Grape Did It

Online chatting with my mother

Alison: Hey, what's your cocktail tomorrow?

Hope: Tricky, tricky, mom, but you don't get to know either.

Hope: You don't get any special privileges for simply giving birth to me!

Alison: Moms always get to know!

Hope: Patience, grasshopper.

Alison: HLV,B.

Alison: =hasta la vista, baby.

Alison: Maybe without the ",".

Hope: Yeah, maybe without.

Should keep in mind that I didn't go to cake school

Tomorrow Sarah comes to town and I think you all know what that means. Sadie will probably pee on the carpet. Which may just match the green puke from last night. At four in the morning I leapt out of bed only to wake up enough to realize Copper was at the bedroom door Hrrphing into the corner. I tried to drag his furry ass into the bathroom because if I'd ever realized how much carpet scrubbing I'd be doing as a dog owner I would have gone ahead and got a cat. What's clumpy kitty litter when it all just ends up in one big soup we like to call home? But no, I had removed Copper's collar before bed so that I wouldn't hear jinglejinglejinglejinglejingle EVERY time he had to scratch, which is really approximately every time I drift off, so I had nothing to snatch-and-drag with. I mopped up the mess with toilet paper and went back to sleep, it was all I could manage in that sleep deprived moment. Only to wake up this morning and realize his puke had been green and now the carpet is...tinted. Are you wondering why his puke was green? Because he EATS his toys. He doesn't chew, he INGESTS. And this one happened to be green.

So, ok, I was talking about Sarah and here I am on Copper's bodily functions again. Should I just go ahead and rename this blog Copper's Digestive Tract? Sarah and I plan on largely ignoring the dogs and getting out of the house and I think even the biggest pet lover can understand me on this one. I have been altogether too involved with my dogs these past few days and I think we all need a break, not least of all Green Puke Asshole, my new name for him.

Tomorrow we're both going to wine night and this weekend I promised Georgia I would start practicing for her wedding cake. I know. Please don't leave comments about how skeptical you are on me making a wedding cake, I am plenty skeptical myself. But I HAVE been watching lots of Ace of Cakes. So I think I'm ready.

Update

As some of you have requested, I've made a Daily Photo archive (to the left, above the About Me page). After going back and forth with Typepad, this is the only way I could figure out to do this. It does not yet, because I am not going all the way back to the beginning (I have drinks to drink), but will include captions in the future. Because it is kind of a clumsy page, I will probably only archive a week's worth of photos at a time. Right now it contains pictures from about two weeks back, forward. If you have a picture you liked in particular, and it has rotated out of the archive, email me and I will try to scrounge it out for you.

In other news! I will be cocktailing today, so keep an eye on your tv for Unruly Behavior in Birmingham, Alabama. As for how this drink's ingredients and name make me feel, I will go with Ski Lodge Cozy Sweater. With a dark twist.

Today's daily photo

I'm still trying to figure out how to add captions to my daily photo and when I say that I kind of mean I haven't really tried. So for now, daily photo captions will be here.

When I first saw this picture I kind of wanted to yell, "DOUCHEBAG!" out to Copper, seeing as his face is just that ridiculous, but then I realized I love him, and that would be mean.

I am a walking pumpkin pie

I am a little confused over what to do for cocktail night this week, for a couple of reasons. Number one, Bud is out of town and while I am not above drinking alone, it does seem a little sad. Yes folks, I pulled out the old hairbrush/microphone and did some one person karaoke! Secondly, I have plans Thursday night. I'll let that sink in a minute.

Ok. It's one of the groups I signed up for on the internet and yes, it does pain me to write those words, but it's a bunch of women who get together to drink wine so what's the worst that could happen? Wait, last time I used that phrase someone lost several thousand dollars, so let me re-phrase. It sounds like fun, it may not be. I may end up in a ditch somewhere with a cheap-wine hangover wondering did that night really just happen, or did I stumble into a Oliver Stone movie?

Aside from my terribly difficult dilemma this week, I do think I found the best cocktail recipe to date. Which wasn't hard because I am only up against two others. One of which, I will go ahead and admit now, was not a shining example of a cocktail. I have had ginger seeping out of my pores for nearly a week. I do stand by the fact that it tasted pretty good but, unless you regularly go to the pantry and pour ginger powder into your mouth, it might prove a little strong.

Maybe I will just spend all of tomorrow in research (or possibly arrested for disturbing my neighbors, either will do) and present my scientific findings Friday as planned.

Did not even eat breakfast this morning

I had to go to a lab this morning to have some tests run for our life insurance application. I know this is standard but I felt inexplicably competitive. Will we get the super preferred rate? Was it my haircut? Because if you know someone who does a good job LET ME KNOW. I kept asking the nurse what my blood pressure was? My heart rate - is that good? Can I buy you lunch? But I think she's had one too many people try to butter her up and, although friendly enough, did not want to chit chat.

