This recipe was half-created from a mythical world beverage that was once (and may periodically still be) available at EPCOT and half-created from a chilled version of a throat-soothing home remedy given me by the bassist of my former band Monte Carlo Method.
You'll need four green tea bags, honey, sugar, a bottle of Chinese plum wine, a bottle of coconut rum, water and ice. Hardware includes measuring implements, a tea kettle or appropriate saucepan, and a decent sized glass iced-tea pitcher.
First, how to make iced tea fast. In general, take your final vessel half-full with ice and water. If you intend on making 8 cups of tea, fill your pitcher with 8 cups of ice and water. This can be achieved by four times filling a two-cup measuring cup first with ice, then topping it off with water until the ice barely floats. Surprise! Two instant cups of ice water. Use twice as many tea bags per cup of boiling water, steep appropriately, sweeten and then add the hot double-strength, double-sweet tea to the ice water pitcher. The tea is cooled to roughly room temperature and may then be served over ice.
Using this formula to make the cooler, do the following.
Boil two cups of water, steep four green tea bags, adding two teaspoons of sugar and two teaspoons of honey (I use regional orange blossom honey). After steeping the tea, add to two cups of ice water in your pitcher. Add four cups of Chinese plum wine and one cup of coconut rum. Serve over ice.
Funny. It took longer to explain how to make sweet iced tea than it did to explain the cooler.
Beware, as with most tea, green tea contains caffeine. This is the reason I am awake at 12:45am writing a beverage blog.
Thursday, April 30, 2009
Sunday, April 12, 2009
Chilled Black Bean and Corn Salad
This is a recipe based on reverse-engineering one of my mother's recipes. It goes great with both Cuban, Mexican and faux-Island-style food. I made two pounds of beer-steamed shrimp yesterday and served them with this salad. It's quick and easy, and comes from cans for the most part.
Chilled Black Bean and Corn Salad
2 cans black beans
2 cans fiesta-style corn
2 cans Rotel mild diced tomatoes with lime juice and cilantro
half a chopped onion (or more.. or green onion if you prefer)
Use one-half cup of the dressing per the recipe above. The recipe for the dressing below does not come out to half a cup, so you may have some leftover. Whisk thoroughly to combine.
2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
4 tbsp basalmic vinegar
2 tbsp dijon mustard
1 tbsp cilantro paste (in the produce section!)
2 tbsp lime juice
garlic powder, salt and pepper to taste
To prepare the salad, drain all of the cans, put the contents into a collander and rinse thoroughly (this is very important!). Toss the ingredients into a big glass serving bowl, add dressing and chill in the fridge.
Chilled Black Bean and Corn Salad
2 cans black beans
2 cans fiesta-style corn
2 cans Rotel mild diced tomatoes with lime juice and cilantro
half a chopped onion (or more.. or green onion if you prefer)
Use one-half cup of the dressing per the recipe above. The recipe for the dressing below does not come out to half a cup, so you may have some leftover. Whisk thoroughly to combine.
2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
4 tbsp basalmic vinegar
2 tbsp dijon mustard
1 tbsp cilantro paste (in the produce section!)
2 tbsp lime juice
garlic powder, salt and pepper to taste
To prepare the salad, drain all of the cans, put the contents into a collander and rinse thoroughly (this is very important!). Toss the ingredients into a big glass serving bowl, add dressing and chill in the fridge.
In Praise of Bacon
What most people would call a "health nut," but I prefer to think of myself as simply "healthy." In fact, those people who call me a "health nut," I prefer to call "obese."
This blog isn't a rant and rave about weightloss and healthy eating, but I preface it with two things. One, you can't get healthy and in shape if you're eating garbage. Period. And two, if you're not healthy and in shape, there is a 90% chance that it is entirely related to you eating too much garbage. Don't try to argue it, I know at least two people that have shed 70lbs. in less than a year, and one of them was myself.
