Cocktail Confessions

In the era of Sex in the City, Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, and half the shows on the CW these days (should I admit I actually watch many of them?) many cocktail concoctions took on some frilly characteristics.  There were a lot more pink umbrellas, red sugar rims, and fruit floating about in poolside glasses than most men would like to admit too.  When was the last time you saw Steve McQueen, Tito Ortiz, T.O. or Derek Jeter sipping on a cosmo? (Well, the jury is still out on Jeter, but that’s another story).

Anyway, I want to introduce you to a few libations that are gonna put a little kick back in your step, make you howl at the moon, and thump your pecs like a silverback gorilla.  Yes, some manly men drinks sure to darken your roots and ground you back in the ’50s where men worked and there was a pot pie, a pipe, and slippers waiting fro you when you got home.

With no further ado:

The Rusty Nail

Straight out of a construction site nail gun, we’re talking two ingrediants - Drambui and Scotch.  Drambuie is a liquer made with a blends of herbs, spice, a touch of honey, and get this….more Scotch!  Liberals be damned when you pour this down your gullet.

• 1oz blended Scotch.  Pick one with enough bite to counter the slightly thicker and sweetness of the Drambuie.
• 1oz Drambuie.
• Lemon twist for garnish.
• Take a lowball glass with ice and pour both ingrediants in.  Stir quickly and drop lemon twist in, allowing natural oils of rind to blend with drink, and then pretend ‘The View’ never existed.

The Negroni

Hey look, I didn’t name this drink so back off.  I know what you’re thinking, but we evolved since then.  Negroni combines gin, vermouth and Campari and supposedly stimulates the appetite and promotes digestion.  Just what the doctor at teh Tiajuana clinic ordered.  It may be a bit tough to get used to, so you probably won’t get many requests to share, but savor this strong and in your face flavor and imagine Mel Gibson handing it to you for a job well done.

• 1oz gin (say Plymouth or Tanqueray)
• 1oz Campari (a bitter apertif)
• 3/4oz sweet vermouth.
• Put ingrediants in shaker full of ice and shake well.  Strain into a chilled cocktail glass or lowball filled with ice.  If you’re confident enough in your masculinity, you can add a cherry, but stare down anyone who gives you crap about it.

Blue Blazer

Sounding more like a mexican luchador (wrestler for you non-bilinguals), this has the added component of fire, always sure to amaze and impress.  It’s a bit more involved in preparation and not for the timid or drunk to try and mix.  We’re talking boiling water and fire, and silver plated mugs people!

• 2.5oz high proof rye whisky (100 proof or better is recommended)
• 2.5oz boiling water.  Yes, boiling.
• 1 teaspoon powdered sugar.
• lemon peel for garnish.
• 2 silver plated mugs as most other materials can’t hold up well with flames involved.
• Pour whisky in one mug with sugar and mix slightly, and boiling water in other mug.  Ignite whisky (be careful) and pour into mug of water.  Continue pouring back and forth to mix displaying a stream of fire.  When done, add lemon peel to glasses.  You are now the ‘most interesting man in the world’.

This post is only used for setting up CocktailConfessions posts to Twitter.

Update: Success!  Follow me on Twitter @alonedisciple (name pending to change).

I’m usually pretty good at creating my own content here, but I came across an interesting article over at FoxNews.com and thought it deserved a little attention here.  I’m cutting out some of the fluff, but you get the meat of it.  If you want to read the full article as it was written by Elena Ferretti, go ahead and click here.

Article

It’s axiomatic: from summer barbecues to Octoberfest, beer makes the party. Lucy Saunders takes it a step further. Beer, she says, makes the meal when the meal’s cooked with it. And she’s talking more than beer-battered onion rings.

She’s talking Cheddar Ale Spread with ancho, chipotle and pale ale, and Chocolate Malt Ganache. Saunders, author of “Cooking With Beer,” “Best of American Beer and Food” and “Grilling with Beer” also runs Beercook.com, whose emphatic motto is: “Because beer is Food!” Beer, specifically craft beer, she says, is for far more than just quaffing.

Most people understand - intuitively if not practically - that cooking with wine infuses food with depth, distinction and subtlety. Some dishes use the harder stuff, too; think Penne alla Vodka, or Bananas Foster aflame with rum. Beer hasn’t (yet) become part of our pantry, says Saunders, because while cooking with beer has been part of culinary history for centuries, “it’s been under-appreciated as it’s generally been the province of home cooks, via hand-me-down recipes.”

A craft beer’s flavor is determined by how barley is treated during malting, the process of germinating barley to create a high-starch content seed. The starch will eventually be converted into a fermentable sugar. The ‘maltster’ heats the grain to stop seed growth, which retains the starch content, then roasts it to develop various flavor characteristics and color, similar to the process of roasting coffee beans. Briess Malting in Wisconsin, says Saunders, is the last independent specialty maltster in North America and makes an incredible range of specialty malts for brewing.

