made a Zelda Martini, because I found (somewhat) fresh mint at Superstore on Sunday. It also contains Bison Grass Vodka, which doesn't strike me as being a whole lot different from regular vodka, except for its greenish hue. I haven't located any almond syrup, so instead I combined sugar syrup with almond extract and hoped that was close enough. I am beginning to run into trouble with ingredients. Superstore didn't have kumquats or passion fruit or anything else exotic that I needed. I may have to move on to gin before completing vodka, for that reason, while I do some research. Perhaps I could order these things online? But then, is it really worth the trouble? Considering what's happening in Haiti these days, or, for that matter, Africa in the past century, is it even ethical?