This past Saturday we hosted a cocktail party for local friends and work associates in the area. It was a great success and everyone (I hope) had fun generally hanging out, eating food, and getting boozed up.
I've been thinking about drinking in relation to that event. The invitations we sent out had a blurb inviting people to bring their favorite mixers. I wasn't necessarily expecting people to show up with any more than beer or wine to donate to the bar and as such made sure we were stocked up with all your core liquours, fresh fruit and mixers, beer, and wine. Mostly when I work on planning the menu and buying lists for these things, I like to make sure that even in a potluck situation, if no one else brings things, everyone still has enough. It's industry thinking (restaurant/party planning I mean) -- having too much isn't that big of a deal, having not enough is where you lose signficient money and future contracts. But I digress.
I'm thinking about the ways people learn to drink. Specifically, how do people learn to drink hard liquors or mixed cocktails? Beer and even wine make more sense to me since I think those are things that Americans drink more casually and so a lot of people grew up with it in the house. But I'm not sure how many of my friends and associates regularly drink "harder" liquor (actually, think about it, I mean this statement more rhetorically since I know a fair number of people from the industry who have or have had alcohol issues almost always centering around high-proof liquors).
When I was in school, one of my clubs held an annual party called "around the world". Each person that lived in the club's house would put together a drink (either alcohol or no, sometimes offering a version of each) and the party would move from floor to floor sampling everyone's drink. Like most things in college, it was an excuse to get plastered and act silly and stupid, and generally it was pretty successful in those regards. I would say that I picked up a fair bit from that party every year, though the bulk of my alcohol knowledge came from working with bar tenders since my early teens. Later, I would go on to learn a lot more about rare, vintage, heritage, and micro-batched alcohols as well as new technical tricks for producing and serving them.
All that said, the forming of my likes and dislikes have been kind of erratic. I love wine and can drink it like water. That definitely comes from the french man I first worked with who would literally split a case of wine with me and others every night. I'm interested in beer but don't drink it regularly. I never really liked carbonated beverages, but living in the Pennsylvania region I was exposed to a giant slew of micro-brews and gained an appreciation of subtle craftsmanship that goes into their creation. I like Gin a lot and a Gin and Tonic is my goto drink at the bar. Of all the alcohols I've experienced, I think it has the most complexity such that different gins definitely taste different in the same way that different juices taste different. I have only a cursory appreciation of vodka in so far as I know the difference between Grey goose and Smernoff. Tequila is the same. So is Rum. I don't care for Whiskey. A lot of bad experiences with it have left my stomach in a poor disposition. So even though the history of it is neat and I appreciate that people care a lot about it and put time into it, I just can't drink it in any volume. After that, I'd say that I almost always want to try something new, especially if it's a kind of signature cocktail. I'm always kind of bummed to see martini menus that're like 12 bucks a glass and made with sweet, preserved, bottled junk like rose's and no real thought or trail to their production.
One more small observation. For the longest time I felt really intemidated at the bar. I think it's a combination of loud atmosphere, demanding, busy bartenders, and the hundreds of options available. Like it was some kind of secret code where people just automatically knew what to say or order without looking at a list and I was outside the hidden order. I'd say generally bar tenders are really awful at suggesting things unless you're in a place that cares a lot about developing new and interesting cocktails (which considering how many bars there are in the world, is the smallest fraction of a percent). Eventually I felt more comfortable by latching onto a drink I knew was always available and everyone knew how to make. By now, however, I'd really like to have new experiences and it's really difficult to get a bartender to cater outside of the 15-20 core cocktails that everyone orders. So again I feel uncomfortable.
So what about you? What do you like? What do you hate? Why? And where do those opinions come from? Is there anything special or weird that you gravitate to? Could you bar tend at a party if invited? Would you want to? What do you want to know more about but have been afraid to ask? |
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Nov. 30th, 2009 @ 11:59 am
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Does anyone know anything about Shelly Duvall and her children's stories? Considering the kids woot for an 18 month old niece. |
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Nov. 30th, 2009 @ 08:35 am
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I just did a google search about the dangers of swallowing glass.
