Spoiler Alert: I’m not going to say one word about coffee.

I don’t normally eat breakfast — in fact, I try not to be awake at that time of the day — but I was starving on my commute (a 15 minute walk) this morning. Lunch was three hours in the future, so I dropped into my friendly neighborhood donut shop. It seemed like a better choice than the gas station.

Standing in line, anxious to purchase blueberry muffin with large granules of sugar baked into the browned, delectable crust, I saw a sign of the upcoming apocalypse: a cardboard display for what they called a “Milky Way Hot Chocolate“.

This is the point where Dave Barry would swear that he were not making this up, but this is the digital age and I’m hipper than he is, so I’ll just provide a hyperlink.

Would that I could have been a fly on the wall at that board meeting!

Generic Executive (henceforth “Atilla”): *standing in front of a whiteboard* I hate everything.

Chairman (henceforth “Ghengis”): You’re right, Atilla, the world should drown in its own filth. Faster than it is, I mean. *murmurs of agreement from board members, most of whom have goatees*

Atilla: But I don’t want to get my slightly-expensive suit dirty. *more agreement* There just has to be some way for a dedicated group of rich pudgy caucasian men to erode all that is humane and wholesome. Other than letting minority groups who aren’t hurting anybody do what they want. I mean, this is Massachusetts and we are a for-profit enterprise.

Ghengis: I have to admit, that was what I was thinking. I hear good things about superplagues though. And bombs.

Atilla: Bombs are just a fad. Viruses are trendy for a reason, I have to say, but we all kinda suck at biology, don’t we? *nervous whispers. Ghengis is visibly displeased* Never fear though, because I have something that should knock ‘em dead. *Writes on board: “Candy Bar + Hot Beverage = Civilization“* The Milky Way Hot Chocolate. *audible gasps from the board*

Ghengis: …Is that what I think it is?

Atilla: You’re damn right. People will die of diabetes, heart disease, and gingivitis faster than they can say “Diseases of excess”!

Ghengis: My sleeping god, you’re right!

Atilla: Oh, I know… MUAHAHAHAHA

Ghengis: MUAHAHAHAHA

All: MUAHAHAHAHA

Okay, maybe that’s not how it actually transpired. But if it is you heard it here first.

In response to the inevitable question, did I man up and try it for science? No I didn’t. I thought about it, but then I remembered what happened to me when I tried the Cherry Lime Sobe Coolatta one hot day last summer. I focused on my mission, and left with just a pastry.

I wish I were making that last bit up.

Well. I’m drinking a cocktail I just made and despite being both a biologist and a budding statistician, I think I may contract salmonella tonight (around 1/20,000 chance). Oh well. At least I’ll have a blog post to show for it.

I got through the first hurdle of my grad school qualifying exam today! So to celebrate, I opened up a bottle of sherry I got recently (the cheap stuff, but hush, it’s my first time) and decided pretty soon after pouring off a taster size portion into my wine glass that 1) port is better and 2) maybe I should’ve spent more than $4.49 on the sherry. Now what to do with a whole bottle that I don’t particularly want to drink from again. I’ll definitely cook with it a bit, but I figured it wouldn’t hurt to make cocktails out of the stuff too. A quick Google search tells me that Cream Sherry Flips are the most common cocktail made with cream sherry… but it involves an egg.

Cream Sherry Flip

2½ oz Cream Sherry
2 tsp Table Cream
1 tsp Simple Syrup (2:1)
1 Fresh Egg
Nutmeg

Instructions: In a cocktail shaker combine sherry, cream simple syrup and an egg. Shake vigorously (or use a stick blender) for 30 seconds. Add ice and shake again for 30 more seconds. Strain in to a mug or coffee cup and sprinkle with nutmeg.

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Upon going to college I realized a lot of habits I had taken for granted as being normal was actually only true for the bizarre family environment I grew up in. Apparently normal people do take showers and that the showerhead isn’t just for decoration and poor urban households that couldn’t afford a bathtub. Apparently normal people don’t eat the unfortunate animals that decide to winter on your front lawn. Apparently normal people don’t go eeling on the weekends. And apparently normal mothers don’t drink an average of 4 teapots of green tea a day. I didn’t drink tea or coffee growing up, so I always shrugged it off as an adult thing. But after one of our first family vacations, I realized that normal families usually lugged around a camera instead of a portable tea container complete with shoulder strap and tea leaf filter.

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Generally speaking, I like my coffee like I like my women: strong, full, rich, and apocalyptically dark. Wait. What? That can’t possibly be true.

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Echoing Neil — there is paradise on earth. It’s called 112 beers on tap. And we have notes to prove it!

