Gin Sour

This is Caleb on Thursday at Mount MacKay. Today he is sick, vomiting repeatedly, his skin grey. He is almost a teenager. I just realized that when my mother was the age that I am now, I was sixteen; or, the other way around, when I was sixteen, my mother was merely the age that I am now. It seems like only a few years ago.

We are watching the scene in Star Wars where Annakin becomes Darth Vader. Sad pregnant Padme is dead. Shadow is kneading the blanket, the laptop, my knee. She is either annoyingly affectionate or scarily violent, this cat - she has no in-between moods.

So, between vomiting episodes today I made a Gin Sour, which also contains a raw egg white, not too bad shaken with lemon and gin and orange juice - a little like Caesar salad. For supper I had scrambled egg yokes (had to use up the second half of those eggs) and avocado and arugula salad and rice pudding, while Caleb nibbled on a rice cake.

I am trapped in my wreck of a house, the sky darkening, wind bending the trees.

I hope we are all well for Las Vegas, and I hope the outdoor pools are open.

I suspect I need to supplement zinc - or start eating oysters.

Lady Martini

Another mediocre martini. I had to make a double because how do you get half an egg white into a martini shaker? Bloop, there it goes. So at the end of it all I added a second measure and a half of gin, a second half measure of apple brandy, a second squeeze of lemon, and a second dash of almond syrup. Yes, I am now the proud owner of a bottle of almond syrup, only three dollars at Maltese, Thunder Bay's Italian grocery store.

We had a great couple of days in Thunder Bay. It finally occurred to me to use Trip Advisor to find some new restaurants to try. It has never failed me before, and did not fail me this time, either. We ate Japanese-style, cushions on the floor, at Wasabi. I got a little bit tipsy on plum wine. We had good pasta and salad and calamari at Armando's the next night, but had the odd experience of being NOT ALLOWED to order a bottle of wine, there being only two of us adults and at a glass and a half each in a half-liter, two hours to dine, we'd be just under the legal limit... so a half-liter was what we got. The table beside us topped up their half-liter with cognac and coffee but we had to rush off to the movie: "Alice in Wonderland" in 3D. Jule bounced about on the seat beside me, thrilled with the cat and the queen and the giant chess battle. I was comfortable and - oh - excited because in the afternoon I found a dress and two shirts and a pair of cargo shorts and matching jacket for 70% off at a beautiful store downtown, and it was warm out, and I walked with my crisp brown bag up Red River Road to the Magnus Theatre to meet the kids. Then we drove to Mount MacKay, which was pretty and Patrick was happy and no one fell over the cliff.

This morning Caleb and Jule performed their play: "Alice in Wonderland and Aliens". Caleb came up with the part about the aliens, inspired unconsciously, I think, by "Pride and Prejudice and Zombies". We ate lunch at Madhouse Tavern and Grill, which actually felt like a British pub, casual and cool. The burgers were bland but the coconut shrimp was pretty good, and Jule loved his french fries. "I wish everyone in the world could eat these fries, they're just so good," he said.

I listened to a lot of Radiohead.

I thought about history, how I did not create my history; rather, it created me. About Gatsby, who said something like, "Of course you can change the past!" Did he mean that it's possible to invent a past, a lie, then act consistently with that, and so make one's new acquaintances believe it? Or was he referring to creating oneself in the now so that when the now becomes past, it will be different? I don't want a different past, though; I don't want a different history. I am who I am, it is what it is. What do I have to feel guilty about?

My children are begging me to go to bed.

When I was a teenager I pictured my adult self as single, childless, moving from love to love, or maybe married, then not, then married again, taking the subway, a paper and a coffee and a chocolate croissant in my hand. Or perhaps a cheese danish. Something like that. Lonely and defiant, cerebral, not overly concerned. I would frequent art shows. I would conduct a career. I would meet my nieces and nephews in Mexico for the holidays. I would walk across England with my mother, travel to Asia with a friend. I would donate to charity. I would come and go, eat and sleep when I cared to.

I would own a cat. One cat, mind you, not two, not twenty. I would be eccentric, but not crazy. I would shop for antiques. I would write ridiculous novels.

My Family Over Chicago

I'm making my peace with Chicago.

I thought about baking banana muffins for my kids tonight but, as they are not here, I made a banana dacquiri instead. It was tasty. I used up the last lime before it rotted, which always brings me pleasure.

I also tripped on the stripped stairs again, fell onto my left wrist and luckily wasn't badly injured. That was pre-dacquiri.

