Everybody's working for the weekend

The last two weekends have been spectacular. I don't know if I mentioned the Offspring concert I went to, but I should have. Holy shit, I love that band. I was sad they weren't headlining, though, because they ended up just playing a handful of their big hits instead of Nothingtown, Rise and Fall, and Trust in You, which are three amazing songs that don't get played often enough outside of my own car.

Anyway. There is a strange thing I have noticed about beer at sports and concert venues. First, it is always American lite beer. Coors, Miller, and Bud are pretty much the only options. Occasionally you'll find Bud Lime, which tastes like someone once described drinking a corona with lime to a person who had only ever eaten lime jolly ranchers before. Even so, Concert Beer is delicious. Partially because you end up wearing it when someone elbows you in the arm, I think. Same goes for Baseball Beer, perhaps doubly so, since it was so brutally hot this weekend, and at least Jiffy Lube Life (worst. name. ever.) had some ventilation coming down from the stage.

Would you know, I have never been to a losing Orioles game? This weekend was no exception, when my boyfriends family took me out to Camden Yards. It was a good game too, some spectacular plays (are they plays in baseball? I do not know) were made. The seats helped too! We were right next to the news box, right behind home plate. I could actually read the names on the backs of their shirts!

I want to make a joke about Luke Scott or Ty Wigginton but I really don't have one right now.

ANyway. We have begun a tradition at our apartment (apparently we're Land Otters... I don't know. Design Broad and I probably shouldn't be allowed to name things while we're at work/school) of having Sunday Night Dinners. This past weekend, Design Broad made vegetarian chili, and her friend Riesling Snob brought the wine. He brought a very pleasant Blue Vin Riesling from the Mosel valley that had been recommended to him by the wine people at Corridor. It was very light, very pleasantly balanced. It had a citrus tartness as a counterpoint to the honey, which was not terribly cloying. It was really good with the chili, which was not as flamingly spicy as Design Broad wanted, but hey.

We also had an exceptional Lan Crianza, which was at its peak of drinkability according to the handy little graph on the back of the bottle. I love it when wineries add SCIENCE to their packaging. They're marketing their way right into my booze-sodden little heart. This was a very peppery, very smooth wine with a finish like crunching into a black peppercorn. It was not terribly heavy bodied, but the velvety mouthfeel added a lot of class.

Basically what I'm saying is that it was way too fucking hot for that wine, and we need to get some of it for the fall. The Internet is saying good things to me about the price, so that's reassuring. I love it when good wine is under 15 bucks.

Next Sunday Night Dinner will be chicken thighs with apples braised in hard cider. There is no smiley emoticon big enough to express my joy.

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.

Rheingau Riesling Rocks

Nothing makes you want to drink more than waiting tables. If the service industry does not turn one into a raging misanthrope, it certainly turns one into an alcoholic. I enjoy working large parties, because most of the time people are so busy chatting with each other that they forget if I screw something up. Unfortunately tonight I was the only waiter who spoke English reliably. The others spoke only French. I was the only native English speaker in the entire staff that night, actually. It's depressing. I can't imagine how it feels to be in an entire country like that, divided off by language all the time.

Actually I can. I grew up in Germany. I learned enough German to get by, but I could only actually make friends with the other Army brats. Still, what a beautiful place to grow up in! We lived in a small town by the Rhein in a red sandstone castle (not kidding) within walking distance of the vinyards. We used to run around the vines and generally irritate the vintners as kids. It was good times.

It is impossible to get Eltville whine in America. They don't export it. This is a sadness for everyone who loves sweet riesling or spaetlese wines. It's hard enough to find good Rheingau wines at all, most riesling seems to come from the Mosel valley or somewhere in heathen France. I updated about our last bottle of Rheingau riesling earlier in the blog and was unimpressed, but my mother managed to find a bottle of riesling from a vinyard only a few miles down the road from our village: Schloss Vollrads.

I am not normally a fan of sweet wines. I find that most rieslings taste either like honey or vinegar. This, however, is very tasty.

It has a faint, fall appley smell. It is a very sharp wine, light bodied and  almost feels like it's pinching your tongue. It tastes like apples that have been macerating in sugar. It is a very fall drink, it conjures up images of fires, blankets, and early snows. I am enjoying it.

This weekend should have been much more interesting in terms of bottles being opened. it was MetalChef's 21st birthday party, after all. I gave him a gift of the cinnamon-apple infusion (formerly the apple-botulism infusion) and we all had a bit of a taste. Wow it was good. I probably over-sweetened it, which is unfortunate 'cause I definitely don't have a record of how much simple syrup I actually used. The cinnamon aftertaste was strong, almost, but not quite, overpowering. I almost think I should have used a stronger tasting apple. I used a Fiji apple when I should have used Granny Smith. I hate eating Fiji apples though, while if there is a Granny Smith available I am probably already eating it.

Anyway, the big problem at that party was that I decided to layer a bottle of hard cider on top of questionable alfredo, which was itself layered on top of a knot of seething, unthinking rage. This is not a recipe for success, and I found myself quite unable to continue drinking after a bottle and a half of cider. What a shame.

On Saturday I had an overly sweet margarita sno-cone at the Greene Turtle in Ocean City with the Boyfriend after watching Zombieland, which was a surprisingly excellent movie.  There was an exceptional band playing there called Pompous Pie. They were not exceptional for their music, which was decent, rather for the volume at which it was played. For some reason the Greene Turtle on Rt. 611 feels that they need to provide music for the entire eastern shore, and turns up their speakers appropriately. I just want to have a terrible boat drink and chat, you bastards!

Germany vs Australia

There was sushi tonight! I love me some sushi. There was snapper, spicy tuna, fabulous ruby tuna, and yellowtail. Yellowtail is just about my favorite sushi fish ever, and luckily my father agrees.

With dinner we had a delicious Spy Valley Gewuerztraminer. Golden color, lightly floral nose, and fabulous fruit flavors. Tart up front. Sweet like new plums at the finish. I could drink that stuff all night. While the New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc from a few days ago was fair to middlin' (as Boyfriend would say), this was truely excellent. It also has a great lable, as you can see.

After dinner, Mom opened the above bottle of Peter Mertes Riesling. It was water clear, with a sour, sulfery scent to it. Not tart. Sour. Like old milk. It the same minerally aftertaste as the sulfer springs in Wiesbaden and Mainz. It was drinkable, much more so than I'm making it sound right now, but it was not all that great. I'd have had that sau blanc (I guess that's just going to be my median for wine) a thousand times over instead of this. The bottle was six years old, so it may have been better a few years ago.

I have also been meaning to mention my favorite bar here: The Rumor Mill, so I guess I should do it now. This place, located in Old Ellicott City behind Bean Hollow, has the friendliest bartenders and the best martinis I ever remember having (there was, after all, the martini bar in London where I blacked out before the first drink. Friends don't let friends drink whiskey during bar crawls). My favorite drink there has to be the key lime pie shot, which I must replicate at some point. Their big schtick is their in-house infusions, which are all excellent, especially the apple cinnamon one. They also have the best creme brulee I have ever tasted. Hands down.

Unfortunately, they are pricy. Worth it, but pricy. Since I am 22 and want to do such wacky things as go to Puerto Rico and have health insurance, I can only go there once every few months. If you're in the area and have money, head on that way.