Avoiding Swine Flu

To reduce risk of exposure to swine flu, the US Centers for Disease Control strongly recommend against doing this.


Getting close to a fake pig, however, poses no risk. (me in downtown Seattle, 2007)

A great trend in cocktails!

Interesting article in Forbes.com about a trend in mixed drinks / cocktails to start treating them more like fine dining and using fresh / local ingredients. Link to article here. The title of the article is a little misleading (it's called Cocktails go Green, but it doesn't really have anything to with environmental issues -- it's more just about fresh ingredients versus using typical pre-made mixes). The cocktail above is the "look better naked" margarita with acai and rosemary by a bartender in Chicago from a club called Nacional 27!

Fun weekend at my uncle's in Houston

Our family went over to Houston (Richmond, specifically), to visit my uncle / aunt Bill (I call him "Barton", my mom's brother) and Twila Day, their daughters Alexandra and Katrina, and my grandmother Marjorie. Barton took several family pictures for us. See above and below for a couple, or link to my flickr page to see them. We didn't get an overall family shot because Lauren was not in a good mood and was crying when we tried to take the group photo, but we got a couple of good ones of her apart from the family/group shot.



Also, I learned that Barton took up classical guitar as a new hobby a few months ago. He got himself a nice guitar, an Antonio Loriente (web site here), and has a very good teacher he's taking lessons from. I forget his name, but he's a virtuoso player from Iceland that lives in Houston and travels the world playing in various symphony and solo performances. While Barton's just getting started, I think he's doing really well for the amount of time he's been playing. It was very cool sitting in his living room listening to him play -- see photo below.


Lastly, I got a chance to make some good margaritas for Barton and Twila. I used some Herradura silver tequila and Cointreau ... very nice.

Musical Friday -- The Imperial March

It's pretty dark and raining outside, and I just got a paycheck deposited in my checking account that's half it's usual amount because of the unpaid time off we had to take. So I'm choosing a Musical Friday theme to suit. One of my favorite all-time classical-music / movie-music style songs, The Imperial March (Darth vader's theme) from Star Wars, by John Williams:

Thoughts from the Masters last week

Man, I was really disappointed at how the Masters turned out this year. Tiger never really could get it going in any of the first 3 rounds.

See highlights below. At the beginning of the final round on Sunday, it seemed like it might be one of the greatest final rounds in history. Phil Mickelson shot a 6-under 30 on the front nine and came back from -4, 7 shots back, to within one of the lead. His front nine included a wonderful shot on #7 where he had to hook his approach and almost holed out for eagle (about 4:20 on the video).



But it came apart for Phil when he splashed his tee shot on #12. After Tiger and Phil were out of it, I was then rooting for Keny Perry to win and become the oldest major champion ever. But, holding a two shot lead after his birdie on 16, he bogeyed 17 and 18 to fall into the playoff with Cabrera and Campbell. So Cabrera ended up surviving, sucking less than the others to win. He was probably the one guy I was least rooting for to win. Wasn't as bad as Phil and Monty's collapse at the '06 US Open, but a similar let-down.

Musical (Good) Friday

A really awesome web site (link here) I found with mashups of Youtube clips into a complete song. Below is a song called "The Mother of All Funk Chords"!

Champagne Cosmopolitan, Proud Mary

I've made a couple of new drinks lately that are pretty good. The first is simply my standard bloody mary recipe (see recipe in previous post for 20th Hole Bloody Mary), but simply reducing the amount of Red Eye bloody mary mix to just a couple of ounces, essentially making a smaller but stronger drink (ratio of vodka to mix is higher). I call it the "Proud Mary". A couple of those will certainly get you "rollin' on a river"!

The second drink is a new one that I really like, and plan to make for the next party I host. It's simply a mixture of a standard cosmopolitan and Champagne or sparkling wine. I thought about calling it a "Cham Wow", but I think that violates a copyright of something else! 8^) I think I'll stick with a Champagne Cosmo.

Note that real Champagne is from the Champagne region of France. While there are a few brands of real Champagne you can sometimes find for < $20, most real Champagne is > $40 a bottle and probably a little too nice to use for a mixed drink. So you can certainly use a good-tasting California sparkling wine or Italian Prosecco for this.

20th Hole Champagne Cosmopolitan (makes 2 drinks)
-- 4 oz vodka [I like Stolichnaya Citro (citrus-flavored vodka) for this, but any other good-quality unflavored vodka will also work well]
-- 2 oz Cointreau or Paula's Texas Orange
-- juice of 1 large lime, freeshly squeezed
-- Champagne, sparkling wine, or Italian Prosecco
-- 1-2 oz cranberry (or cran-raspberry) juice cocktail
-- 1-2 tbsp simple syrup, to taste
-- shaker filled with crushed ice
-- 2 large chilled martini glasses or champagne flutes

Add vodka, orange liqueur, lime juice, syrup, cranberry juice, and ice to shaker. Shake thoroughly to mix and chill. Strain into martini glasses or flutes, filling glass about halfway. Pour into glass the Champagne / sparkling wine to fill glass (you want about 1:1 ratio of cosmo to sparkling wine). Garnish with orange or lemon peel if desired.

Better check your Ozarka bottle before you leave for the day

Sigh. With the hard, poor-tasting water we have in Kyle, we use an Ozarka water delivery service where you flip over those 5-gallon bottles onto the dispenser. I put on a new bottle last Sunday morning, then we all left for the day. When we got back home after lunch at about 2 or 3pm, the bottle had emptied all over the floor. While it initially appeared that the water remained only in the kitchen area with the hard tile floor, we later noticed the laminate flooring in the living room starting to swell and bubble up in a few areas near the transition.

We ended up having to rip out a pretty large area of the flooring. The pad underneath was soaking wet over a pretty big area. Fortunately, Ozarka has a subcon insurance they keep for situations like this. So I don't think I'll end up with any out-of-pocket expense. I've got an appointment next week with a flooring installer to get a quote on the repair. Home Depot is checking to see if they still make this color of Pergo -- if they don't, the whole living room flooring will have to be replaced. See photos below. In first photo, note position of Ozarka bottle in upper left.