haresfur

The almond biscuits who's name I can't remember well enough to even find on Google are quite nice. And the Jaffa Cakes are very good but not quite as nice as LU Pims (aka PMS biscuits - not that that's a problem for me).

Does a Bacardi cocktail made with any rum other than Bacardi count? ETA: But I like Bacardi's bat label and their support for Bat Conservation International

I moved from a government contractor where, if you brought in a bottle of wine for someone who had performed a favor or a home brew for someone to try, you had to go out in the parking lot to make the transfer upon threat of termination. They did have an auditorium building that was privately owned and alcohol was allowed with very strict restrictions - especially on how it was paid for. At my current employment no one drinks during the week but my we have a Friday after work beer club where we rotate through different beers and rank them on taste and on 'wank' (a factor more or less related to the degree of pretentiousness of the bottle and label design and text). It is run mainly by the young computer wonkies and discussion of work is generally frowned upon, although jerking managers' chain is encouraged when they show up. The beer costs $3.00 (reasonable by Australian standards) and people drink at the most 2. At the end of the year profits went into personalized stubby holders and an evening of lawn bowling. If I were running a company I doubt I would provide free alcohol with no bartender - that's asking for a lawsuit from someone's next of kin. I think you could do as much or more for morale through a stock of fruit juice and power drinks (and a good espresso machine). I know my own productivity would go down with even one drink during the day but IMO societies tend to do better when moderate drinking is supported in the appropriate situations rather than developing a binge culture.

I like having Fee's orange bitters on hand to complement Regan's. The Fee's can be a nice way to add orange notes without adding sweet (or much bitter but frankly that doesn't bother me - they are what they are and I don't see any reason they need to conform to anyone's pre-conceived idea of how they area supposed to taste). Try 1/2 and 1/2 with Regan's, too. I think Dr. Cocktail had a hand in developing their Peach Bitters, but I haven't tried them. I could see how they would be fun to play with. I like the old fashioned bitters quite a bit and usually use them when Angostura is called for. Fee's are quite inexpensive compared to other brands so you might consider that either a reason to buy a variety to try or a reason to avoid them and spend the extra on the brands such as those made by others on this forum. And I think Fee deserves a medal for keeping the US in the bitters business through the long cocktail drought of the late 20th Century.

I saw on TV that Costco is planning on 9 stores in Australia including a couple in Brisbane and more Sidney Suburbs. I'm not sure if they were looking at more in Melbourne. The commentators were speculating on how this would affect Woolies and Coles. I can't see it having a huge impact on them but any increased competition would be good IMO.

Old Fashioned, Americano, Dark and Stormy

snip... "spatial effect" implies that the drink was composed with the aesthetic, sensory, side of beauty in mind as opposed to the symbolic, exemplary side and it was also composed using spatial intelligence instead of linguistic. snip... the divide between the symbolic and the aesthetic can also be used to explain most of the new cooking that is happening. what we call things like "molecular gastronomy" or "modern cuisine" could very usefully be called "aesthetic cuisine". this new cuisine can be undeniably delicious and beautiful, but is detached from traditional techniques (sometimes no longer economically viable) and "if it grows together, it goes together" juxtaposition. this new cooking is mostly powered by spatial thinking. hopefully i did the idea justice? Thanks. I had to read this a few times and let it simmer. I think I was with you up to the "molecular gastronomy" part. It seems to me that all that making food look like something else or have completely different texture from that we normally associate with the taste is much more symbolic than anything. I can see that the two aren't mutually exclusive but I would think that bacon flavoured bourbon is more about the (symbolic) surprise of the taste of breakfast in a glass than about the aesthetic that diner breakfast pairs well with with bourbon.

Just finished my dram following along Chris' lines: 375 ml Inner Circle Green 375 ml Captain Morgan Dark 50 g 1/2 c allspice berries, crushed 0.4 g 6 black pepper berries, crushed 1 g 10 cloves, crushed 14 g 2 cinnamon sticks, broken 7 g 1 nutmegs, crushed Infuse with Inner Circle for 1 week add Captain Morgan and infuse for 2 more weeks Strain through metal strainer and coffee filter. Add to simple syrup made with 300 ml water and 340 g raw sugar. Bottle. Now am sipping a Lion's Tail and pondering. There's a bit of a bitter taste in the tail that I'm not quite sure about. Maybe it's from the extra week I left the spices infusing. Still, I think I'm going to have fun with it.

The pierogi look great! I'll have to try to make some. I went to Polish friends for Boxing Day pierogi, fish and bigos. It was really a great meal.

Beat me to it, although I might have posted this in another thread. I was 7 years old, in a small town in Italy with my family. I got a heaping plate of mussels in a wonderful spicy sauce. The taste was amazing and only made better by my vegetable-hating brother ordering something on the advice of my father, which turned out to be cold green beans in olive oil. I'm not sure it was an epiphany as much as a start of a process but my parents did not like olives and had warned me away from them - in spite of our otherwise diverse eating habits. I finally tried a green olive and thought, "This tastes disgusting. But what an interesting disgusting taste!" From there I moved on to black and all the great varieties.

