Salted Whiskey Carmel Sauce

On the second day of boozemas we used booze just a little differently; as a flavoring for carmel sauce.  I used this recipe, and to make it sauce instead of carmels you just don't let the temp get all the way to 248. This would also make a really great homemade gift if you can stop youself from eating ever last spoonful.  We poured ours over vanilla ice cream. Cheers!

Birthday Booze!

It's birthday season around here! If you can believe it,all three members of our little family have a birthday in the month of January.  We just call it birthday month. To celebrate my birthday since we didn't get around to making our 10th cake of the month we made:

Boozey Birthday Cake Shakes

1 Pint of Ice Cream

2 Shots of Bourbon

Whipped Cream
Food Color (if desired)

Sprinkles

Could we have any more balloons?

Now, the thing about this particular drink is that it's the last one we'll be enjoying 'till March 1.  Boo! Hiss! We're going to make it a Dry February and try and work off some of that birthday cake, holiday weight and booze.  So if no one has any objections, and since I think all of three people read this blog and likely don't care.... February posts won't have anything to do with booze! (Egads!) but I promise to try and make them equally fun.  Keep in mind February is a short month and the booze posts will be back before you know it! 

Cheers!

Bowling for Beer

Eric Bowling in the Shadow of Two Bud Lights

Few things go together as well as beer and bowling.  So when we decided to go bowling yesterday, of course we had a few Bud Lights.  Did you know that at the bowling alley in Kenmore, a Bud Light will run you $1.50? $1.50! Amazing! I haven't paid less than $4 for a beer since college. It would have been better if they'd been in the shape of bowling pins, but for $1.50 you can't exactly complain.

I can't decide if the beer helped my game or not.  My first game was 122, my second 89 (yikes!) and my third 130.  Before you belittle my scores, the last time I went bowling was well over a year ago at a company Christmas party, where I'll have you know, I bowled a turkey!  In case you don't bowl or don't know, a turkey is three strikes in a row.

See? Proof!

Also in case you are a local and are wondering, the Kenmore lanes was a lot better on the inside than I expected from it's facade.  It was clean and bright and had TONS of lanes.

Cheers!

SnOwMG!

Here we are; day 2 or 3 depending how you look at it, of snOwMG! We decided that we want to make sure that on top of everything else, we don't get sick.  One of the things I believe strongly helps you to remain healthy, is a good dose of Vitamin C.  Lucky us, we'd just gotten a shipment of Honeybells before snOwMG hit!  If you haven't had a honeybell, you are seriously missing out.  These are a holiday tradition for us and we always over order and end up juicing some of them.  So we decided to put some of that juice to work as a:

SnOwMG Honeybell Sparkler

1 oz Vodka

6 oz Honeybell Juice

Splash of Seltzer Water

Yeah, that hit the spot and so far neither of us are sick.  I'd say it MUST be working and we all need to consume these on a regular basis in order to maintain our health. 

Cheers!

Snowmageddon!

 

It's Snowmageddon here in Seattle and I celebrated being stuck in the house with a rambunctious 7 year old with this little beauty. 

Snowmageddon Berry Slush

1 oz Rum

1 cup of frozen berries

3 oz Sweetened Lime Juice

1/2 cup of Snow (or water if you aren't feeling eating snow)

Quite good!  In case you can't tell, I often just throw things in the blender that I have available, give it a pithy name and call it good.  It's easier than making a real drink. We're anxiously awaiting Snowpocolypse so stay tuned to see what we whip up next!

Cheers!

Put a cork in it!

Last year we got into the habit of saving our corks and displaying them in a decorative vase.  I often think of this as the adult version of displaying all the bottles of alcohol you've consumed on your windowsill in your dorm room.  Not really sure why this is an acceptable decorating practice, but since places like Pottery Barn and Ben Franklin sell corks as "decor" if you aren't "sophisticated" and "classy" enough to be drinking enough wine with corks to create a similar statement it's o.k. with me!  This year's number..... 110.  That's a bottle every 3.3 days (I was so hoping it'd somehow be Tebowesque and be 3.16! Dang! In case you are wondering, you need to drink 115.5 bottles to get that number) yikes..... kind of seems like a lot.... However clearly that didn't even come close to filling our decorative container so we'll just have to try harder this year.  

