Grape Did It

Friday at Five: Ruffino Chianti

Yes, I cheated a little last night but I have two very good reasons. Instead of doing a cocktail, I just bought us the best Chianti I have ever had (at $9/bottle!) and we poured it into my new favorite wine glasses. This was the wine I brought to wine night last week and I was surprised at how, on a whim of, "huh, this bottle of Chianti looks good," smooth and easy to drink it was. Then, earlier this week, Bud's mom surprised us with some of the prettiest wine glasses I have ever beheld:

So, BEHOLD. The stems are long and delicate and just begged to be featured on a Friday. Plus, red glass tops? Oh Bonnie, you know me so well.

Which has me thinking, maybe I should expand my Happy Alcohol Fridays to simply, a good drink. Whether it be an inexpensive warm, red wine, or a cocktail that knocks you so far back you wake up wondering why you thought any of this was a good idea. Tell me something. How does this make you feel?

THAT'S WHAT I THOUGHT.

Bud commented the other day that all of my Google Ads (and do you love how it says Google Ads, Google Ads, Ads by Google? We get the fucking point GOOGLE.) generally have to do with alcohol. Which made me think - is my content that of a person too defined by drinks? Why yes, I think it is. And well, I'm not just a little proud.

I know this is kind of a shit picture, but I love that it says Italia and so, couldn't resist.

Visual

May in fact save your life

Yesterday, in a moment of ROAR CHOCOLATE ROAR, which is not normally me, I went to the kitchen and made homemade chocolate candies. They were A. very easy and B. good. So I will share below:

ME NEED CHOCOLATE, candies:
1 square baking chocolate
Somewhere in the neighborhood of 1/4 cup peanut butter
At least 1/4 cup brown or granulated sugar (to taste)
Small dash of milk

Melt this all together over medium heat, stir constantly so it doesn't burn, then put in dollops onto wax paper. Put in fridge for about an hour, peel off paper and cram into face.

Alternate ingredients that also help:
To above mixture, add shredded coconut and/or almond slices. Then follow the rest of the recipe.

If you are desperate, eat the batter.

What it might be like

Bud and I have never lived together while both working outside, full-time jobs. Back in Virginia he was in school while I worked, and then here in Alabama, well, you know the string of jobs I've tried in order to better define myself. They were both either part-time or from home and so we are used to the things that accompany one person at home. Namely the dogs usually have the run of the house and I can attend to their every need. That is important because what would I do without Copper dashing to the window in a mad attempt to save me from a video I just played online? The video had a dog howling in it and Copper raised his hackles and began to bark at our window. I had to shut down the video when Sadie joined in and now perhaps you can see why I need to be home. Or why I am slowly acting more and more like the old lady down the street who makes everyone plum jam at Christmas that they throw away because Good God, what'd you think she puts in that stuff?

Because I began temping last week our household finally got a feeling for how it might be, should we both work outside jobs. Which means I stand in the living room in my pajamas while Bud waits impatiently, hand on the door, for my instructions. Which I know makes me sound like a Type A bitch, and that is probably true, but it's not so much instructions I need him to follow as, VERBALIZING IS MY THERAPY. I cannot help it and at lunch one day when we were both home for a short time, I found myself repeating, "So, okay, I will go to the grocery store, you will come home and take the dogs out. I will meet you at the house as soon as I can get home with food for tomorrow's get together. Then we will go to your presentation. Then I will make our cocktails and then we will watch Lost and eat dinner. WAIT! When will I have time to cook dinner?"

Or breathe? I FORGOT TO SCHEDULE BREATHING.

Compromise, trying

"Here, you can have the remote."

"No, it's ok. I really don't mind the last couple of shows you've picked."

"No, really, here, get ready to catch."

"Okay."

"But...please don't change the channel, I like this show!"

How much would you have paid to be in on that performance?

Totally inappropriate on every level. I haven't felt my heart soar like this in a long time.

*Update, I fixed this link. It was just going to Jimmy Kimmel's homepage.

Like a fog lifting

This weekend, on looking back, reminds me of when in a movie the time sequence is sped up and then eventually becomes a blur. Wine night went off like a rocket that wakes up terribly hungover the next day, wondering why it felt the need to open that sixth bottle of wine. Because it was there, that's why. And we all NEEDED MORE. That, combined with Thursday's Mar-wherethehellamI-tinis left me a soggy, irritable puddle for much of the other two days.

One of the bright spots in the weekend though was that Bud and I finally made it to the Botanical Gardens. This was stupid for two reasons. 1. I might as well cave in to suburban motherhood as go to some gardens on a Sunday afternoon and 2. It is February. So, uh, what was I expecting? It is the south and so it was probably a lot prettier than, say, the Detroit Botanical Gardens and I can appreciate the small things. But mostly we walked by twigs. Twigs that no doubt are pretty in the spring. Still, it was a mild day and the greenhouses were nearly like a therapy. They are all warm and muggy on the insides, you can just feel your body relax. Like a mini-vacation, those houses.

Which leads me to this. I am done with posting ceramics, although I am tempted to go back and fill my cart with all of those objects I took pictures of. It is no longer enough that I have their pretty picture on record. I WANT TO OWN THEM. But will move on to garden pictures this week. And, for Georgia's sake, I will try to minimize the Up Close Flower Shots. All I can do is try though, a girl's only got so much self-control.

Wine night was fun, six bottles of fun

Friday at Five: Vodka Martini

I did the most classic drink I could think of (which required, rather than research, more like movie references), the martini. I have grown a bit tired of Creme de Cacao and was looking for something that showed off the alcohol, rather than coating it in sugar and then rolling it in powered sugar and then giving it a bath in honey. This? It did the trick. IT SO DID THE TRICK. Like an overachiever does a trick. I drank one and a half last night (and I am a big believer in making fun of people who do not finish their alcoholic drinks. What? You're going to waste good alcohol? It may be why people leave the bar without saying goodbye, I don't know for sure) and when the alarm went off this morning rather than simply suppressing the urge to yank it from the wall and throw it through the window, I had to suppress the urge to yank it from the wall and throw it at my own head.

Vodka Martini:
Vodka, a lot.
Vermouth, a little, I'm not even sure what the point of the vermouth is.
Shake over ice and strain into glasses, preferably with an olive. The olive is what saves your life.
I did vodka because, surprisingly, we are still working off of the bottle I bought over a week ago. We are moderate like that. Bud doesn't like olives and so asked for a cherry in his. I cannot imagine the flavor without the olive to cut through, but, you know, he's weird.
It's like the kids version of a martini although had I drunk this as a child, I would not have tried alcohol again. Ever. Forget drug education, just give those kids a martini. Here's mine, with a proper olive.
Lesson? Drink martinis as long as you are okay with being dead the next day.

A note on posting

As you may have noticed, posting has been light for the past couple of days. That is because, I GOT A JOB. For three days. But in case that PROFICIENT IN EXCEL gets me any other high powered jobs, I am going to figure out what time is best to write and post around having a job.