I found this forum post. You need to read it. It'll cure your Moandays fo'shizzle.
<3 N |
Quick weekend update:
I've been fighting a cold for the last few days. My nose isn't shooting goo anymore, but I still feel tired and achy. Hopefully tomorrow I'll be back to healthy.
Thursday Em made a delicious thanksgiving day feast. Turkey and all the trimmings. We watched the Battlestar Galactica miniserie and worked our way through most of Eternal Darkness.
Yesterday we drove out into the wilderness and chopped down a Christmas Tree!!! Christmas Time is Now Time! Worked on holiday plans, decorating, and updating some resolutions.
This morning we went to a board game meet up in Euclid for a few hours. The Euclid library is huge and right next door to the world's largest Polka museum. (that might be a mistruth, but as far as I know, it's the world's largest). We played Oregon and For Sale!. Oregon felt very much like C-zone and Sale reminded me of the same strategy you use in Hearts. For those who don't know, I really don't care for Carcassonne. I like tile laying games in general, but there's too much in C-zone that feels like luck and gambling to me than real skill. I do appreciate how well it plays as a two player game, it's just not my cup of tea. Oregon had that same kind of short-term play-making verse long-term possible payoff choice. For Sale! was a card game that went really quick and had a surprising amount of depth. Imagine playing hearts, but instead of being dealt a hand, you use a bidding system to determine what cards you get. I don't tend to go in for card games, but I really liked it.
We cut out early so I could come home and take a nap. Em is working on some turkey enchiladas, while I'm looking for Christmas movies and generally decorating. It's an exciting time in the neighborhood. |
| » Warcrafting |
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I'm apparently really bad at Warcraft 3 and I can't figure out why.
In watching replays against the computer, I'm better at laddering up my builds, and I've gotten much better at creeping my heroes while micromanaging my town. Often times I have as many troops as my opponent, but with better tech. That should be enough to win. But in every army v. army conflict, I get thoroughly stomped. I can't figure out what I'm doing horribly wrong.
Suggestions?
Nov. 23rd, 2009 @ 10:27 am
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| » My closet threw up |
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In an effort to be more organized this year with financial records and important papers, I bought a file cabinet. I think pulled out our individual file boxes and the giant piles of "to-file" papers that had stacked up so high on the file boxes that they had slid off at least three times, creating geological iterations of well intended record-keeping. I also pulled all of the games out of the closet in order to transfer them to a very orderly and visible games bookcase just outside the same closet. A few weeks ago, when I was trying to pull out an individual board game, the entire stack tipped. Not in the Home Alone everything-falls-on-your-head-and-then-the-bowling-ball kind of way. That might have been a bit easier to deal with, though most likely more painful. It was that slow, horrifying tipping. The kind where you have plenty of time to realize what's about to happen, but not quite enough time to come up with a clever solution. Instead you just haphazardly flail your body parts around in and effort to catch (really just pin to the wall) various piles and combinations of stuff you deem valuable enough to risk the inevitable twisted leg or sprained wrist. By the time things stopped making crashing sounds, I was posed like a hindu god holding at least 4 separate piles of things trying to keep boxes from flipping open and hundreds (if not thousands) of little plastic soldiers, goblins, farmers, hobbits, electric plants, alien creatures, and six-sided dice from spilling out across the room like so much oil from a shipwrecked tankers. Emily meticulously removed each stack from my hand and we managed to salvage the species from the brink.
So I bought a file cabinet and moved the games. The problem is that now the entire office is covered in stacks of things. The closet looks nice. Roomy and perfect for filling with more stuff. But it looks like the rest of my afternoon will be devoted to reorganizing these stacks into something file cabinet shaped cut with interludes of remembering and briefly playing old games I forgot where in there. The good news is that I just found my old Gameboy Color. The kewi green one I bought exclusively to play Pokemon.
Nov. 19th, 2009 @ 01:52 pm
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