Woo! Pictures!

I found my camera cable! It was, as Mauve Shirt suggested, in her room. How the hell it got there, I don't know, because I'm pretty sure it's not compatible with her camera. Whatevs.

Anyway, pretty pretty pictures!

Look at them strawberries. Look at 'em. Ain't they gorgeous? They were tasty too. MOST of the two pounds of strawberries ended up in the jar. The rest ended up in me. Of course, my favorite strawberries are the mutant ones. You know, the ones trying to grow an extra head or something. Like this one.

IT IS ALIIIIIVE. Or not.

I also did a mango infusion this afternoon. What I know about mangoes can be counted on the fingers of one elbow, so these were selected and broken down pretty inexpertly. There were gonna be three of 'em, but...

I sort of assumed that that's not a good way for mangoes to look. QuasomodoMango was not used in the making of this infusion, though I did involve him in making a mess of the kitchen. GOD mangoes smell like flowery ass. I'm not entirely certain about the quality of this infusion, so I didn't make all that much of it.

Finished products!

Oh yeah, check out that bidniss. When I went downstairs to put the mango infusion away with the others, I made sure to give them all a good shake. The coffee was already turning a delightful color, as seen below.

That is going to be delicious. CRAZY delicious.

Of course, I've got about a quarter liter of vodka left, and I'm wondering what I should do with it. Any recommendations?

I keep misplacing my camera cable...

Which means I don't have any good pictures of the infusions I made. LAME. It's a damn shame too, 'cause these ones look particularly delicious. First is a strawberry infusion, made with two pounds of strawberries and enough vodka to fill the jar. Mr. B gave me two old whisky bottles, nice glass ones with a cork. One of them is now full of vanilla bean infusion, and the other with coffee bean. My vanilla-coffee infusion was so successful that I really wanted to make more, and I figure that these two can be combined in all sorts of delicious ways, or taken alone.

Now, these particular infusions have a purpose: they are bribes. Before I move out, I will decant and sweeten them (except the vanilla, it keeps its bean in and takes no sugar). They will be served as bribes to those who help me move in, likely along with cupcakes.

I know beer and pizza is the traditional bribe, but I figure this is more my style.

In wine news, I had a delightful Malbec with the Boyfriend. Naturally I can't remember the name. Luckily, when I got home, I found a bottle of Chateau du Cleray Muscadet Sevre et Maine. I don't... I don't know what those words mean. It's French and I'm not very good at this. The grape is Melon de Bourgogne, which is typically used in Muscadet, which I thought was its own grape. Learn something new every day.

It is a very dry, minerally white, which surprised me, since I see "Muscadet" and think "honey sweet." This is really good, and I'd love to have it with oysters. I'll be getting the chance for tasty, tasty slug rocks soon, since for Easter this year we are having a Foie Gras and Oyster Dinner. Oh yeah. It doesn't get much better than that.

...I'm also just happy because I have flowers. I got a shamrock plant named Padraig. Also the Boyfriend got me some yellow roses and they are beautiful.

goddamn goons. goddamn slender man.

I make poor decisions. Today's poor decision was to read all the Slender Man stories on Something Awful. After watching the first few Marble Hornets episodes. I am now jumping at movement in my peripheral vision. Luckily I own a parrot, so screeching and giggling sounds are so standard in my life that I can't even notice. And so I turn to wine and terrible German pop to drive the distressing images out of my mind.

Last night I had a large party of people order a large quantity of red meat. They ordered three bottles of red and one bottle of white, and proceeded to drink all the red and half of the white, so I liberated the bottle. It is another white burgundy wine, I can't find the grape varietal, and it is tangy and tropical and kind of delightful for sitting open in my fridge overnight.

