How Much?

Yes, how much booze do I need? 


We can stop pacing and wondering, because I have GREAT NEWS! On page 176 of The Guide (which I’ve come to think of as “My Guide”, sung to the tune of “My Guy”) is a reference table, and I have to say a spreadsheet has never spoken to me the way this one did. Charts and graphs usually leave me pretty cold, but not this one, which is a 1935 style spreadsheet “for determining approximately how many bottles you may need for various occasions.” Turns out that the recommended number of cocktails before dinner is between 2 ½ and 4!! Per person!! AND, it is recommended that to be extra safe, substitute quarts for fifths! I couldn’t have said it better. For the novice, a fifth refers to 4/5 of a quart so, in short, always have more, more, more!!

It’s another story for a buffet, where we are told to plan 2 cocktails, 2 glasses of wine, 1 liqueur, and 2 highballs, again, per person. I can’t stop smiling even writing this. The news is just too good. Wanna come to my house for a buffet? Yes, I thought you would!

Several years ago I brought Sangria to a Christmas pot luck dinner for about 15 people. People. I’d found a recipe on Epicurious that said it would serve 100. Once I managed to get up off the floor from laughing, I began to imagine -- one hundred what? One hundred who? Certainly not the people in our crowd, who managed to finish it over the course of the evening. Check it out yourself, epicurious.com, Sangria for 100. And then stick with me.

The Swizzle Stick

I can’t believe it happened again. It’s apparently happened enough times to enough people that some yonko made a pithy statement that people now quote, something about how lots of people have great ideas, but only great people bring them to life. Blah blah blah. What an idiot.


So there I was walking back from the mailbox with the New Yorker in my hot little hand, not even waiting to get to the house before I start reading (first the cartoon contest on the back page, then the table of contents) and WTF, scooped by Malcolm Gladwell. Malcolm Gladwell. Why couldn’t it have been by someone like Christopher Buckley? But noooo… It turns out that Malcolm has been researching alcohol consumption. Yeah, but did he actually mix a drink in the process?

So that’s bad, but it gets worse. The very next day, I peruse a copy of More magazine, you know, the one for women of style and substance, and what do you know? Scooped again. There’s an article entitled “Does This Drink Make Me Look Old?”, and it’s about updating your cocktail so as not to look dated by drinking a Cosmopolitan. You want to see dated? Watch me whip out a Manhattan. The article has recipes and photos, though, so it’s not totally useless. I’ve been tossing and turning, wondering if the article was about style, or substance? Substance, or style?

I’d better get on the stick (the swizzle stick, that is) and get back to work. By the end of this I may have even learned to love the Bloody Mary, breakfast of champions everywhere (or would that make me look old?)

Off the wagon

Oh no, I keep falling off the wagon and not drinking! 

I do have a great vegan success story, though.  The other day, while wandering through the newest HEB (that's Texan for grocery store, monopoly that it is), strolling through the bins and running my fingers through the various dried beans (everyone just loves to see me do that), the very dark red aduki beans got me thinking ... about a roast.  Before I knew it I was rubbing down  beef with pepper and herbs and searing it in olive oil; several hours later we sat down to pot roast and potatoes in rich gravy, and a gorgeous array of roasted root vegetables -- beets, turnips, onions, carrots, all beautifully carmelized, fresh bread and butter  ... give me a moment, I think I need a cigarette ...

Where was I?  Oh yes, the vegan part.  Since part of my motivation for going vegan is environmental (what did you think?), one of the sub-texts in this blog will be the various ways that I am also going green.  Just today I read the ingredients on the hair spray I use and thought "Hmm.  This might have to go."  But I wander.  The vegan/green success story is that the roast was packaged in ... get ready ... a bio-degradable tray!!!  You can imagine, I practically skipped to the check-out line, feeling smug and just  a  little  bit  superior. 

Now, though, it is happy hour, and I have work to do.  Love you all. 

We've come a long way since the Bartender's Guide was first published, and there are variations on martinis that weren't even imaginable in 1935, or whenever.  They didn't know about garlic stuffed olives, and certainly not jalapeno stuffed, the point being that I'm going to spend a looooooong time on martinis, visiting and probably revisiting the many options.  Oh yes. 