Saunders, a Midwest native who, in addition to teaching, runs water conservation workshop for brewers and cheese makers, says she has a “palate for grains” and has loved the taste of beer for as long as she can remember. It started with her mom’s Cheese and Beer soup (beer, caramelized onions, asiago, cheddar and parmesan), Carbonnade (a jaw-dropping ale, beef and onion stew and a major Belgian culinary contribution along with waffles and chocolates) and her dad’s beer-based steak marinades.

The first commercial cookbooks, including some with recipes for cooking with beer, appeared in England during the Tudor era, late 1400s to mid-1500s. That was due not to beer’s ubiquity but to Gutenberg inventing the printing press in 1440. Previously, cookbooks were hand-written and used primarily by monasteries and the upper classes, says Saunders, who majored in Old and Middle English. Instead of a term paper she translated Tudor recipes, cooked and catered a medieval feast for her professor and other students and “hired frat brother friends as serfs to serve dinner.”

Americans’ love affair with craft beers started in the 1980s for a few reasons, says Saunders. By the mid-70s many states lifted a Prohibition-era ban on home brewing allowing people to recapture a forgotten craft. Also, in the late 70s and 80s, study-abroad programs proliferated and students started tasting European beers that had been crafted from long-standing brewing traditions, introducing their palates to flavors other than Budweiser and Miller Lite.

Saunders says that craft brewing combines the artistry and creativity of cooking with the rigors of science. It’s about fermentable sugars, final alcohol content, color and mouth-feel, and evoking flavor and aromatics from grain’s entire taste spectrum. “It’s a continuous learning and creativity curve. That’s the allure. It’s a great challenge and when the results are delicious they are shared and enjoyed. It’s why it’s here to stay.”

Part of me feels like I sold out to the Media Man.  I’m not exactly sure why, but I’ve been fairly proud to have gone thus far so long without jumping on the Twitter bandwagon.  There’s a couple of reasons why I never felt the need to jump on this trend, and I suppose on the technological front it was because I never had a smart phone prior to my Droid and there was no way in hell I was going to use my regular phone (sans QWERTY keyboard) to attempt and fumble through pecking out a tweet.  It didn’t help either that Verizon charges like $.10 for every text message as well if you don’t have a data plan.

The second reason was more of a social ego thing for me which of course goes both ways.  On my side of the coin, I’m not sure what I would ‘tweet’ or why I would in the first place.  I’m not of the generation where this technology is second hand nature to kids have my age.  It seems that ‘tweeting’ was the next step in evolution for teens who were already maturing beyond Myspace, and now had a mobile way to keep friends updated.  I’m pretty sure that if I were 16 again, I’d really be into Twitter.  On the flip-side of things, it seemed Twitter became all that when celebrity douche’s like Ashton Kutcher, Kim Kardashian, Paris Hilton and John Mayer got on-board and felt the need to tweet about everything they came into contact with.  Soon, ‘entertainment’ news shows such as Access Hollywood and Extra started to report the often mundane and sometimes insane musings of so called celebrities and hung on every word as if the ability to tweet now turned them into wise old sages that we as a culture needed to hang onto every word.  It was no longer about what we could do or experience for ourselves, but we were more interested, (for whatever reason) in “What would Ashton do?” or “What does Brittany think?”, as if somehow we were actually no closer to them, understood them, and now could tell others we were friends.

So why did I succumb if I am so against it?  Well, like all things, even my opinions change over time.  I still think Ashton and John Mayer are douches, but I cam to realize that there are other people out there that actually do write about things that interest me.  There are people I am interested in following as it comes to discovering new technologies, new restaurants, new clubs and venues, and even news that affects my world.

So who the hell am I following then?    Funny you should ask.  For the first time, it seems I have the ability to ‘interview’ who I want to follow on a trial basis.  Some may come, some may go.  For example, I don’t think I could follow a John Mayer even if I like him because my phone would be chirping upwards of ten times a day on just him.  Now suppose I began to follow 10 people, or maybe 20, or even 30.  If they even just tweeted once a day, I’d be inundated with chirps that would drive me up the wall.

The current list I have is relatively small (10), and there wasn’t all that much thought put into it.  Some of them I added like Neil Patrick Harris, because he actually has something to say and it has content, not like Kim Kardashian who peppers here with just links and nonsensical crap like advertisements.  I looked at a few dozen random celebrities in different fields and here’s my list thus far:  Nikkie Jackson (fitness model), Catalina Cruz (Internet entrepreneur), Niel Patrick Harris (actor), Bobby Flay (celebrity chef), Denise Richards (actress, model, animal lover), Kevin Smith (director, comic buff, actor), Blair Herter (TV personality, comic geek, video games), Adam Sessler (TV personality, video gamer), Aziz Ansari (comedian, actor), Guy Fieri (celebrity chef, tv personality).

