The Lord is Risen! Now Let's Drink! Hallelujah!

Easter was... epic this year. Truly epic. It was a feast of gigantic proportions, and I am larger for it. Our menu was as follows:

Chili sambal shrimp, made by The Boyfriend
Jalepeno Popper Dip, made by The Smalls
Raw Oysters, served by Dad, The Boyfriend, and Mr. Small
Grilled Foie Gras, made by Dad and Mr. B
Antipasta Salad, made by The Smalls
Grilled/Smoked lamb, Small Potatoes, and Asparagus with Hollandaise, made by Dad
Cheeses selected by Me
Irish Cake Bombs, made by Me.

Oh god. So much food. The Boyfriend is a mighty fine cook, which is part of why I like him so much. Unfortunately, he also has the tendency to say things like "Hey, you know what would taste great with this? CAIPIRINHAS."

A capirinha is a wonderfully refreshing drink made with cachacas, a sort of un-clarified sugarcane rum from Brazil. The recipe on the back of the bottle calls for using raw sugar, but we substituted simple syrup, because we didn't want to spill a crapton of sugar all over the floor. Our recipe was as follows

3-4 pieces of lime
1 measure cachaca
simple syrup
lime wedge garnish
sugarcane juice (optional)

Muddle the lime in a lowball glass. Fill with ice. Add cachaca and syrup. If using it, splash a bit of sugarcane juice in. Stir. Taste. Decide it's too strong and squeeze your garnish into it. Realize that you can no longer taste the alcohol. Drink three. Make a bad decision.

You don't *need* the sugarcane juice, which really just tastes like sweetened hearts of palm, but it adds a really nice green aroma to the drink that makes it especially nice on a hot day. I'd caution against using more than a splash, though, as you want the cachaca flavor to come through too.

After a caipirinha, I had a glass of sparkling Merlot. You heard me right. The Pugliese Vinyards 2003 Sparkling Merlot, hailing from the North Fork of Long Island. It is a deep purple-red sparkling wine, that fizzed up in a way that reminded me of that scene in Fantasia where Bacchus visits the centaurs and gets everyone drunk and wine gets sloshed about pinkly. It was actually pretty good, very different. Sparkling wine is such a pleasure, and when you get something that weird that tastes that good, you've just got to go for it. I recommend it highly.

There were other wines, but I found that after a few handfulls of shrimp, a dozen oysters, a caipirinha and a few flutes of sparkling wine that I could not recall much about any of them. In all honesty though, the rum drinks and sparkling Merlot were the highlights of the alcoholic reverie. I cannot recommend these enough. Seriously, go out and get yourself some cachaca and some limes and make yourself one of these, because it's The Best.

Cookies, wine, and Top Gear!

Oh, what a lovely evening!

It's been snowing steadily all day, leaving us with somewhere between five and six inches of the white stuff. On the Eastern Shore where the Boyfriend lives they got around eight inches, which is huge for that part of the state.

The results are in for my wine vs. beer. From my Real Life friends the vote was pretty solidly Beer, except for CollegeMinx who voted for wine on its alcohol content. On the other hand, the delightful folks at the Google coffee shop forum nearly unanimously voted for hard liquor, ranging from vodka belly shots to a G&T. Two votes for wine came in and one for beer... bringing the Wine vs Beer ratio to... 4 votes each (including my own for wine.) Clearly, I am a less competant shit-stirrer than I had previously thought. I really ought to have phrased things better. Perhaps I will try again in a few months.

Mmmmm cookies. I'm drinking a glass of Columbia Crest Horse Heaven Hills Merlot (C2H3M) while they are in the oven, filling the house with their delightful aroma of chocolate and sugar. It's not a good cookie wine, being dry and heavy and full of fruits. I'm getting red delicious apples out of this one, which is strange because I love this wine and I hate red delicious apples (they are not delicious at all).

The B's are coming over with chinese food, and have actually just walked in the door! Time to drink unwise amounts of wine and eat large quantities of MSG!

Punkin' Chunkin'!

First, yesterday was a good wine day. I got to try two merlots at the restaurant. One was a decent, aromatic, medium bodied and had a good taste of dried fruit. I can't quite recall which one that was. The other was a Kendall-Jackson grand reserve merlot, and it was fantastic. It was the kind of wine that you *could* drink with a meal, but it would almost detract from how tasty the wine was. I thought about trying to get various flavors and scents from it, but I was too busy enjoying the experience.

I also liberated a half bottle of Entrada sauvignon blanc from a party of pharmaceutical people. Lucky them. I might even bring it back to the restaurant. It smells like sugared pears and tastes like sugared pears steeped in vinager. Thank you very much, Argentina, but I'll stick with your malbecs.

Speaking of malbecs, I also had a lovely glass of Terrazas malbec at the Boyfriends house. He and I first had this wine at Fogo de Chao, which is basically a fat kid's paradise. Made of meat. He fell in love with its spiciness and full body, and buys it whenever he thinks he may be cooking red meat. It really is a lovely wine, especially with lamb.

In other news, today I went to the Punkin' Chunkin, which is basically an engineering frat party. The idea is to build absurdly powerful machines to fling pumpkins up to 5,000 feet. There are centrifuges, air cannons, catapaults, and trebuchets. My favorites are the air cannons, which get the best distance and look the most impressive. My god, the Old Glory and the Young Glory III had hundred foot barrals! The best named air cannon was probably the Second Amendment Too, which also had a rediculous barral.

Possibly the greatest thing about the punkin chunkin is the bizarre mix of people. You have the engineering clubs who build the machines (or, in the case of one group, genetically engineer pumpkins to go farther), the Harley riders who help sponsor the event, fratboys who just want the excuse for a tailgate party, and D&D nerds who are jealous of the useful skills that the engineering nerds are displaying. I know I saw at least one gang member there, and Boyfriend claims to have spotted several undergound biker gang signs. It was a surprising group, but it reveals a universal truth: nothing brings people together like the promise of artillery.

Sadly, the event was BYOB, and Boyfriend and I did not realize this, so we went drinkless for the entire event. No matter, for now we have both consumed a bottle of Blue Moon, and he is napping on the couch while I type. It is a good day.