On a lighter note though, bacon. Bacon, like other recreational drugs, should be used in extreme moderation, but when used can be a very, very handy thing. In the last year or so, I've tried to keep a bit of bacon (whether in strip or slab form) in the fridge at all times in case there was a need for a special weekend breakfast. If you know what you're doing, it's pretty hard to mess up a good plate of bacon and eggs (add some salsa or pasta sauce and you've got an extra exotic offering that perpetuates the illusion that you went to culinary school).
I like bacon. I don't love bacon. I would be hard pressed to ever say "Gosh, this sandwich, pizza, salad or cake needs some bacon on it," and I'm not the kind of person that wakes up on Saturday morning and makes twelve slices of bacon with which to plop down in front of the television, but bacon has a two-fold purpose.
Flavor. This is self explanatory, and a little bacon (if its good quality) goes a long way for adding flavor to cooking. I don't think I need to go on much further.
In addition to flavor, the second wonderful side-effect of bacon is lubrication. Bacon yields up the second best natural lubricant that I've ever encountered. I've never had an omelet stick to a pan after cooking up some bacon. I've made maddening fried eggs with bacon grease, and cooking spinach in bacon grease is divine.
But what do you do with the grease when you're done? Pour it down the sink!? NO!!!
I make it a habit to save half of my bacon grease before I throw anything else in the pan by pouring the excess into a little plastic container I keep in the fridge. This leftover bacon grease can be used to grill up the best grilled cheese sandwiches you've ever had. (Serve with tomato soup, please).
Now you know why I like bacon. An oft over-indulged and misunderstood vice. Meanwhile, I've got to get outside and get some exercise to burn off this bacon.
This blog isn't a rant and rave about weightloss and healthy eating, but I preface it with two things. One, you can't get healthy and in shape if you're eating garbage. Period. And two, if you're not healthy and in shape, there is a 90% chance that it is entirely related to you eating too much garbage. Don't try to argue it, I know at least two people that have shed 70lbs. in less than a year, and one of them was myself.
On a lighter note though, bacon. Bacon, like other recreational drugs, should be used in extreme moderation, but when used can be a very, very handy thing. In the last year or so, I've tried to keep a bit of bacon (whether in strip or slab form) in the fridge at all times in case there was a need for a special weekend breakfast. If you know what you're doing, it's pretty hard to mess up a good plate of bacon and eggs (add some salsa or pasta sauce and you've got an extra exotic offering that perpetuates the illusion that you went to culinary school).
I like bacon. I don't love bacon. I would be hard pressed to ever say "Gosh, this sandwich, pizza, salad or cake needs some bacon on it," and I'm not the kind of person that wakes up on Saturday morning and makes twelve slices of bacon with which to plop down in front of the television, but bacon has a two-fold purpose.
Flavor. This is self explanatory, and a little bacon (if its good quality) goes a long way for adding flavor to cooking. I don't think I need to go on much further.
In addition to flavor, the second wonderful side-effect of bacon is lubrication. Bacon yields up the second best natural lubricant that I've ever encountered. I've never had an omelet stick to a pan after cooking up some bacon. I've made maddening fried eggs with bacon grease, and cooking spinach in bacon grease is divine.
But what do you do with the grease when you're done? Pour it down the sink!? NO!!!
I make it a habit to save half of my bacon grease before I throw anything else in the pan by pouring the excess into a little plastic container I keep in the fridge. This leftover bacon grease can be used to grill up the best grilled cheese sandwiches you've ever had. (Serve with tomato soup, please).
Now you know why I like bacon. An oft over-indulged and misunderstood vice. Meanwhile, I've got to get outside and get some exercise to burn off this bacon.
Friday, March 20, 2009
Marchgaritas
This will be a quick blog for my reference and be expanded later. What do you need to know beforehand? I'm making "presidente" margaritas with homemade orange-infused brandy, blue curacao and sweetened lime juice.
I've worked on this recipe for several weeks and finally came up with one that yields a pleasant, but challenging flavor, relatively pleasing color and a decent kick.