There are a number of other dacquiri recipes in my cocktail book: mango and mint, strawberry, etc. I now know and will probably never forget that dacquiris contain rum, as opposed to margueritas, which are made with tequila.

Last night I threw together a Palm Beach, which is gin and vermouth and grapefruit juice and sugar syrup, and I am glad to have discovered it. Nearly as simple as cutting a grapefruit in half, sprinkling it with sugar, and eating it. It's on the to-make-again list!

Only one more call day this week and as of noon on Wednesday I will be free for four days. Then one more week of work before Las Vegas! Jule's already filled his Caillou backpack with his Las Vegas teddy bear, Spongebob-in-Las Vegas t-shirt, swimsuit, and sun shirt. He walks around singing, "California, the fornia that is Cal." My kids are so weird.

Maybe I'll get it together yet and make banana muffins tonight... no, maybe next Sunday. I've numbed my mind with two episodes of "How I Met Your Mother", which I've started watching because I love that guy from "Forgetting Sarah Marshall" and "I Love You, Man". He wrote "Forgetting Sarah Marshall", which made me laugh for two hours straight flying home from England in October 2008. One of my favorite days ever.

Honey

Something odd has happened to the image uploader - it was working a minute ago, but now it's not. There's supposed to be a very cute picture of Jule in a bright green and yellow dragon costume here, grinning his trademark grin. Picture it.

Jule loves honey. He'll eat a honey sandwich, nothing but bread and honey, for supper and be perfectly satisfied. I've realized that I don't like it very much. Sometimes, smeared together with peanut butter on very fresh whole-grain bread, it's okay... but even in that situation, I'd prefer corn syrup.

It's just too sickly sweet.

Last week I made a Bumble Bee, honey and some other things, blech. Yesterday, a Canchanchara, white rum and lime juice and honey and a dash of soda water - potent, okay in the context of yesterday, pre-dinner, chicken breasts coming off the barbecue coated with mesquite spice, cognac carrots and rice - but nothing I'd rush to make again.

I'm beginning to wonder if I picked the right cocktail recipe book... perhaps I should have shopped around, instead of just diving into the only one I happened to own willy-nilly. Twenty or thirty recipes are for shots, which I've decided to skip - can't truly call those cocktails. Never mind that they involve licking salt off one's partner, setting things on fire, etc., which I am not willing to do. But as for the rest... well, it's too late now. I just have to persist.

I think I bought that book at Atikokan's only bookstore, on the clearance rack, if I recall correctly. I can't decide if it's trying to catalogue classic cocktails, or new in-vogue cocktails, or just a random selection of this and that from here and there, with no rhyme or reason to it at all. Some of the ingredients... well, they sort of overlap, they sort of call one thing by two different names some times, if you know what I mean. As if they didn't read their own recipes, didn't edit. Or maybe I've just had enough of lemon and lime and honey and gin and various raspberry liquors. How many different ways can one possibly combine those five ingredients?

I miss Holy Water! And wine!

Blue Bird Etc.

Well, the house is in ruins, but at least the daybed is set up in the basement now so we can lay in bed and watch a movie - if the opportunity ever arises. I have "The Notebook" rented on Apple TV and only another 19 days until it expires. Right at the moment we're watching The Simpson's Halloween special, Bart is a vampire attacking Lisa, and Jule is hiding his eyes.

I'm running into trouble with cocktail ingredients again. For some reason my credit cards were both declined by that Cocktail Kingdom site, where I found orgeat and orange bitters and some other stuff that I can't recall. I wasted a fair bit of time on that. I figure I'll check out De Luca's and an Asian grocery store in Winnipeg at the end of March, then try online again if I have no luck. I found out that kumquats are grown in southern California so I should be able to find some in San Diego. Will I be able to bring them back, though? I should probably take kumquat-containing recipes with me and make them there... but can I bring half-empty bottles of alcohol back?

A few days ago I made a Blue Bird, gin and triple sec and something else and a lemon twist, basic and good. It made me crave sea salt-with-a-hint-of-lime tortillas, which we didn't have. We watched the Olympic gold medal hockey game - Canada beat the U.S. - and we cared for about five minutes, then went on with our lives. Today we bought the tortillas and I made salsa and guacamole and it was the perfect afternoon snack, after a sunny walk by the Atikokan River and an hour taking apart bookshelves and tasting beer in Patrick's mouth and oh, I also slept in until ten this morning, and drank a lot of coffee, and maybe now I'll go play "Fur Elise" on the piano instead of watching more Simpson's, and maybe we'll stay up late and watch "The Notebook" even though I have to be up early for work tomorrow, and am on call again this weekend, or maybe we'll just read and sleep.