Cheers!

It's beginning to look a lot less like Christmas

Well, Sunday was the day we took down the Christmas decorations. Always a day of mixed emotions, sad because the house looks empty happy because the house looks clean and fresh.  Regardless! What better way to celebrate such a day than to be drinking Mimosa!  This one was premixed blood orange concoction that we got at World Market.  Upon my first sip I thought... it reminds me of something... so I reached way back into my memory banks and came up with........ Mad Dog 20/20.  I haven't thought about Mad Dog 20/20 in 10 years. Yuck. There is a reason you only drink Mad Dog when you have about fifty cents to your name... it's terrible! Do they even sell it any more?  Eric thought it was more like Boone's Farm.  Another one you aren't probably going to be reaching for any time soon.  If you're over 25 that is.....  Either way, it wasn't good.  Do yourselves a favor and stick to fresh OJ with sparkling wines that cost more than $10.

Of course, none of this means we didn't polish off the whole bottle.  Those decorations weren't taking themselves down!

Cheers!

Ringing in the New Year

Since we'd planned to leave on Violet's birthday trip on New Year's Day this year, we decided to forgo our traditional getting tipsy at home in favor of getting enough sleep (how old are we?) so we had to break out the bubbly a little late this year. This Wilson Creek Almond "champagne" caught our eye. We thought almond? Why not? We were rewarded for our dare to dream attitude by DELICIOUSNESS! We went to the store the very next day to buy more it was so good. In fact, I liked it SO much that my New Year's resolution is to try more types of champagne and sparkling wines. I know... how EVER will we be able to keep such a challenging resolution?

Cheers!

9th day of Boozemas

"On the 9th day of Boozemas my true love gave to me, 9 angry birds!"

One of them even made it into the picture. He's angry he can't drink some of this delicious concoction, which I'm going to call a Chocolate Orange. Nothing says Christmas like a chocolate orange in your stocking and here we have it in a cup. 1 oz of Grand Marnier and 4 oz of hot chocolate topped with whipped cream and some orange zest for color. This would be an amazing thing to have to have after a day of sledding or building snowmen, but since we have no sign of snow here in Seattle we enjoyed it after a long day at work.

Cheers!

8th day of Boozemas

"On the 8th day of Boozemas my true love gave to me, 8 slices of pizza"

Of which, he ate at least four. And come to think of it, I went to get the pizza.... Who cares! It was Monday Night Football night so we enjoyed a few beers and some pizza. For this night we choose purely based on animals in the logo and ended up with the Frog Ale , the 10 Below and the Raven Mad. All great beers to watch the game on a cold winter's night!

Cheers!

7th Day of Boozemas

"On the 7th day of Boozemas my true love gave to me, 700 miles!"

O.k. kidding, it wasn't really 700 miles, it just felt like it. One of the great joys of the holiday season is traveling 11 billion miles, usually by car. On the 7th day of Boozemas we found ourselves driving our daughter to meet her grandmother to stay with her for her first week of Christmas vacation, when we finally got to the designated meeting point, the Valley Cafe we celebrated by having a beer. A locally crafted brew by the Iron Horse Brewery, presumably named after the Iron Horse Trail a trail that we've biked several times. Back to the beer. Yum! So good and really hit the spot after traveling. In fact it made such an impression, we stopped by the brewery itself on the way home to pick up a couple bottles in anticipation of our arrival home.

Cheers!

Vega Oliveras - Tempranillo vino de la tierra De Castilla 2009

This is a selection from our latest delivery from the WSJ Wine Club.

A nice, full-bodied spanish wine that went well with our low-carb shrimp and walnut dinner. Usually you'd drink this with a thick rib-eye, marbled with veins of delicous fat, but it performed just as well with our farm-raised shimp friends.

From Wikipedia:

Tempranillo wines can be consumed young, but the most expensive ones are aged for several years in oak barrels.

Well....clearly this 09 swill didn't spend its infancy in a snuggly crib of oak, but it maintained a precocious presence.