Snow Booze! And Pictures!

It's like snow cream, only ALCOHOLIC. How have I been living life without it?!

Well, anyway, as I sip this raspberry truffle delight I will begin with first things first: It snowed like the Dickins yesterday. I do mean that. It was Dickinsean in scope: drifts up to my chest perfectly designed to smother poor match girls, and packable in a way that would give the roughest of street urchins a delight.

Unfortunately this means mother and I had to move several hundred cubic feet of snow from our driveway. Allow me to illustrate:

That is my car. His name is Heathrow, and he is a Ford Focus. The snow banked up along his sides was the height of the snow on our driveway, just about up to his side view mirrors or about two and a half feet. Mother and I toiled away at his, her with a wrenched back and me with my... well there's nothing actually wrong with me, I'm just a stick figure and have problems lifting things. The banks of snow beside our driveway were well over five and a half feet high, and I am just under that, so tossing the shovelfulls of snow was a bit of a strain.

We got about this far down our drive, which is about a third of the way, before we managed to attract a team of teenagers with a snowblower, and with the promise of forty dollars and some cookies got them to clean off our drive that we could go inside and drink some of the terrible riesling I bought.

In my defense it was from the Hessen rheingau, where I grew up. I *know* that the dastardly Germans keep all the good rieslings for themselves, leaving us with a bunch of sugary Mosel river crap (I rather like Mosel rieslings, actually). Well shut up, parentheses, you with your reason, logic and good humor. You're not wanted here.

Anyway, this Liebfraumilch (yes, it was actually called that) was sugar water with a squeeze of lemon. It was rather nice because you could easily forget you were drinking something alcoholic, allowing the nice warming sensation to tempt you out of doors again to watch the High Schoolers engage in manual labor. When that bottle was gone we had a bottle of sub-par Sauvignon Blanc that I'm too lazy to really review.

This morning I engaged in more gratuitous shoveling, this time creating a run for the dog to go pee in.

 

That is the snow piled up at our door, having drifted. It was about at neck height, so at a guess I'd say about 4 and a half feet. I was shoveling along, creating a really nifty looking trench, when I happened to look up at the roof. 

 

...Oh what the hell. I did not come out here to be crushed by a gravity defying overhang of snow.

 

 

It was rather pretty though. Eventually I finished the dog run, just in time for a few episodes of Top Gear, the one in which Michael Schumacher is not, in fact, The Stig. After watching Hammond destroy his nadgers on a motorbike and defeating Team Galactic on top of some pixilated mountain, I discovered a recipe for alcoholic snow cream posted on The Ho Formerly Known As Crazy's facebook.

Holy Science! I cried. This must be tried! FOR SCIENCE!

The Formerly Crazy's facebook recipe was for a chocolate snow shake, but I lacked chocolate cream liqueur. I do have a half pound of high quality chocolate though, and so should probably get on that. Anyway, I used her recipe as a base and created a delightful raspberry truffle snow drank.

 

Now that's a two quart bowl of snow. Add about a half cup of cream (I had about an eighth of a cup of half and half and a gallon of skim milk so I sort of mixed the two), something like a third of a cup of sugar and a teaspoon of vanilla. Stir it up, making a mess of your kitchen in the process. Next, add your booze.

That's a quarter cup of regular vodka and slightly less than a half cup of homemade raspberry liqueur. Toss in a tablespoon full of Hershey's chocolate syrup and stir it all up, again making a terrible mess of your countertop.

If you are doing it right it will look like nice, healthy pink brains. Pour into a collins glass with a crazy straw and whipped cream.

Now this, similar to a Wendy's frosty, is a drink that looks like it SHOULD be drunk through the straw, but in actuality needs to be eaten with a spoon until some of it melts. It is delicious and delightfully inebriating. It is also very pink, which I guess is appropriate for valentine's day, but not really for Superbowl Sunday, which is supposedly an occasion for manliness. I guess you could easily add and layer food coloring for the colors of your favorite teams.

Next snow booze experiment: TEQUILA.