Also, today, I made a Tom Collins, which I found bland, not as sweet as I remember from Bangkok Thai in Winnipeg, where I used to order them. Next time I'll double the sugar syrup. And because I had a free minute while the alfredo sauce was thickening, I made a Breakfast Martini as well, with orange marmalade. It was fine, but why? I skipped the triangle of toast with marmalade garnish.

Soon I will be forced to purchase sloe gin, so that I can move on properly.

Nesting

Despite having yet another sore throat, I made pork satay and bean sprout salad for supper today, and two raspberry pies, one for us and one for the Boy Scouts potluck on Tuesday. I also slept while Pat took the kids tobogganing, which I feel badly about, never enough time. We've decided to finally rip out the old carpets that came with this house, and lay hardwood throughout the main floor and upstairs, tile in the front and back halls. We haven't even ordered the wood yet, and already Pat's torn apart the living room, taken down all the pictures, moved doors around, and re-framed the front hall. He "goes hard". Better than laying around all day in front of the TV, I guess, but it means our home will be chaotic for at least the next two months.

The cocktails I made this weekend were the Apple Sip, for which I boiled, crushed, and strained organic apples as we had no juice, and the Honey Berry Sour. I'm glad I liked the Honey Berry Sour, as it contains Krupnik vodka - I'll have at least one way to use it up. Honey vodka, raspberries, lemon juice. Caleb tries so hard to bond with his dad. We all do.

I'm tired of being sick. It's 8:05 pm and I want nothing more than to go to bed. Jule's painting his birdhouse, though, and Pat and Caleb are watching Olympic hockey, Canada versus the USA.

I always thought I'd be a single person, as an adult, cooking meals for one, arranging my belongings in a quiet bedroom, reading by lamplight, booking flights and taking them, all over the world. But here I am, nesting. Funny how it goes.

Moscow Mule Part 2

Someone was pissed about something, obviously.

Patrick thinks I shouldn't speculate about people's sexual orientations in public, and he's probably right. My point is just that it doesn't matter, it shouldn't matter, but to a Mennonite, to much of the Evangelical church, it matters, and it has to be hidden. It was one of my cousins who pointed out that there are tons of middle-aged lesbians in the Mennonite church, but none of them would ever admit to it - instead, once they've passed a reasonable age for marriage, they become missionaries, go off to Africa with other single women to drink tea and teach Sunday School.

Christy is my age, despite being my mother's first cousin (my grandmother's parents had quite a few kids), and I was enamored by her growing up. Her house perched on the edge of the Qu'Appelle Valley near Lumsden; she had a posh white bedroom with a patio door out to the valley, a rec room with bean pillows, a tennis court, a swimming pool, and forts in the forest that she'd built with her brothers. I first tasted an avocado at her house. She had long blonde hair in braids, and took piano lessons. She reminded me of Anne of Green Gables. We played hide-and-go-seek in the dark in her basement. We watched "A Room With a View" together, laughed at the naked men romping around the pond.

I just want her to be content with herself, not afraid. Maybe she is. Read her book, though, and then reassure me: it's called "Widows of Hamilton House." My grandmother was sorry she'd picked it up, wondering why Christy would choose to write about such horrible things: seances and lesbians.

Anyways, about the Moscow Mule - we used to drink Vodka Specials in Saskatchewan, and no one outside of Saskatchewan seems to know what they are - just vodka and lime juice and Sprite, liquid sugar basically. So now at least I know where it comes from. Patrick introduced me to Vodka Specials like he introduced me to rye and Coke, Kokanee, fast cars, Saskatchewan back roads, and work without sleep. Sloshing on the dance floor at City Slickers in Prince Albert, some stranger yelling "Get a room," Jill singing along to "When I think about you, I touch myself," Sheldon, red-faced, not knowing quite what to do. Regina bars, cavernous spaces with long vinyl tables sticky with vodka, Pat's high-school friends, strobe lights - I was a mere six months past legal drinking age when we got married. Pat phoned my parents from a pay phone at Emma Lake the night we got engaged, and instead of "Congratulations," my dad said, "We'll talk." They didn't think he was good enough for me. I would be going off to medical school, meeting all sorts of brilliant, privileged young men. Most people these days would have waited, tried out a few adult relationships before settling. So why did I marry him, at nineteen? Because I wanted to have sex with him, I was ready, but I am Mennonite, and my mother's oldest child. Which is not to say that I shouldn't have, necessarily. He was my first love.