Firewater Friday - Peppery Bacon Infused Vodka

I like a strip of bacon as a garnish for a nice spicy Bloody Mary cocktail.  That got me thinking.  What about vodka infused with bacon and pepper.  Imagine that in your Bloody Mary!  Oh my!

So, I made it.  

Peppery Bacon Infused Vodka

3 or 4 Slices Smoked Bacon
16 Ounces Good Vodka
8 - 10 Peppercorns

Cook bacon in pan until crisp but not totally crispy.  

Place bacon strips into a jar and fill with vodka.

Place jar in the refrigerator for one week.  

After a week, put the jar in the freezer for an hour to solidify the fat.  

Strain the solids out of the liquid by pouring through a sieve or a stocking lined funnel.  

Pour into a bottle or jar.

For the most bacon flavor, serve at room temperature.  Use as a mixer or a sipper.  

Cheers!

Firewater Friday - A Roa

I was looking for a cocktail for mixers I happened to have on hand.  What I found was a simple, elegant cocktail made with melon liquor, cranberry juice and vodka.  

I don't know what the history of this drink is but it's delish!

A Roa 

3/4 oz Vodka
3/4 oz Melon Liqueur
1 - 2 oz Cranberry Juice

Add all ingredients to a cocktail shaker, shake 3 - 4 times and strain over ice in a cocktail glass.

Firewater Friday - The Spin

Light and refreshing - a little sweet, a little tart.  The mixture of the ingredients give this drink an almost sweet grapefruit taste.  Delish!


The Spin


1 1/2 Ounces Vodka
1/4 Ounce Triple Sec
2 Ounces Fresh Cranberry Juice
1 Ounce Fresh Orange Juice
Orange Garnish


Combine all ingredients (except garnish) in an ice filled shaker.  

Shake and strain into a chilled wine glass.

Garnish with an orange wedge.

L'Orientale Cocktail

L'Orientale

1 Part Ginger Liquor
1 Part Vodka
Splash of Chambord
Splash of Orange Juice

Combinne ginger liquor and vodka in an ice filled shaker.  Add a splash of Chambord and a splash of orange juice. 

Shake, shake, shake.

Strain into a chilled martini glass.

Print Recipe

Firewater Friday - Frog in a Blender

Frog in a Blender

There's not actually a frog in this drink . . . it's supposed to look that way though.  Did it?  Kinda, a little, maybe.  Mmmm . . . but it tasted good.

1 Cup of Ice
2 oz Vodka
4 oz Cranberry Juice
2 Slices Lime

Place all the ingredients in a blender.  

Blend for 3-5 seconds.  You don't want it to be smooth, blended enough to chop up the "frog"/limes a bit.

Pour into a chilled hurricane glass.

Print Recipe

Firewater Friday - Very Berry Deliciousness

Hubby and were out for our weekly date night and spied a jug of strawberries steeping in a clear liquid.  The sign above the container proclaimed one shot of strawberry vodka $6.  Okay . . . a bit pricey for a simple shot but I just had to try it . . . and try it I did.  And OH-MY-GOD-BECKY it was soooooooo good!  And then I had another one.   Yeah, you can call me a lush.  

I figured how hard could it possibly be to infuse vodka with strawberries.  Not hard at all . . . here's how to do it:

First, you must have fresh strawberries.  They're in season, relatively cheap and very, very sweet.

Second you must have a neutral flavored spirit . . . vodka.

Take 2 cups of fresh clean strawberries, hulled and cut in half and put into a clean 1 quart jar (I use a Mason canning jar).  The stawberries should fill the jar halfway.

Next pour in the vodka to the top leaving about a half inch of headspace.  

Then place cool, dark place (like a pantry or cupboard).  Give the jar a little shake once a day to move things around.  

After a couple days you will notice that the strawberries are being leeched of color and turning a sickly albino white.  Don't panic, this is normal.  All the color and flavor is going into the vodka.

In a week you will have strawberry infused vodka with very pale strawberries floating around in it.

Strain the solids from the liquid.  I do this by placing a stocking . . . you know, like a knee high women wear . . . over the top of another jar.  You can use cheese cloth if you want.  Then I put a canning funnel over that and pour the infused vodka into the funnel and through the stocking.

What you are left with is a wonderful strawberry flavored vodka that is a beautiful red color.

I found it to still be a bit strong.  So to add a little sweetness and to make it perfectly delicious I mixed it with a simple syrup.  Take a 1/2 cup raw sugar and mix it into a 1/2 cup boiling water and stir until all the sugar is dissolved.  Let it cool.

Mix 1 part infused vodka to a 1/2 part of the simple syrup.  Pour into a shaker full of ice.  Shake, shake, shake and strain into a cocktail glass.  Sip and be in absolute heaven.

Of course, you can use the infused vodka and a myriad of other cocktail recipes but I like it cold and simple.  