I also decanted the apple-caramel and the raspberry infusions. They both smell *amazing.* I flavored the raspberry with a metric crapton (about a half cup) of simple syrup and dropped some food coloring in there to turn it a beautiful, dark-dark red. I made knockoff chambord! Yay me! I have no idea how I am going to use this stuff at my party. I guess people can drink the apple-caramel stuff like a martini, maybe with a rim of cinnamon-sugar. I think I'll mix the raspberry stuff with the pama knockoff and add... something else, maybe just straight up pomegranate juice... and call it Persephone's Tears. Suggestions?

A very "meh" weekend.

 First, let's get on-topic. I have a bottle of Kendall-Jackson chardonnay here, and it is quite tasty. Not sweet, sort of off-dry. It has a cranberry sort of tartness and a lightly floral aroma and is heavier and spicier than a lot of whites I've been drinking. I also threw together a caramel-apple and a ginger snap infusion, but since I don't have pictures of them I won't bother talking about them much.

Other than the wine, this weekend was not a successful alcohol weekend. I had a tasty tequila sno-cone on friday at DuClaw, where Boyfriend drank an extremely disappointing beer. BeerSnob may disagree, but both Boyfriend and I found the Hellraiser IPA to be a one-note failure as a beer.

Of course, we then went on to drink Keystone Lite at the college, where Boyfriend's friend was having his 21st birthday. What an epic shitshow that was. The birthday celebrant was blacked out by 5 pm, but somehow managed to stagger to the bar at midnight for his birthday round. We have received word that he is not, in fact, dead of alcohol poisoning, nor did he have to get his stomach pumped. Good job, dude.

Things like that make me really glad I had my 21st birthday in a foreign country where no one knew me nor cared to know me. My flatmate threw a party and trashed the apartment, and I drank a few beers at an Brog, but that's about it. Not very interesting, but there was no horrifying intoxication. Granted, I experienced horrifying intoxication later during a pub crawl in England, but I feel fortunate that I escaped the stereotypical 21st birthday shitshow.

Also, WOW is alcohol expensive in restaurants. One of my tables tonight easily ordered a hundred and fifty dollars worth of wine, knocking back overpriced by-the-glass selections like it was their job. I love it when people do that, because it means I get paid for watching the bartender work, but seriously. Where are these people working where they make enough money to spend that much on a night of not-immoderate drinking? Can I have their jobs? Please?

I have become a huge fan of ordering one or two drinks and a dessert in restaurants. The bill stays low and I am satisfied.

MOAR VODKA.

It is time for another episode of STARK MAKES STUFF! Again with the pictures! My god!

Today we are making raspberry vodka and pomegranite liqueur. Let us begin.

Now, raspberry season is so far over that it is not even funny, and pomegranite season really hasn't started yet, so why the hell did I decide to make these? Simple. I had money and the store had pomegranites and raspberries. They also had pumpkins, but the more I think about it the less I want to dig into a pumpkin right now. So here we go.

A big ol' jug of vodka is what you want. Yes, it's ten dollars more expensive than the 750 ml bottle. Yes, that's STILL a better deal. 22 dollars for 1.75 liters vs. 12 dollars for a 750 ml bottle? Is there a question here? Okay, if you've only GOT 15 bucks to spend, go for the 750, but it's almost always worth your money to get a bigger bottle.

Recepticles prepared! Yes, I actually bought some smirnoff raspberry twist. It was nasty. This shit tastes like Red Flavor and smells like Blue Raz soda. Screw it.

Fill that thing with raspberries! Real ones! These were super goopy 'cause they were overripe. Ew.

Now fill it with vodka! HOORAY VODKA!

That's about all we can do with the raspberry for now. It needs to rest. Now let's move on to the pomegranite.

People give Maryland blue crabs a lot of shit for being a lot of work for very little food. These people have obviously never eaten pomegranites before. The ratio of edible material to nonedible material is pretty freaking low. That said, they are delicious and if you have never had one then you are living a sad and deprived life.