Now, about the vegan part of this blog.  I was doing pretty well today until the salmon, which is definitely flesh.  And Rone' is right, I get almost giddy around roast chicken, especially when it's roasted a la julia.  Still, at the grocery store today I managed to stop short of buying a bird, settling for a quick fondle.  Turns out that a fryer feels exactly the same as a roaster,  blindfolded (the feeler, not the bird).   Whooooo's mixing?

Actually from February 5

Last night’s pasta y fagioli, with a sprinkling of freshly grated hard Italian cheese: not vegan. The accompanying salad of mixed greens and a light buttermilk dressing: also guilty. Actually, one can’t get through The Guide without breaking a few eggs for a gin fizz, and then there’s the whole nog category, not to mention the white Russians. I recall a saner-than-average vegan saying that the ideal diet is to aspire to be vegan, but to occasionally fail. (Lest anyone be wondering, yes, I am free to judge sanity, as this is my blog post). She was referring to the difficulty of getting absolutely all essential nutrients with a strictly vegan diet, but I’m referring to more basic needs here: fermentation and fun. So, I’ll aspire to go vegan, but I’m afraid I’m going to be caught not aspriring very hard.


There’s a good chance there won’t be much touring through The Guide very much in the next few days, given that I’ll be in Eugene with Chloe. Eugene is a good place to be vegan, though, with all those crunchy, organic, granola types.  We shall see. 

Ready or Not

Just two days ago I ran an idea by some friends, the good kind, and they responded the way good friends are wont to do:  we love it! 

Well, no wonder.  Who wouldn't want to drink their way through The Bartender's Guide while becoming a vegan and blog about it?  Correction -- who wouldn't want to watch someone else to do it? 

Thing is, eating and drinking are social activities, so like it or not my friends will be coming along for the ride.  However much I relate to the line in George Thorogood's song ("when I drink alone, I prefer to be by myself"), we're in this together. 
 
So, today begins the project, beginning with the Abbey. It's so obviously the right way to start, with all the stars in alignment around it.  It's the first drink in The Guide, but that's not all -- when I went to a web-site to learn about how to become a vegan (I couldn't just DO it, I had to read about it first), there was Paul McCartney's video, his face oh so soulful, him telling me to just stop eating meat. So THAT's how you become a vegan!! Glad I read up on it. I haven't been much of a fan of Paul's since 1963, but I am a fan of Abbey Road, and there you have it.  I can find cosmic justification for anything, anywhere. Stick with me.


Along with the days' other errands, I'll be adding a stop at the local package store for gin and orange bitters. The Abbey contains orange juice, and if I hustle I can sneak it in before noon and call it breakfast!

So that didn't happen.  It didn't actually get mixed until four o'clock, but the motto for this project will be "it's always breakfast somewhere!"  The verdict?  A good English gin (Plymouth), sorry ass Orange Bitters (in a plastic squeeze bottle?), a splash of orange juice, and a marachino cherry made for a perfectly nice cocktail for getting out of the gate.  A side of Pepperidge Farm Mint Milano cookies wasn't the perfect accompaniment (they'd be the Orange Milanos ideally), but it sufficed. 

I've not had a bit of animal product all day -- when do I get to call myself a vegan?  Whoops, forgot about the half and half in the morning coffee.  Damn. The vegan thing is going to be harder than the drinking thing, I'm thinking.

I've got a problem with marachino cherries that I'm going to have to come to terms with (they seem to figure prominently in drinks from a certain era -- mine).  Might as well start wrestling those demons early.  Years ago, beginning when I was about ten, I was the mixologist in our house, and Manhattans were the cocktail of choice.  Mom and Dad would have several Manhattans, and each drink would have its own cherry.  Gradually, they started keeping the same cherry through the cocktail hour, not such a bad idea, but by the time I was in my twenties they'd started putting the cherry back in the jar and re-using it -- night after night, until it became blanched and ragged, at which point they'd start with a fresh one.  The other day my therapist told me that life at my house sounded depressing, and I hadn't even told her the cherry story.  So, for me, it's cherries unlimited, all you want, any time.  Like I said, stick with me.