Delicious!

Firewater Friday - Happy Birthday to me . . . Cheers!

Cheers!

Vodka And Strawberry Lemonade

Dangerously delicious . . . once you start drinking this you won't want to stop!

4 oz Strawberry Lemonade (from this recipe)

2 oz Vodka

Fill a shaker half full with ice cubes. Pour all ingredients into shaker and shake well. Fill a glass almost full of ice cubes, and strain drink into glass.

Firewater Friday . . . Yeah, baby, YEAH!

The year after my son was born . . . 1997 . . . Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery was in movie theaters.  I thought it was the funniest movie and so when it came out on VHS a couple years later I had to have it.  And, have it I did!.  For you whipper-snappers out there, that like a DVD only in tape format :)~  

I watched that movie over and over and over again.  It never failed to amuse me . . . small things for small minds, I guess.






But give me some credit.  I have always been a James Bond fan and this flick spoofed elements from all the early James Bond movies and was groovy '60s psychedelic, too.


In retrospect, I probably should have known better but as a first time mommy I guess I didn't think of the impact of my son watching a movie likewould have.  Well, now I know better.  Little kids are like sponges . . . they soak everything up.



Short synopsis: British secret agent . . . with really bad teeth . . .  Austin Powers was placed into cryostasis at the end of the 60s, in case a spy of his talent was ever needed again.  The world is a very different place when he's woken in the 1990's.  

Unfortunately for Austin, everyone is no longer sex-mad despite the fact that he is.  He is inappropriate, sexist and horny as hell.  He spends the entire movie in pursuit of his arch enemy Dr. Evil (who also happened to have been cryogenically frozen) and . . . sex.


With such catchy catch-phrases as:



“Shall we shag now, or shall we shag later?”


“Groovy, baby”

"Oh, behave!"

and


"Do I make you horny baby, do I?"


The child was bound to pick up one or two.  Thankfully the one he seemed to like the best was “Yeah, baby, yeah!”.






Well, when that became his standard reply to just about everything, it became apparent that he probably shouldn't be watching that particular movie anymore.  It was all Bear in the Big Blue House, Blues Clues and PB&J Otter for him!


Yeah, baby, yeah!

Lemon Drop Martini

1/2 Lemon
Ice
4 Oz Citron Vodka
2 Tbsp Simple Syrup


Simple syrup: To make simple syrup combine 1 cup of water and 1 cup of sugar in a small saucepan. Stir over high heat until the sugar has dissolved. Bring to a boil and let boil for a minute. Turn off the heat. Let cool completely. Pour into a glass jar and store covered in the refrigerator.


Fill a cocktail shaker with ice. Squeeze the wedge of lemon over the ice. Add the citron vodka and the simple syrup. Cap the shaker and shake (the longer you shake, the more dilute). Strain into martini glass. Makes a small martini. Garnish with lemon wedge.  If you want a little sweetness with each sip, rim the glass with sugar.

Firewater Friday - The Birth of a Blog Post

Have you ever wondered how bloggers get their ideas?  Think about it . . . some bloggers, like me, write about something or other every single day.  How do I get all those fabulous ideas . . . and all that time to cook, too!  For me sometimes it's a random thought that inspires a post and sometimes it's something like this (a real IM conversation between hubby and me) . . .

So there it is . . . sometimes that's how it happens.  And now I have a blogpost.  

Now, about those eggs.  Hubby's family has an Easter tradition where they bump their (presumably) hard boiled egg against someone else's.  Whoever's egg cracks loses.  What do they lose?  I have no idea . . . their sense of egg tapping pride perhaps?  I thought they made the whole stupid thing up . . . his family is pretty goofy (in a goodly way) and it would surprise me if this was some silly game they came up with.

Well, if Wikipedia is to believed . . . an if it's a Wiki page it just has to be true, right? . . . then apparently this is an Easter tradition that goes back a bazillion years or something like that . . . or 1979 years ago, at least.


Anyhoo . . . the egg fight is supposedly an Easter traditio wherein you are supposed to hold a hard-boiled egg and tap the eggs of other participants to break them but to keep your own undamaged.  Yeah, good luck with that!  Cheating is rampant but it's all in good fun.  


This egg tapping thing can be found in many different cultures around the world but has it's roots in pagan beliefs.  For obvious reasons, the egg was a Pagan symbol of the rebirth and early Christians co-opted this metaphor as the rebirth of man at Easter in light of Christ's ultimate sacrifice.

Speaking of Easter . . . do you know how our calendar Easter day is selected?  It is always the first Sunday after the first Full Moon after the Spring Equinox (thanks to Dicky for the bit of pagan holiday info).   


So . . . go bust up some eggs!  Happy Easter or Solar/Lunar Pagan Holiday

Coconut Cream Cake 


2 oz. Pinnacle Cake Vodka
2 oz. Milk
Splash Coconut Rum


Shake with ice and strain into a chilled martini glass. 

