stick a fork in me!

So this weekend I got some cynar. wow, that is... potent stuff. ten years ago, I would have thought it completely vile. Now, I'm thinking about ways I can build interesting drinks out of it in strict moderation. It is like a funky Campari and for trial, I made a negroni with it. Might be a little too assertive in the vegetal dimension for me to make a lot of those regularly. I would like to try it in something where I dial it back a touch, or use it at what I'll call—lacking a better term—"bitters strength", i.e., measured by the teaspoon or percentages thereof instead of whole shots of the stuff.

I'm going to tackle the aforementioned Spirit World's/zigzag cafe's Trident Cocktail¹ with Akavit, as well as the Bensonhurst I saw in last month's Surdyk's "drinks" mag² We're also going to try their hot buttered rum variation with the pumpkin flavoring sometime this week. I do love hot buttered anything and now that the weather's turning I think the time is right.

While a straight up negroni, subbing Cynar 1:1 for Campari, came off a little too medicinal for my palate, I think using it in fractional quantities in some drinks could be very pleasant. I'll also have to admit that maybe Broker's was the wrong gin to use in this case, but I don't have anything else in the house to confirm. I will give it a second chance with Plymouth, since I'm not running out of the Cynar anytime soon. But I wonder if maybe whisky also has what it takes to mesh with this spirit. Right off I've got a plan to sub it for a similar quantity of Angostura that I might normally use, in a Dubliner³ variation of the Manhattan. With that earthier/veggie edge to it, I propose it's appropriate to think of a Dubliner made this way as a kind of tribute to the memory of victims of the famine and the coffin ships, a tipple for toasting their sacrifice and cursing the name of Lord John Russell⁴. I'll try it in a standard and in a perfect version, just to see if a little dry vermouth uplifts the Cynar harmoniously or fights with it⁵. Anyone else with the nerve and a bottle of artichoke liquor lying around should give it a spin on my behalf, we'll need a good sampling for scientific study!

We had a nice dinner and toast to the memory of Michael Jackson at Town Hall last night. I enjoyed their casked IPA, mrs_lovett had oatmeal stout. I reminisced about reading the Michael Jackson world guide to whisky when I was a sophomore/junior in high school. I reflect now as an adult that I have pretty much always had an interest in spirits, and I'm further led to reflect that...gosh that's kinda weird for a teenager. But the passages were so descriptive! And it's not like I was able to get my hands on the stuff then. The bottles were $30+, and we lived in South Dakota for crying out loud! Well, he's dead now, and I do thank him for so many lucid and formative passages.

¹ for those of you reading this far...do I need so say "hence the title of the post"? yeah? yeah. the trident, same as the link above, presumably the medicinal taste I'm complaining about is remedied by the caraway in the akavit? we'll see.
² there's some clever 3-D marketing. I wonder who the real publisher of that content is and how many other large stores drop their site-specific content into it for republishing to their customers.
³ I think it's Regan who gave me that title: a Manhattan made w/Irish whisky.
⁴ May your blackhearted soul rot in hell
⁵ Yes, this is the point where you go "oh lord, how much more fucking precious is this going to get?" and the answer of course is, "baby this rabbit hole goes all the way down."

please pray for the golden country

Please pray for Burma.
learn more about what's going on

fyi: I have family who were born there. Mom lived there as a little girl while her parents were serving in the American Baptist foreign missions¹. Eleanor's namesake, my Aunt Eleanor (she's one of the girls pictured at right, maybe the bigger one? the smaller one being my mom?), grew up and returned as a nurse there. I have an adoptive cousin, MiMi (Myint Myint Ohn) who is Burmese.

Being of limited material means and living ten thousand miles away, I can think of little more powerful than prayer. International Ministries notes that there are long connections, strong twining roots between America and Burma through the missions work done there. In the history of colonial abuses inflicted on Asian peoples from various white missions, the Baptists' work in Burma was often exemplary of a better relationship. And certainly these Baptists could be counted on to stand opposed to the kind of powerful rulers who now grip Burma (unlike some we could no doubt name in our present degraded era) .

¹ It might interest you to note that my grandfather's name was Joseph Smith, a fact that always tickles me when I speak to LDS folk. Rev. Joe Smith, the American Baptist missionary, not the founder of Mormonism. Grandpa, with a degree from the old land grant college SDSU, was involved in agricultural work--I don't know if there was something like cooperative work going on there or what. But they were making some significant headway on land reform and agricultural methods that caught Mahatma Gandhi's ear from neighboring India. He wanted to know more and came to the mission for a visit. Mom was very young, so she can't confirm she actually met the great soul, but the rest of the family sure did. So, you know, there was a time when Joseph Smith met Gandhi! And believe me, the disposition of matters such as polygamy and translation of prophetic messages was not on the agenda!