I also realize it’s a great self marketing tool.  I’d love to get more people to listen to my podcast and if I can even attract one person via Twitter over to CocktailConfessions, then by measurement, it worked.  I doubt I will be personally be ‘tweeting’ much, I mean what possibly do I have to say to the masses who don’t even know I exist?  If I’m lucky, maybe I’ll get a few followers, although I suspect they will be friends and I can share with them some new eats I’ve discovered, or inform them of a new podcast, or perhaps an occasional mobile picture….but isn’t that what we have Facebook for?

On my Droid phone I installed ‘Tweetcaster lite’, a freebie version of Tweetcaster Pro.  It seemed to get a lot of positive ratings 4.5/5 and seems failry intuitive to use.  Not sure if it is the best one out there as it seems a few people said it doesn’t have the ability to upload video’s to Twitter….but do I care about that?  Maybe it will come with an upcoming patch or release upgrade?

Anyway, now I’m looking for an appropriate and easy Twitter plug-in for Wordpress.  I’ve already seen a few, but I need to decide which one will suit my needs here.  Don’t be surprised if you see one or two come and go over the weeks as I decide which one is for me.  However, in the meantime, if you so choose you can follow me on Twitter at ‘@alonedisciple’.

Finally, if you were to become a follower of me, what would you want me to tweet about?  Recipes?  Grilling?  Cocktails?  Funny crap?

So as any self respecting nerdy geek like myself will admit to without embarrassment, I enjoy video games.  Always have.  My very first console was an Intellivision, followed by the following: Sega Genesis, Nintendo 64, Xbox, Wii, Xbox 360.  That doesn’t include the portable systems I’ve owned as well: GameBoy advance and PSP nor my pure gaming rig, the PC computer.

Anyways, I’ve played a lot of games over the years.  Some good, some bad, some strange.  But Japan has the market on weird shit as the picture states.  The land of the rising sun in all their tech savvy ways is also very perverted.  That’s not to say the Germans and a few other European countries don’t give the Japanese a run for their money when it comes to eroticism and perversion…well, I suppose perversion is in the eye of the beholder, but the Japanese often blend sex with just about anything they can.  Take vending machines for instance:  it is well known that Japanese business men can often be seen dropping coins into public vending machines in order to obtain panties.  Yes…panties.  Not sure if they are ‘used’ or not, but no one seems to think this is out of the ordinary over there.

They are also obsessed with Manga, or to qualify, cartoonish looking robots and young school girls with larger than life eyes, huge breasts, and some kind of innocent-slash-constipated look on their faces.

Now throw in video games.

This is what you get: Eroge, a video games that not only encourages masturbation, but also keeps score and statistics regarding your solo activities if you feel so inclined.  Yes, you are indeed reading this correctly….the game keeps track of how many times you have decided to a choke the proverbial chicken.  There are numerous categories you can enter data in (wash your hands first though), such as: Did you use socks today?  How long did it take you?  How many times did you spank the monkey today?  You get the idea.  The best part is, there is a handy graphing tools as well for those math centric racial stereotyping we are go good at.  Hey, go compare your graph with that of your friend.  Fun!

One of the old adage’s we have all heard time and time again, but seemingly and knowingly tend to ignore for various (and quite possibly mischievous) reasons is to never talk politics or religion with those you are close with or coworkers.

I came across a recent news article online regarding an anonymous benefactor back in Minneapolis who purchased some billboard space and had the following picture adorned on the side of the highway.  Personally, I found the picture quite funny as former President Bush looks a tad cartoonish here, but more so in lieu of all the pop-shots the media has been taken this last year at the right and Sarah Palin.

Now before you get your own personal panties in a tizzy, I’ll have you know that while I do consider myself a person who leans towards the conservative side of things, my stance the last few years has grown increasingly Independent.  See, personally, I wasn’t happy with the last few years of the Bush administration, not because of his convictions or morals, but more so because I thought his administration dropped the ball on a few things and forgot about many others.  I believe the GOP had lost sight of their core constituents and stopped listening to those who placed them into office.  I am one of those Americans who no longer believe that those in Washington were working for the people, but working for their own designs and elitist agenda.

That goes for both parties, and while I’ll be the first to say I will never be a ‘liberal’ or lean so far left that I throw all common sense out the window, the ‘right’ hasn’t been doing themselves any favors in my eyes either. 

Enter the 2008 election where the messiah of Hope and Change was elected to nauseating heights and the masses began to trip over themselves as they abandoned all common sense and truly became blind and deaf to the world around changing around them. 