Bud and I have been running some recently and along with too much wine, I have been eating LOTS of salads. I also don't smoke but was I supposed to tell her about that time behind the drug store in seventh grade? I just don't know. This stuff is confusing. Kind of like when my mom asked me what I wanted for dinner and I had something else on my mind, "I went to a boy-girl party! There were no parents!" SOMEONE SHUT ME UP.
 

Daily photo notes

This weekend (as evidenced below) we tortured Sadie by forcing her to interact. With. another. dog. CeCe is a grown puppy and so just wants to play. BADLY. She is right around Copper's size, though maybe still a few pounds lighter, with no concept of space or etiquette and it makes me want another puppy so much that I might just tuck her into my sweatshirt next time we all go out for a date at the farm.

The next few daily photos will likely be dog pictures because you cannot imagine the joy I got in watching Sadie snarl at CeCe every time she ran her over. The NERVE! Where is my cup of tea and warmed blanket?

Not friends

We took the dogs to the horse farm this morning, along with our friend and his new, very sweet dog CeCe. Maybe Sadie wasn't very well socialized as a puppy, or maybe she's just a bitch.

Friday at Five: A Furlong Too Late

I know, obscure, I'd never heard of it either. I got here because I wanted a drink that used rum (in order to build off last week's ingredients rather than buying a whole bar because of this section. Stocking a bar would be nice, though.). Finding a drink that uses rum and isn't chock full of sugar and fifteen extra ingredients is hard though. My goal, which is less of a goal and more of a personality defect: laziness, is to find simple but tasty drinks. I do not want to have to blend six ingredients together only to find that's what LINES the top of the glass, then the real drink mixing begins. I waded through daiquiris and all of those other island type drinks until I found this one.

A Furlong Too Late:
2 oz. light rum
4 oz. ginger beer
1 twist lemon peel

Simple, yes? Yeah but what the hell is ginger beer? And why were things so much cooler in the old days (beer that tastes like ginger)? I mean, I assumed I could substitute ginger ale (turns out you can) but, determined to mix an authentic drink, I looked up ginger beer. I read through the description but by the end I was almost more confused than before. Sounded like ginger ale was close enough, although ginger beer did used to include alcohol. No big deal, I'd just add a splash more rum, not like I wasn't going to already. But just IN CASE I was missing out on this ginger beer coolness, I bought some fresh ginger to shave into the drink:

Are you getting tired of the word GINGER yet? Let me warn you, if you have never tasted raw ginger root. It is spicy. NOT like pickled ginger on sushi.

I had the rum, I bought the ginger and lemon and then I remembered I hadn't picked up ginger ale. BEHOLD what I found at Target yesterday:

Turns out the past is alive and well. God bless retro.

Ok, so, I mixed the drinks last night and realized halfway through shaving the ginger (haha, now I'm doing it on purpose) that I have no idea how they make those cute curly cue lemon peels. Probably with a fancy piece of kitchen equipment that I have no intention of buying since I would only use it once every ten years because who has ever heard of A Furlong Too Late (and does that really qualify as a drink name? Sounds like some drunk kept repeating the phrase after losing his job, "I was JUST a furlong TOO late! And I got fired. Blarmey.") (Side note, Bud says furlong is a unit of measurement so it only sort of makes sense in this context in the first place. Those crazy Irish.)

This is how I solved the lemon curly cue problem:

Kind of turned out pretty, huh? I  surprised myself a little, there.

Reactions? The drink was good, I had two. With the ginger added AND authentic ginger beer it was very...gingery. Kind of spicy and strong, and not only because I splashed way too much rum in them. Bud had one and then politely asked if his next drink could be, say, with some lemonade or something because, much as he liked this new drink, it was a bit, um, ginger-heavy. I like ginger, as you may have guessed by now and I thought the drink was fun, but even with my ginger-love, I wouldn't drink it on a regular basis, or have more than one or two in a night. It's a niche drink.

I tried looking up the history of the drink itself, but couldn't find anything. I'm thinking my 1940's feeling comes from the fact that who the hell says furlong anymore?

Also, this is what you get for free when you frequent the liquor store too much:

Add some ketchup, maybe

Tonight is cocktail night and so we are prepping a bit around here. Bud is headed by the liquor store after work and I have to swing by and get a secret ingredient while I'm out today. Except for it's not really a secret ingredient, it's more a run-of-the-mill ingredient that will be revealed, probably blearily, tomorrow morning.

I did a small amount of research on this drink and though it is simple in the extreme, it makes me think about putting my hair in bobby pins and wearing chunky heels and very red lipstick. I don't know why so many things revert to the 1940's for me. The drink was probably invented two weeks ago by someone who sauntered to the fridge on a Friday night and thought, "what the hell, it's the only three ingredients I have."