Shrek Poo
I love avocado milkshakes. Half an avocado, lots of ice and milk. into the blender.
Drink it until the pain hits, right at the base of the skull. Brain Freeze! Oh why do I do it.
Last week I made them for my kids when they visited.
Emmylee’s immediate response, “I’m not drinking that, it’s Shrek poo!” Sigh, that’s an eight year old for you.
I showed her the avocado skins and finally convinced her to try it. She liked it. Now they’re called Shrek poo!
Interesting Question
Followed a new Tweeter today. This was the first tweet that I saw at the top:
What’s your favorite liquor to put in #eggnog? We are looking for suggestions!
— Moms Love Wine (@MomsLoveWine) December 18, 2013
My immediate response is brandy!
Now perhaps I am a boring old fart with no imagination, so I was perplexed by the question; maybe I am just a stick-in-the-mud traditionalist that has never considered anything outside the brandy box.
But I see that rum and whisky also get a mention on google. One link even suggested Southern Comfort.
To me there are some traditions, that to break them leads directly to purgatory, do not pass go, do not collect $200.
Things like sherry in a trifle or other than a brandy sauce with a Christmas pud are just not tampered with. Just think, a Brandy Alexander without brandy, the mere thought takes me beyond redemption.
So you can imagine my surprise when I read this tweet.
Egg Nog, needs brandy to be an Egg Nog.
Sherry is Making a Come Back
Sherry sales are booming. Well, everyone loves an underdog
Amid the nostalgia-fest that is Christmas, news has broken that sherry – which many people will forever associate with that disgusting sweet liquor they sipped as a child from auntie’s glass when no one was looking – is suddenly terribly fashionable and selling like hot cakes. But to the sophisticates among you, this will be no revelation. In fact British appreciation of pale, dry sherries, which are nothing like the stuff granny served in dainty, cut-glass schooners, has been bubbling up for a decade, largely thanks to the rise in very good tapas restaurants.
Wednesday’s report points out that, along with sales going through the roof (M&S’s figures are already up a third on last year’s), specialist sherry bars are now popular: 35 opened in London alone over the past three years. This isn’t a bunch of students ironically knocking back a “blue-rinse” tipple – it’s young professionals sampling fine sherries in elegant wine glasses, which allow drinkers to appreciate the camomile and coastal aromas of their manzanilla.
What a turn-around – it isn’t that long ago that no one would have touched sherry with a barge pole…
It’s… um, Halloween
Here’s some ideas for Halloween drinks, follow the links for recipes and instructions.
Nearly all the above inks have multiple drinks and cocktails.
WTF is Cold Brewed Coffee?
Rummaging through my google box this morning I discovered cold brewed coffee, which piqued my interest.
Reblogged from Brewed Daily
What is cold brewed coffee?
Cold brewed is a coffee term that has been popping up more and more frequently, even though there are plenty of cafes – including the chain Seattle’s Best – that have been offering up cold brewed coffee for quite some time now.
Cold brewed coffee is just what it sounds like: coffee that is brewed cold, not hot. To make it, ground coffee beans are placed in cool water and left to sit in a cool place for around 12 hours to brew.
Cold brewing produces a milder and sweeter cup of coffee than simply refrigerating coffee that is brewed hot. You don’t get the harsher, more bitter notes of coffee that are often brought out after chilling hot-brewed coffee. Cold brewed coffee will keep very well for several days in the refrigerator after it has been made, and it is easy to make a big batch and keep it on hand.
As with regular coffee, you will want to experiment with the ratio of coffee grounds to water to get a concentration that you like, but err on the side of using too much coffee. Not only are you not rising adding bitterness to your drink by doing this, but you can always water down a cold-brewed coffee concentrate with a bit of extra water before serving if it is too strong.
Comment:
Hmmm, have to try that.
Coffee and qahwa: How a drink for Arab mystics went global
The Arab world has given birth to many thinkers and many inventions – among them the three-course meal, alcohol and coffee. The best coffee bean is still known as Arabica, but it’s come a long way from the Muslim mystics who treasured it centuries ago, to the chains that line our high streets.
Think coffee, and you probably think of an Italian espresso, a French cafe au lait, or an American double grande latte with cinnamon.
Perhaps you learned at school that the USA became a nation of coffee drinkers because of the excise duty King George placed on tea? Today ubiquitous chains like Starbucks, Cafe Nero and Costa grace every international airport, and follow the now much humbler Nescafe as symbols of globalisation.
Coffee is produced in hot climates like Latin America, sub-Saharan Africa, Vietnam and Indonesia, and you could be forgiven if you thought it is a product from the New World like tobacco and chocolate. After all, all three became popular in Europe at more or less the same time, in the 16th and 17th Centuries.
In fact, coffee comes from the highland areas of the countries at the southern end of the Red Sea – Yemen and Ethiopia.