When serving this drink to small groups of guests (3 or fewer) the proportions are as follows:
4 parts tequila
2 parts orange brandy
2 parts bluecuracao
4 parts lime juice
3 parts simple syrup
I double the mixer portion when creating for larger groups. Not because I'm cheap and trying to save liquor, but because I don't need a bunch of rowdy people, drunk on tequila in my house. Mixer is so much more of a pain than dealing with liquor.
The large group recipe is roughly converted to English from metric (liquor bottles are metric/my drinking habit is English) for a 3 gallon quantity:
8 cups tequila
4 cups orange brandy
4 cups blue curacao
16 cups lime juice
16 cups simple syrup
I've worked on this recipe for several weeks and finally came up with one that yields a pleasant, but challenging flavor, relatively pleasing color and a decent kick.
When serving this drink to small groups of guests (3 or fewer) the proportions are as follows:
4 parts tequila
2 parts orange brandy
2 parts bluecuracao
4 parts lime juice
3 parts simple syrup
I double the mixer portion when creating for larger groups. Not because I'm cheap and trying to save liquor, but because I don't need a bunch of rowdy people, drunk on tequila in my house. Mixer is so much more of a pain than dealing with liquor.
The large group recipe is roughly converted to English from metric (liquor bottles are metric/my drinking habit is English) for a 3 gallon quantity:
8 cups tequila
4 cups orange brandy
4 cups blue curacao
16 cups lime juice
16 cups simple syrup
Saturday, March 7, 2009
Pizza Omelet
I'm a big fan of omelets. For the last eight months or so, every Saturday and Sunday morning, I make myself a healthy serving of French press coffee and an omelet. I figure this is an important life skill.
Here is the scenario: you find yourself at 10:30am the morning after a bender that started with some sort of Italian dinner. You're not entirely certain what you had for dinner or for drink, and if there is someone next to you in bed, you may or may not know her name. Hopefully, over breakfast, this is all information you can divine.
As a bit of an aside to the young ladies reading this. If a young man makes you breakfast in the morning, he's probably a keeper. Even a gentleman knows how to gracefully part ways with an undesired paramour in the morning before even a glass of water is offered, but breakfast is another story entirely.
To resume our story, in your possession is half a pack of pepperoni, a half dozen eggs, some random bits and pieces at the bottom of an otherwise empty jar of banana peppers, a nearly-gone bag of shredded (2% please) mozzarella cheese and some leftover marinara. There may have been either pizza, a strange baked pasta dish, or simply minestrone souper rice the night before, but you've got all the ammunition you need.
Pizza Omelet
--------------
2 eggs (beaten like a red-headed stepchild)
half a dozen pepperoni (diced up)
2 or 3 banana pepper rings (or more if you're like me)
handful of shredded mozzarella
handful of fresh (albeit leftover) baby spinach
In a small non-stick pan, crisp up the pepperoni and banana peppers and set aside. Make an omelet. Seriously. Do I have to tell you how to make an omelet? There are instructions somewhere on the web, and I'm sure Alton Brown and Emeril Lagasse would be more than happy to tell you the right way to do it.
At the end of it all, plate the omelet, add a drizzle of marinara, a dash of hot sauce and a splash of basalmic vinegar, serve with garlic toast and a bloody mary.
Here is the scenario: you find yourself at 10:30am the morning after a bender that started with some sort of Italian dinner. You're not entirely certain what you had for dinner or for drink, and if there is someone next to you in bed, you may or may not know her name. Hopefully, over breakfast, this is all information you can divine.
As a bit of an aside to the young ladies reading this. If a young man makes you breakfast in the morning, he's probably a keeper. Even a gentleman knows how to gracefully part ways with an undesired paramour in the morning before even a glass of water is offered, but breakfast is another story entirely.
To resume our story, in your possession is half a pack of pepperoni, a half dozen eggs, some random bits and pieces at the bottom of an otherwise empty jar of banana peppers, a nearly-gone bag of shredded (2% please) mozzarella cheese and some leftover marinara. There may have been either pizza, a strange baked pasta dish, or simply minestrone souper rice the night before, but you've got all the ammunition you need.