What's panama renegade rum like? Comparable to anything I might recognize? Oh, and what do you mean by "spatial effect"?

Sound's like a consistent order helps in becoming a regular, but isn't necessarily required. At the local coffee shop where I used to live, I learned that we were all much happier when I went to a consistent mocha order that was the same as my wife's (she went there more often). That way I could just say, "two please" if I was bringing her one. If there was someone new taking my order it was really hard, "Um, I'd like a pretty big mocha with 2 decaf and 1 caf and a little extra chocolate. Oh, yeah skim milk." To which they would reply, "Oh, E's drink". If I wanted iced, I'd have to announce it as I walked in the door before they started making it. The person working the drive-through would look down the line of cars and call out the names of the drivers so they could get the drinks started. The owner made a point of being open Thanksgiving and Christmas mornings so people could prepare themselves for the day.

I'm a bit confused on how much sugar to add. Gumbo Pages recipe uses 1.5 pounds per 2 1/4 cups 151 rum for a total liquid volume of 5 1/4 cups, Chris' above uses only 12 oz sugar per 3 cups (half overproof) for a total liquid volume of 4 1/2 cups. That seems like quite a difference.

I was bicycle camping in England one time and got a withering look when I asked for UHT milk. I had to guzzle the liter of fresh outside the shop but it was the best milk I have ever tasted. That being said, shelf stable milk is vastly superior to on-the-edge or over-the-edge "fresh" milk. I don't go through a lot of milk and even new containers of fresh milk, especially plastic can taste a bit off. The shelf stable milk lasts a long time in the fridge after opening. Most stores here have the eggs on the shelf. Perhaps this helps the difficult to peel hard-boiled egg problem. Fresh tofu is vastly superior to the shelf-stable packs if it is really fresh.

I moved from a glass top induction-radiant hybrid to a gas cook top where the burners are set into a glass plate. You still have to clean under the burners and probably the worst is trying to clean the stuff that gets way down inside. But the top is pretty easy. I think gas is less expensive than electric here but I prefer the electric. I seldom use more than 2 burners at a time so the radiant burners got little use. They actually had finer temperature control than the hybrid ones but didn't have the low end, which as mentioned above is as important as the high end temperature. The main problem with switching from induction is that I was in the habit of picking up spilled food bits with my fingers since the stove didn't get hot...

Macca's breakfast is my downfall. Other choices here are usually either quite expensive and/or serve pre-fabricated sandwiches with cold, dry, fried eggs. Recently they had a special that was similar to a bacon McMuffin but with more bacon, I think, and with Aussie tomato sauce that really went well. The current special is a Mighty McMuffin with double bacon and sausage. That's really a bit much. The McCafe mochas are drinkable although the machine at the food counter is pretty bad. They apparently have a policy that they won't fill people's reusable cups at the food counter but the Manager filled mine anyway. At some stores the McCafe is at the end of the food counter, but they are completely separate at others so my ritual is to eat the hash brown while it is still warm while waiting for coffee. Under no circumstances, unwrap the sandwich until the hash brown is consumed. The free WiFi is a rarity at other places, so they get my business when I travel.

Um, I think smoked salmon is one of the original shelf-stable products.

2 oz Wild Turkey Bourbon 1 oz Campbells Rutherglen Tokay 4 dashes Peychaud's bitters served on the rocks a lemon twist would have been nice Not bad. Sweet comes in many forms the trick seems to be to hit the right level and still getting the most out of the other flavour elements such as those found in this dessert wine.

Thought I'd take one for the team and try the New Esquire Cocktail which supposedly can be made with 1.5 of any spirit, 0.5 Aperol, 0.5 any liqueur, and 0.5 of any citrus. I used Inner Circle Red rum, Benedictine, and lemon. Hmmm, not one I'm going to make again, but I will finish it. I think gin, Cointreau, and lemon might be a better bet.

Looks like the fun is in pouring it. Invite some friends over, ply them with a few good drinks, then pull out the bottle and see how it works.

Well at least you don't have the bizarre non-sequitur, "It just isn't cricket without the Colonel."

Happy bay day to you. Sounds great, my bay tree is too small, but maybe in a few years... Thanks for the blog!

Fuzzy logic rice cookers are much better than the old style. Induction is IMO far superior to radiant electric in spite of the restriction in pots that work.

Is that the one where you take the chocolate wafers, smear each one with whip cream, stack them together on edge, coat with more whip, let sit until the the wafers are blissfully soft, and cut on the diagonal so you get zebra-stripes? A childhood favourite.

Kraft just introduced myfirst Vegemite. Formulated as a gateway drug for young children. It apparently has added vitamins B6 and B12, and half the salt of the original. I guess selling low salt food to adults is out of the question here. I bought a jar of MightyMite, because it has less salt than Vegemite, but I still think it is awfully salty. So maybe myfirst would be a suitable gateway for foreigners and transplants, too.