Although a beverage made from the wild coffee plant seems to have been first drunk by a legendary shepherd on the Ethiopian plateau, the earliest cultivation of coffee was in Yemen and Yemenis gave it the Arabic name qahwa, from which our words coffee and cafe both derive.
Qahwa originally meant wine, and Sufi mystics in Yemen used coffee as an aid to concentration and even spiritual intoxication when they chanted the name of God.
By 1414, it was known in Mecca and in the early 1500s was spreading to Egypt from the Yemeni port of Mocha. It was still associated with Sufis, and a cluster of coffee houses grew up in Cairo around the religious university of the Azhar. They also opened in Syria, especially in the cosmopolitan city of Aleppo, and then in Istanbul, the capital of the vast Ottoman Turkish Empire, in 1554.
In Mecca, Cairo and Istanbul attempts were made to ban it by religious authorities. Learned shaykhs discussed whether the effects of coffee were similar to those of alcohol, and some remarked that passing round the coffee pot had something in common with the circulation of a pitcher of wine, a drink forbidden in Islam.
Coffee houses were a new institution in which men met together to talk, listen to poets and play games like chess and backgammon. They became a focus for intellectual life and could be seen as an implicit rival to the mosque as a meeting place.
Some scholars opined that the coffee house was “even worse than the wine room”, and the authorities noted how these places could easily become dens of sedition. However, all attempts at banning coffee failed, even though the death penalty was used during the reign of Murad IV (1623-40). The religious scholars eventually came to a sensible consensus that coffee was, in principle, permissible.
Coffee spread to Europe by two routes – from the Ottoman Empire, and by sea from the original coffee port of Mocha.
Both the English and Dutch East India Companies were major purchasers at Mocha in the early 17th Century, and their cargoes were brought home via the Cape of Good Hope or exported to India and beyond. They seem, however, to have only taken a fraction of Yemeni coffee production – as the rest went north to the rest of the Middle East.
Coffee also arrived in Europe through trade across the Mediterranean and was carried by the Turkish armies as they marched up the Danube. As in the Middle East, the coffee house became a place for men to talk, read, share their opinions on the issues of the day and play games.
Another similarity was that they could harbour gatherings for subversive elements. Charles II denounced them in 1675 as “places where the disaffected met, and spread scandalous reports concerning the conduct of His Majesty and his Ministers”.
A century later Procope, the famous Parisian coffee house, had such habitues as Marat, Danton and Robespierre who conspired together there during the Revolution.
At first, coffee had been viewed with suspicion in Europe as a Muslim drink, but around 1600 Pope Clement VIII is reported to have so enjoyed a cup that he said it would be wrong to permit Muslims to monopolise it, and that it should therefore be baptised.
Austrian coffee drinking is said to have received a big boost when the Turkish siege of Vienna in 1683 was broken, and the European victors captured huge coffee supplies from the vanquished.
Perhaps that is why, to this day, coffee is served in Vienna with a glass of water – just like the tiny cups of powerful Turkish coffee with its heavy sediment in Istanbul, Damascus or Cairo. Is this just a coincidence, or a long forgotten cultural borrowing?
The beverage we call “Turkish coffee” is actually a partial misnomer, as Turkey is just one of the countries where it is drunk. In Greece they call it “Greek coffee”, although Egyptians, Lebanese, Syrians, Palestinians, Jordanians and others do not seem to care overmuch about the name.
On this day in 1886…
Reblogged from: Slice the Life
Dr. John Pemberton Brews The First Batch Of Coca-Cola- This Day In 1886
On this day in 1886 Dr. John Pemberton brewed the first batch of Coca-Cola in a backyard in Atlanta, Georgia. Today there are vending machines selling Coca-Cola in every country except for North Korea and Cuba.
Bullshot
Beef consomme and vodka recipe
Served hot from a flask or with ice, the meaty bullshot is long overdue a revival
This classic mix of beef consomme and vodka has managed to acquire an undeservedly tweedy reputation in Britain. It is often drunk hot, poured from a Thermos on crisp winter walks – the steam rising and mingling with the cloudy breath of walkers holding out their cups for a dose.
But served over cracked ice after dark it is a more dangerous beast. Bullshot was probably invented in the 50s in the US, by someone with a twisted mind. Meat and alcohol. In a glass. With pepper. Oh yeah, and chilli.
It’s Marlon Brando in The Wild One. It’s Shane McGowan on an experimental day. In the early 70s, Malcolm McDowell drank it while publicising A Clockwork Orange. He “bundled in against the cold in a leather jacket,” recorded one journalist, “[on his face] the beginning of a smile that never quite finished, he sat down and ordered a bullshot – bouillon and vodka.”
I first had it in a dive bar on a snowy evening in New York in the late 80s – the first time I was ever alone there. As the vodka flush hit my cheeks, I was momentarily James Dean. And then I caught a glimpse in the back-bar mirror of a chubby English schoolboy with a fake ID holding his cigarette like a square.