Pizza Omelet
--------------
2 eggs (beaten like a red-headed stepchild)
half a dozen pepperoni (diced up)
2 or 3 banana pepper rings (or more if you're like me)
handful of shredded mozzarella
handful of fresh (albeit leftover) baby spinach
In a small non-stick pan, crisp up the pepperoni and banana peppers and set aside. Make an omelet. Seriously. Do I have to tell you how to make an omelet? There are instructions somewhere on the web, and I'm sure Alton Brown and Emeril Lagasse would be more than happy to tell you the right way to do it.
At the end of it all, plate the omelet, add a drizzle of marinara, a dash of hot sauce and a splash of basalmic vinegar, serve with garlic toast and a bloody mary.
Saturday, January 10, 2009
On Losing Gracefully
It may not seem to be common amongst the gentry to lose at anything, but I'm a firm believer that everyone either loses at something or fails to attempt to ever win at anything. Those who appear to be winning all the time are doing one of two things.
A) Not accepting any challenge that they are not confident they can succeed at
or
B) Losing gracefully.
I love billiards. I'm not good at it even remotely, but I bought a pool table last weekend because I enjoy it so much. My friends may even say I'm a decent player, or that I've won a game or two against them, but that would be a little bit more than somewhat innaccurate.
Everyone is well aware in the game of eight-ball that scratching on the eight ball or sinking the eight ball out of turn constitues loss. While I'm not at all unfamiliar with being on the perpetrating end of such losses, I've more often than not been on the receiving end of victories based on these rules.
That is to say, the only games of eight-ball I can really recall winning involved someone else fucking up.
I won my first legitimate game of eight-ball against my roommate last week. I believe I may or may not have won a second game, but there was alot of Canadian Club involved in the equation and my memory is fuzzy beyond the point that I recall crying out "That was the first game of eight ball that I've ever won legitimately!"
I much prefer nine-ball, or (when paying per rack) six-ball because you can always clean up and win after your opponent has done the rest of the work for you previously.
I say all this to say that losing gracefully involves more than just being a good sport and not a sore loser. We learn all of this in kindergarten, and it still astounds me to this day how many grown adults act like children when confronted with both victory and loss. It's not even about "getting back on that horse."
The most important thing about losing gracefully is learning how to lose. Learning how to "give it the old college try," and standing up to challenges that seem ridiculously difficult.
Another good example of this occurred during the purchase of my pool table. My roommate, Lance, and I went to Sports Authority (I usually don't name names, but the salespeople went above and beyond the call of duty delivering my pool table. That is another story entirely).
Whilst waiting for the sales associate to check if the pool table I wanted was in stock, Lance and I wandered over to the weights section of the store. Mind you, there's a bench press in my garage and I see no further need of weights beyond my 25lb. hand-weights; I can bust out 35 military-grade push-ups (albeit on my knuckles.. personal preference) in one set and can do crunches until I lose track of what number I was on, but I was curious about getting a pull-up bar.
It's good to balance any workout, and pull-ups (at least to me) seem to be the antithesis of push-ups. I grabbed a pull-up bar and found that, despite my proficiency at push-ups, I could only do one. Lamenting this, I exclaimed, "Well, I guess I should wait on buying that pull-up bar."
It was then that Lance said something profound. I've forgotten the exact wording, but the meaning was profound enough for me to absolutely butcher the syntax and still deliver a decent bit of advice:
To do pull-ups, you only need to be able to do one pull-up. After you can do one pull-up, you can do pull-ups. It may take weeks and weeks of trying, but eventually you'll do two or maybe three. There's no reason to not do pull-ups simply because you can only do one.
The advice could be taken further and more deeply into abstract warm-fuzzies to say that if you can only do one pull-up, you should make it the best pull-up you can do, but that goes without saying. Everything you do should ALWAYS be the best you can do, otherwise you're just half-assing it and wasting your own time and energy.