Now it’s more than a year later and this administration continues to blame the previous guard for all their shortcomings.  Healthcare?  No.  Immigration?  No.  Guantonimo?  No.  Iraq?  No.  National Security?  No.  Stimulus?  No.  Housing market?  Not yet.  Iran?  Still no.  The list goes on and on, but I digress.

I placed this picture on my Facebook page as an attempts of humor, and I was shocked on how quickly and visceral the comments were from my ‘liberal’ friends.  Yes, I do have friends who swing left, but I always find it very amusing that they are also the most intolerant and one-track mind when it comes to politics.  The party that proclaims to be progressive, enlightened, and tolerant of all viewpoints….really isn’t.  No, sadly when it comes to politics and religion, if you can’t agree with them or sit back and laugh, they take their ball home from the sandbox and pout.

Does that mean all liberals?  Before you flood my email and comments with yet more knee jerk reactions, the answer is no, of course not all liberals are this uptight.  I’m just stating from my own personal pool of friends (who will remain nameless here) is the old “They can dish it out, but can’t take it themselves” attitude.  When Obama won and was sworn in I can’t recall any of my conservative friends throwing a hissy fit.  However, you mention any of the string of quantifiable instances that Obama hasn’t been able to pull off any of his agenda of ‘change’ as promised you better duck for cover and steel yourself for the tirade of insults that are about to fly your way.

To my liberal friends….lighten up, drink a cocktail..or in your case two or three.  We’re still friends, we’re still adults, act your age and prove me wrong that you can actually handle a little criticism, even if in jest.  You only have three years left to enjoy this mess anyway.

Was it just me, or did you think this year’s game was just slow and un-entertaining?  I just couldn’t seem to get into it at all and thank goodness some of my neighbors came over to make the afternoon at least somehwat palatable. 

I didn’t even care for the commercials this time around either.  Usually there are a few good ones that have a creative hand behind them, but I was really disapointed with this years spots.  Okay, maybe the Betty White one was a tad amusing and I always like the Etrade talking baby, but the rest just seemed uninspired and ‘meh’ at best.

Thank goodness I had plenty of drinks to make the day go by a bit faster, but I’m kinda paying for it today.   I don’t have a hangover by any means, but I am tired.  Tired enough where I was seriously debating on not coming to work today, and I’m kinda now bummed I didn’t stay home.  Today is just dragging on and I was able to sneak a little cat nap in my car at lunch.  Problem with that is really trying to focus and keep awake after that.  Many people swear they feel refreshed after a good 20 minute power nap.  Me?  Well, I just end up yawning even more and shaking my head here and there to try and wake myself up.

This clearly may be a sign of both my age and me not going to the gym as much as  sued to.  When I was going to the gym 4-5 times a week, my metabolism was much higher.  Now that I go maybe 1-2 (usually just 1) I notice that I do lack that certain energy.  But that was was also 10-15 years ago whereas now I’m creeping up on 40 (next month).

Anyway, a few strong libations yesterday during the superbowl had me falling asleep on teh couch by end of third quarter.  I honestly don’t rmember too much of the game, nor do I really care.  I did enjoy Undercover Boss right after however.

For anyone who likes a truly unique way of grilling or cooking very moist and flavorful chicken, I give you this podcast.

The very first time I saw this take on grilling chicken was around 2001-02 and I had seen it on FoodTV.  I was fascinated on the method and idea of both basting and cooking a chicken from the inside out using liquid, and in this case beer.  It looked simple enough and guaranteed to be a talking point amongst friends who see you pull the bird of the grill.

You’ll be amazed, if done correctly, how moist the chicken actually is, especially after sitting on the grill for hours.  And despite the fact it may look a bit complicated, it really isn’t at all.  The most caution I can give though…and I learned this from my own experience is to be very careful removing the can from the bird without adequately letting it rest and cool down juts a tad.  That can is hot, and the left over brew is basically boiling (it did just turn to steam after-all), and you can easily burn yourself.  Oh, and make sure you leave the bird on long enough to cook thoroughly….no matter how good it may look on the outside, you don’t want to get sick from raw chicken (I’ve done that as well, and it isn’t pretty by any means).

Don’t be afraid to experiment with various rubs and spices, and of course if you have fresh herbs liek rosemary or thyme, don’t be shy to try them out either.

Like I say in the episode, best enjoyed in the company of friends and can be paired with lighter wines or like beer.  Enjoy on a nice spring or summer day, get the tunes going, have some light side dishes and I promise you, if done semi-correctly, your friends will want to know how you made such a good main dish.

Show Notes:

• Intro music: “I am a man of constant sorrow” - Soggy Bottom Boys
• Recipe: Beer Can Chicken

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (18.4MB)