Bullshot is best mixed with homemade broth, but don’t let this stop you – it still tastes great with consomme from a can. There are many variations. If you have it heated, I think it needs a little dry sherry in the mix to give it more body. Some people add orange juice, as well as lemon, to the mix.
I like it strong, cold and straight, with a lot of Worcestershire sauce, a good squeeze of lemon and a little more vodka than given in the recipe that follows.
Make your own bullshot
Serves 1
90ml beef consomme
45ml vodka
A dash of Worcestershire sauce
A squeeze of lemon
Tabasco
Black pepper
1 Mix all the ingredients together, adding Tabasco and black pepper to taste.
2 Shake with cracked ice and strain into a highball glass with extra ice. This drink is supposed to be more boozy than a Bloody Mary but if you would prefer a slightly weaker version, simply add an extra 50ml of the consomme.
Sunday Art Fare
Karen Eland is an Oklahoma artist who not only drinks coffee but uses it as paint; and she doesn’t stop there she takes it a step further by adding the unexpected into classic masterpieces such as Michelangelo, Matisse and Picasso. How? – She adds a cup of coffee!
Vietnamese Coffee… an oxymoron???
If somebody had asked me yesterday about Vietnamese coffee, I would have blinked more than twice and wondered if they were pulling my leg.
Today I read an article in The Guardian, that Vietnam does indeed produce coffee, and is only second to Brazil in world production.
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The French colonials introduced coffee there in 1857, so it’s not new. Despite many ups and downs including a 1900s glut of poor quality beans and then the Vietnam war and the scorched earth policy, the industry has recovered. There are many concerns of an environmental nature, but you can read about those on the link above.
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And you can try the recipe on Cà phê sũa dá – Vietnamese Iced Coffee my post from yesterday.
So you can see that indeed Vietnamese coffee is not an oxymoron.
Doesn’t Always Work
Sometimes when I am thinking of a post, I don’t have any idea what I will post about. I often throw something into the Google mincer and see what comes up.
It doesn’t always work.
My original thought was ‘wine’. Then I got to thinking, ‘what countries are not known for their wine’. That’s how I got to write ‘Laos wine’. Not a grand idea.
It seems that any wine from Laos has creepy crawlies in it; snakes, scorpions and the like. Not my cup of tea at all.
Apparently it is a rice wine, but my liking of sake does not extend to additional reptiles and insects.
But the good news is… they have beer, and there doesn’t seem to be a snake insight.
There are other brands, but Beerlao Lager seems to be the prominent one. They also have stout and light beers
Too Much Stuff – Not Enough Fizz
Pre-Post Blurb
Often when I sit here staring numbly at a blank screen, I have absolutely no idea what I am going to post. Some call it writers block, I call it having no idea what I am going to post. While I was undergoing this metamorphosis between having no idea and having an idea. I glanced back at some previous posts and realised that lately I have had too much stuff and not enough fizz.
So, I looked up the Great God Google “Fizz”and found this gaudy bauble staring at me.
Fizz Diamond
Now that I have the image in place, I am going to discover WTF Fizz Diamond is. At the moment I have no idea.
Well, so far no luck, that was a design page.
Next…
Hmmm, next site was in Russian.
Next…
Found this: Estonian brewery Tartus new cider-based cocktail, Fizz Diamond, is to be the first brand to use Rexams glittering new Sparkle varnish on its cans.
Well, now we know about the glittery can.
And… Fizz Diamond will be available in bars, shops and clubs in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.
Well, that’s it. It’s a cider-based fruit drink. There appears no further product info on the web, great marketing ploy.
Post-post Blurb
Blogging is such fun, not always successful, but fun. You have your “Fizz.”
Bissap
From the International Scene
Senegal
One of the smaller countries of West Africa, in fact it is the western-most of the African countries. In the past one of the French African colonies the capital city is Dakar.
The national drink is Jus de Bissap (pron beesap), while technically it is more a tea than a juice it is made from dried hibiscus flowers Hibiscus sabdariffa. Every busy street, train station, bus depot, and stadium will have its bissap vendors selling the drink. The dried flowers can be found in every market.
To make the tea is very simple. Hibiscis flowers, mint leaves, honey (if you want a sweetener) and an option of a vanilla pod.
You can also use options of any citrus fruit, pineapple juice, etc; there are many variations.
It can be served hot as a tea, or chilled.
Like many countries who have/had their national drinks, Senegal has sadly opted for the conversion to pervasive brands like Coca-Cola that are considered to be much more in vogue.
“What happened is that when I went back, I discovered that people were basically abandoning bissap – a red drink made from the hibiscus plant – because for them, if you’ve made it now in this world, you drink the western brands.” – Magatte Wade, after having studied in France and moved to the US. You can read more of her interview on BBC’s African Dream.
Bissap is produced for consumption around the world.