What Animal Is Joe Eating?

This is my blog, where I write about what I’m eating, drinking and watching

My Wife’s Favorite Drink

Posted: 8/12/2008

Here’s a variation on a drink called Dutch Breakfast.

½ shot Irish Cream
½ shot Galliano
½ shot gin (use a good gin, like Hendrick’s)
½ shot simple syrup
juice of half a lime
juice of half a lemon

Fill a shaker halfway with ice and shake. Fill a tall glass with ice and pour. Garnish with a slice of lemon.

This is a drink where you read the ingredients and think that there’s no way it’d taste good. But it is wonderful-- think a light lemon cream with a deep complex flavor.

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More Lightning Damage

Posted: 6/30/2008

We received a letter from the city saying that there's a problem with our water meter, and that we had to call them to schedule its replacement. Mary called today. The rep from the city asked, "were you hit by lightning?"

Oh well, at least we don't have to pay for this one.

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Lightning

Posted: 6/29/2008

Two weeks ago, we had a pretty nasty thunderstorm during the night. I normally sleep through them, but this one had me half awake as the thunder was close and loud. At 3:15 am, one bolt seemed to penetrate my eyelids and shook the house. And our smoke detectors went off.

I jumped out of bed and ran down the hall to Dobry’s room. By the time I got halfway there, the smoke detectors turned off; it was just a power surge in the follower lines connecting the detectors.

By now, I was wide awake and any hope of more sleep was gone as I realized that any bolt that was close enough to directly induce current in my house’s wiring was strong enough to have fried something, despite the whole house surge protection I had installed a couple of years ago.

The next afternoon, I started cataloging what I had lost— a couple of ports on our main network switch, cordless phones, the garage door opener, a small network switch in the bar, the ethernet card on our web server, the wall switch for the ceiling fan in the sitting room of our master suite, and the modem for our HD satellite receiver. Of these, I was most bummed about the main network switch— I had gotten a great deal on an enterprise-level gigabit switch that fit into our structured wiring enclosure.

I tried finding another robust switch that would fit into the enclosure, but sadly could only find desktop switches. So, if I wanted something robust, I was realizing that I’d have to look for rack-mounted equipment. Which also meant that I’d have to rewire all of the low-voltage wiring in the house. And this was not going to be a simple job.

I took off last Thursday to do the job. I started at 7:00 am and finished at 8:00 pm. For some of the builder-installed wiring, I barely had enough slack to terminate the wires. Fortunately, most of the wiring I had done myself so I had plenty of slack. Here’s the finished project—

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The Quito Daiquiri

Posted: 6/29/2008

Ernest Hemmingway drank daiquiris. Not the fruity ice-blended pink girly drinks most people think of when they hear the word ‘daiquiri,’ but a real daiquiri— rum, lime, a bit of simple syrup— shaken over ice and strained into a martini glass. They’re very tasty, and if Hemmingway were still alive, I’d dare anyone to walk up to him and say that he was drinking a girl’s drink. Once bloodied and perspective changed, the daiquiri would escape your 70s purgatory of fern bars and hands of Love Boat matrons.

A college buddy of mine is repping for a liqueur company. Last fall, he brought some samples over to my house so that I could taste them and perhaps come up with some recepies. One of the liqueurs is called Espiritu del Ecuador. It’s sweet, with a mild flavor of soft tropical fruits infused with vanilla and a hint of caramel. I tried a few combinations, looking for something that would match well with the tropical fruit of the Espritu.

And then I remembered the original daiquiri. The lime of the daiquiri enhances the tropical nature of the liqueur and causes the vanilla to become more prominant, further enhancing its floral nature. It’s become my favorite drink.

Quito Daiquiri
½ shot Espiritu
1 shot white rum
½ shot sweetened lime juice (Rose’s or similar)
juice of ½ lime

Shake over ice and strain into a martini glass. Pour over a slice of lime in the glass.

As Espiritu can be hard to find (it’s only available in Ecuador and in the NYC area, currently), a poor substitute is the notoriously hard-to-mix Midori, but it’ll lack the floral nose and vanilla hint of the Espiritu. And it’ll have an otherworldly green hue that screams, ‘girl drink.’

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What Animal Is Joe Eating?

Updated 12/6/06

This is my blog, where I write about what I’m eating, drinking and watching

My Wife’s Favorite Drink

More Lightning Damage

Lightning

The Quito Daiquiri