The second most important thing about losing is to not advertise it. I'm not telling you to deny that you've ever lost, but simply don't announce it to the world. This is somewhat analogous to the school-yard advice to not be a sore loser, but it takes it a step further. I was taught long ago, that when you miss a note while playing in a band, don't make a face or apologize. It may be that no one noticed in the first place; if you make a face, everyone will realize that you screwed up.
Competitive point-sparring is a good example of this. It is incredibly subjective and largely arbitrary in the three- and five-point style rounds, but when struck by an opponent, one should NOT stop fighting until the judges call "break" or "yame." If you continue fighting even after struck, there is a chance that you could land an even more visible point on your opponent; this gives some likelihood that the judges will not notice your opponent's point and award you the point instead. If you DO stop fighting immediately upon your opponent landing a point, it is incredibly likely that the judges will award your opponent the point, even if they didn't actually see the point land. You essentially admitted defeat when it may or may not have been necessary.
To bookend this with my billiard story. Most of my friends, (save the ones that have repeatedly seen me jump the cue ball off the table) don't realize how truly awful I am at the game. Simply because I never turn down a challenge, I enjoy the game whether I win or lose, and I make sure they drink heavily so they will have little memory the next day of my astounding defeat.
To summarize: lose, lose early, lose often and get used to losing. It will make winning occasionally that much more enjoyable.
A) Not accepting any challenge that they are not confident they can succeed at
or
B) Losing gracefully.
I love billiards. I'm not good at it even remotely, but I bought a pool table last weekend because I enjoy it so much. My friends may even say I'm a decent player, or that I've won a game or two against them, but that would be a little bit more than somewhat innaccurate.
Everyone is well aware in the game of eight-ball that scratching on the eight ball or sinking the eight ball out of turn constitues loss. While I'm not at all unfamiliar with being on the perpetrating end of such losses, I've more often than not been on the receiving end of victories based on these rules.
That is to say, the only games of eight-ball I can really recall winning involved someone else fucking up.
I won my first legitimate game of eight-ball against my roommate last week. I believe I may or may not have won a second game, but there was alot of Canadian Club involved in the equation and my memory is fuzzy beyond the point that I recall crying out "That was the first game of eight ball that I've ever won legitimately!"
I much prefer nine-ball, or (when paying per rack) six-ball because you can always clean up and win after your opponent has done the rest of the work for you previously.
I say all this to say that losing gracefully involves more than just being a good sport and not a sore loser. We learn all of this in kindergarten, and it still astounds me to this day how many grown adults act like children when confronted with both victory and loss. It's not even about "getting back on that horse."
The most important thing about losing gracefully is learning how to lose. Learning how to "give it the old college try," and standing up to challenges that seem ridiculously difficult.
Another good example of this occurred during the purchase of my pool table. My roommate, Lance, and I went to Sports Authority (I usually don't name names, but the salespeople went above and beyond the call of duty delivering my pool table. That is another story entirely).
Whilst waiting for the sales associate to check if the pool table I wanted was in stock, Lance and I wandered over to the weights section of the store. Mind you, there's a bench press in my garage and I see no further need of weights beyond my 25lb. hand-weights; I can bust out 35 military-grade push-ups (albeit on my knuckles.. personal preference) in one set and can do crunches until I lose track of what number I was on, but I was curious about getting a pull-up bar.
It's good to balance any workout, and pull-ups (at least to me) seem to be the antithesis of push-ups. I grabbed a pull-up bar and found that, despite my proficiency at push-ups, I could only do one. Lamenting this, I exclaimed, "Well, I guess I should wait on buying that pull-up bar."
It was then that Lance said something profound. I've forgotten the exact wording, but the meaning was profound enough for me to absolutely butcher the syntax and still deliver a decent bit of advice:
To do pull-ups, you only need to be able to do one pull-up. After you can do one pull-up, you can do pull-ups. It may take weeks and weeks of trying, but eventually you'll do two or maybe three. There's no reason to not do pull-ups simply because you can only do one.