Break your pomegranite down, fill the jar with vodka. Easy steps here, folks. Avoid getting any of the bitter pith into the jar. I was super anal about that, and so it took me about half an hour to fully break down the pomegranite. I ate a lot of the seeds. They were DELICIOUS.

What's that? You have vodka left over? WELL HOT DAMN! Thinly slice half an apple and snap a cinnamon stick in half and toss them in that jug! I would usually prefer not to use plastic for an infusion, but hey. When life gives you a plastic jug o' vodka, make an apple pie infusion. Woohoo!

The end results. These are my infusions. Apple-cinnamon, raspberry, pomegranite, apple-botulism, and strawberry. The apple-botulism infusion has been sitting there since June 30, and is really hard to open. I probably shouldn't drink it, but I know I will.

And now time for a snack!

Those of you who are even classier than I am will be asking "Stark, why are you drinking a spicy languedoc vintage with apple slices and chocolate? That is the worst pairing ever." You people are correct, it is a horrible pairing but the picture is pretty so go away. Actually it works pretty well with the tart apples, but the chocolate was a poor decision on my part. The wine was given to me after I waited on a large party of wine reps at the restaurant. I love the wine reps, they are good people.

So I think all of y'all (the three of you who will read this) should make infusions too. They are embarassingly easy, and a good way to turn cheap, nasty vodka into premium, delicious vodka.

NASTY

On the list of Things That Are Nasty, I am adding Soda Fountains.

I had the fun task of cleaning the soda fountains at work today. Oh sweet science... the amount of black nasty-nast turned the stomach.  I think it's the first time that thing had been cleaned in a month. Holy shit.

That right there? THAT is why I prefer alcohol. It sterilizes what it is contained in! Of course, one of these days I'm going to have to clean out a beer tap, and that entire theory is going to go up in smoke... but beer is made of friendly delicious bacteria, right? So it's okay!

Also, crap. I left the bottle I was going to put my pumpkin pie infusion in at the restaurant. CURSE YOU CRUEL FATE! Oh well, I needed to buy the liquor for that anyway. Here is my current recipe plan.

750 ml vodka (kutskova again if I can find it. Smirnoff if I can't)
500 mg roasted pumpkin
Steep 3 weeks.
Add 1 vanilla bean
Half stick cinnamon
1 sealed teabag with pumpkin pie spice.
Steep  1 week

Open, taste, sweeten, and age until my halloween party. Give to plebian friends who will not appreciate my genius. Bastards. I'll remember to take pictures of this one, though, as well as the strawberry stuff I plan on opening and sweetening tomorrow. Hooray booze!

2008 Beauvignac Syrah, Raspberry infusion

I love rose wine. All roses are delicious to me. There is nothing nicer in the summertime than sitting outside with some Terry Pratchett and a glass of rose. So when I found an open bottle of rose that sells for 30 bucks at my restaurant, I needed to try it.

It was a pale orange-pink color, clear and dry. It had passionfruit and citrus notes, and that flinty taste I like in chilled wines.

...one of these days I'll learn to write about wine descriptively. For now, you'll have to deal with "durr that flinty taste I like."

IN OTHER NEWS I opened the bottle of raspberry liqueur that has been aging in my basement. 500ml of Cheap Vodka + 500mg of raspberries. It steeped for 3 weeks and aged for 3 more.

When I first opened it up it smelled of booze and grass, not attractive scents. I sweetened it with simple syrup so that it tasted like sweet, boozy grass and sent it back to the basement. Two nights ago when I opened it back up it tasted like fabulous raspberry syrup. It wasn't perfect: I should have let it steep for at least another week to take some of that cheap-liquor aftertaste out. But it made for fabulous shots and was gone before I could mix it with anything. That's what you get when you bring good booze to college parties, Stark.

I'd also like to take the time to mention my favorite summer cocktail: the low country iced tea. Firefly sweet tea vodka and lemonade over ice. FABULOUS. Do not, however, under any circumstances drink Firefly by itself. It tastes like ass.