Firewater Friday - Let's call a spade a spade

To call a spade a spade is a way to describe something as it really is.

These days it seems like everything and everybody is called a racist for any little old thing.   I guess it’s simply the way I think but it never occurred to me that this phrase . . . ‘call a spade a spade’ . . . would be considered racially derogatory.  And the fact is . . . it’s NOT.  Or, at least it wasn’t . . .

 

The expression is thousands of years old.  Back when spades were implements to dig the earth and not the symbol on a deck of cards or . . . whatever else.

The original saying derives from the ancient Greek idiom ‘ta syka syka, te:n

skaphe:n de skaphe:n onomasein’  which translates "to call a fig a fig, a trough a

trough".    

Far from being an ethic slur, its thought that this expression was initially a sexual reference . . . a fig and trough being symbolic for . . . well, I don’t think I need to paint you a picture.

Anyhoo . . .

Interestingly, sometime during the Renaissance, ‘trough’ got mistranslated as ‘spade’.    It’s not surprising, considering the ancient Greek for these words are fairly similar . . . skaphe = trough / skapheion = digging tool.

"Spade" in the sense of "negro" is not recorded until 1928 and comes from the color of the playing card symbol, via the phrase ‘black as the ace of spades’.

 

Frankly, I’m sick of tippy-toeing around and tired of political correctness. I think people are way too overly sensitive.  Buck up and get a stiff upper lip . . . every little ol’ thing is not an attack on some other thing.  It’s just not.  Sometimes a spade is just that . . . a spade.

That is all . . . moving on . . . 

Sweet Cream Soda


2 Shots Pinnacle Cake
2  Shots  Pinnacle Whipped
8 oz. Club Soda


Mix in a glass filled with ice and garnish with a cherry.

Firewater Friday - The tower of power, too sweet to be sour, ohhhh yeahh!

Have you ever experienced what could best be described as a puckering of the salivary glands when you eat something?  The pain is right at the very back of the jaw where it hinges with the skull. It feels sort of like the glands going from zero to OMG-here-comes-a-lemon! in half a second.

This pain is usually comes on when the first bite of food hits your tongue and only lasts a couple of seconds.  Sometimes it happens when you smell a certain food or even when you do nothing more than think about it.  

It is commonly, but not necessarily, something sour that causes this reaction.   

This is what that is . . . when you eat something sour your mouth waters.  That is, saliva is being pumped into your mouth by the salivary glands. The parotids, two of your primary salivary glands, are located on your cheeks, near the jaw.  The pain is caused by the inability of the glands to discharge the saliva they are producing quickly enough.

Normally, this is a natural reaction to the foods you are eating.  However, it can also be caused by parotitis, which is a low level inflammation of the gland which most often requires no treatment. 

But I’m not a doctor . . . so what do I know?

Absolut® Orient Apple Vermont


OMG! good . . . very delicious . . . very dangerous!

2 Parts Absolut Orient Apple

1-2 Teaspoons Real Maple Syrup

2 Dashes Bitters

Garnish: Orange Zest

Pour ingredients into a cocktail shaker filled with ice.  Stir and strain into a martini glass. 

The tower of power, too sweet to be sour, ohhhh yeahh!
Macho Man Randy Savage

Firewater Friday - Allow me to ladle you a piping hot bowl of . . .

If a meal is served to me 'piping hot' I know if I gobble it down with utter disregard for its extreme hotness I should do so with full knowledge that it's going to burn the taste-buds from my tongue and scald the flesh from the roof of my mouth.  

Piping hot . . . what does that mean anyway?  A reference to plumbing?  If you’re in the vicinity of a burst steam pipe, it will get your attention  . . . and, I promise, it will hurt.

Nope, that’s not it.  

Does it come from the Scottish tradition of ceremoniously serving food on special occasions accompanied by the playing of the bagpipes?  Certainly that food could be considered 'piped in'.

No, not even close.

What ‘piping hot’ refers to is the sound sizzling hot food makes as steam escapes from it . . . the sound is reminiscent of whistling teakettles and high-pitched musical pipes.

One of the first literary references was from the second of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales - The Miller’s Tale (1390)

Absalom in his attempt to woo Alison . . .

He sang as tremulously as nightingale;

He sent her sweetened wine and well-spiced ale

And waffles piping hot out of the fire . . . 

Now a pipe dream . . . that's a whole other thing. It, too, has nothing whatsoever to do with plumbing or musical Scots.  It has everything to do with pipes . . . opium pipes.

You puff on one of those suckers you'll have dreams like no other . . . pipe dreams, as it were.

Absolut® Orient Apple Breeze

2 Parts Absolut Orient Apple

2 Parts Cranberry Juice

1/2 Part Fresh Pink Grape Juice

Combine all ingredients and pour over rocks in a highball glass.