The advice could be taken further and more deeply into abstract warm-fuzzies to say that if you can only do one pull-up, you should make it the best pull-up you can do, but that goes without saying. Everything you do should ALWAYS be the best you can do, otherwise you're just half-assing it and wasting your own time and energy.
The second most important thing about losing is to not advertise it. I'm not telling you to deny that you've ever lost, but simply don't announce it to the world. This is somewhat analogous to the school-yard advice to not be a sore loser, but it takes it a step further. I was taught long ago, that when you miss a note while playing in a band, don't make a face or apologize. It may be that no one noticed in the first place; if you make a face, everyone will realize that you screwed up.
Competitive point-sparring is a good example of this. It is incredibly subjective and largely arbitrary in the three- and five-point style rounds, but when struck by an opponent, one should NOT stop fighting until the judges call "break" or "yame." If you continue fighting even after struck, there is a chance that you could land an even more visible point on your opponent; this gives some likelihood that the judges will not notice your opponent's point and award you the point instead. If you DO stop fighting immediately upon your opponent landing a point, it is incredibly likely that the judges will award your opponent the point, even if they didn't actually see the point land. You essentially admitted defeat when it may or may not have been necessary.
To bookend this with my billiard story. Most of my friends, (save the ones that have repeatedly seen me jump the cue ball off the table) don't realize how truly awful I am at the game. Simply because I never turn down a challenge, I enjoy the game whether I win or lose, and I make sure they drink heavily so they will have little memory the next day of my astounding defeat.
To summarize: lose, lose early, lose often and get used to losing. It will make winning occasionally that much more enjoyable.
Sunday, January 4, 2009
Stache's Greens
It's a new year, and it was instilled in me as a young southern gentleman that it is important to ingest several key substances between midnight on New Year's Eve and midnight on New Year's Day (aside from massive quantities of Champagne or sparkling wine). Two of these important edibles are greens and black-eyed peas.
A traditional southern New Year's Day dinner/supper consists of ham, black-eyed peas and greens cooked with hog jowl. In this region, the latter is pronounced so as to rhyme with "y'all" and not "towel." My recipe for greens follows:
1/4lb. hog jowl or a half dozen nice thick slices
2 - 3 slices of thick pepper bacon
2 12oz. bottles of beer (lager, not ale)
1lb. of greens (turnip, collard, mustard... your choice)
3 tbsp pepper vinegar (homemade is best)
2 tbsp red pepper flakes
2 tbsp garlic powder
salt and pepper to taste
The most important thing about greens is to wash them thoroughly. Tear the greens into slightly-larger-than-bite-sized pieces. Greens of all sorts wilt when cooking.
In the bottom of a big enamel pot, cook the bacon and hog jowl until they have given up their grease and are nice and crispy. Deglaze using the two beers, and add the spices and pepper vinegar. Once the "pot liquor" has come to a gentle boil, add the greens, put a lid on it and cut the heat back to medium low. Simmer for 45 minutes or so.
A traditional southern New Year's Day dinner/supper consists of ham, black-eyed peas and greens cooked with hog jowl. In this region, the latter is pronounced so as to rhyme with "y'all" and not "towel." My recipe for greens follows:
1/4lb. hog jowl or a half dozen nice thick slices
2 - 3 slices of thick pepper bacon
2 12oz. bottles of beer (lager, not ale)
1lb. of greens (turnip, collard, mustard... your choice)
3 tbsp pepper vinegar (homemade is best)
2 tbsp red pepper flakes
2 tbsp garlic powder
salt and pepper to taste
The most important thing about greens is to wash them thoroughly. Tear the greens into slightly-larger-than-bite-sized pieces. Greens of all sorts wilt when cooking.
In the bottom of a big enamel pot, cook the bacon and hog jowl until they have given up their grease and are nice and crispy. Deglaze using the two beers, and add the spices and pepper vinegar. Once the "pot liquor" has come to a gentle boil, add the greens, put a lid on it and cut the heat back to medium low. Simmer for 45 minutes or so.
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