Suffering slightly from beer ADHD, we figured we’d go with 2 tasting flights to start the night. Which lead to another flight. Which lead to two very happy liquid bloggers. The following notes are in chronological order and are exactly what we wrote down in the bar — meaning you probably shouldn’t take the last couple seriously. (Also, we need to figure out a better notes taking system that doesn’t look like I’m listening to an organic chemistry lecture in the middle of a bar).

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The scribes of this illustrious journal found enlightenment on Friday night, and, as I always half suspected, the key to happiness is more of a gnostic secret than a zen insight. It’s not fair, but worry not - you’re here now and I’ll share it with you.

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Y’mean not everyone keeps them in empty pork fu containers?

When you turn 21, it’s as good a time as any to start on stocking that home bar you’ve been daydreaming about before but never could bring yourself to bribing one of your overage friends to buy you 1901823 bottles of hard liquor for.

Well, as a reward to myself for not rioting against the unbelievably ridiculous and paradoxical government which decided that certain subsets of those allowed to vote in a democratic election are somehow still incapable of making responsible decisions, I bought myself the beginnings of a home bar as a birthday present. But what to get?!

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A while back, one of the chemists in my department threw a a sort of medieval-themed Christmas party with her housemates.Now, I’ll interject that for us, that’s not a huge stretch. For reasons related to our field of study, we tend to be a pretty granola-munching bunch. Dressing up as bards, knights, and wizards is not really a big deal. Well, except for me. I’m not above it, I just don’t own any costumes. I should probably rectify that.

I wouldn’t let details like that slow me down, though, so I of course I went.

After cajoling my way across the drawbridge they had installed in their foyer, depositing my 6-pack of really decent Trader Joe’s Winterfest Double Bock into the fridge and retaining one for myself, (how do I remember that after this many weeks? I’m not sure.), and squeezing my way into the livingroom where Robin Hood and his merry men were playing Simon and Garfunkel tunes on a guitar and a mandolin (really), the hostess came through and offered me what must have been the horn off of an angry 100-kg sheep.

“Oh my. What is this?”

“Mead.”

“Wow. I’ve never tried that before. Is it good?”

“Well, C made this batch, but we’ve got a few bottles of the store-bought stuff in the fridge. Wanna try?”

“Well, I’ve already got a beer.”

“Set it down and I’ll show you how to drink from it.”

How you drink from a horn is actually obvious if you think about it - you have to hold the point so that it’s in front of you and tip it back. I took a swig, it was rather tart but pretty good. She took the horn away and let me get back to my beer.

The party progressed as any non-catastrophic party with that many people in period costumes would: we got a little drunk and started singing. Eventually, one of my better friends came up to me with the horn.

“Have you tried the mead?”

“The homemade stuff, yeah.”

“This is the stuff from the store. I think it’s better.”

In our crowd, that’s blasphemy. Things made at home are always better. Admiral Ackbar would have known what was happening, but I walked into it. “Really? Let me try it.”

I was empty-handed, so he handed me the horn. It was nearly full. I tasted the mead; it was sweet and good, though not necessarily better. I said as much and tried to hand the horn back.

“Oh, no thanks. I’ve had enough.”

I drank a little more, or maybe a little more than that, wandered around with my new prop, and did all that party stuff that always happens but which we can never actually recollect very clearly the next day. Eventually, I decided I had had enough mead.

It was at that point that I realized the most important fact about horns: You cannot set a horn down without spilling all the liquid inside.

I tried to find someone else to take the horn, but everybody said they had had enough. It was still half full. There are worse problems to have than alcohol that you can’t set down. Out of primal instinct, I drank more — it’s just what you do when you’ve got alcohol in your hand and you’ve already had a few. At some point I actually internalized that I was drinking mead well after the point which I decided I didn’t need to have anymore; my plight became dire and my search became more desperate. Not that I stopped drinking then, either. That’s just not how it works.

Eventually, someone took it off my hands. I have no idea who, or how much mead was in the horn at that point.

I do know that the rest of the party was freaking awesome.

The next morning, notsomuch.

Mead? In the words of the last person who sold me something on half.com: “AAAAA ++++++ Thank you !!!!!”

Horns? Pretty cool, whether on or off of a ruminant.

The juxtaposition? Lethal.

Happy lunar new year! Xin nian kuai le, gong xi fa cai, etc, etc. I have to confess — I am pretty terrible at being chinese (unless I’m awesome at being chinese, like… when getting food freebies in Costco). I decided I wanted a small little Chinese new year get-together chez moi and I ended up having to call my mother…

Me: “Mommy? What do chinese people eat on chinese new year?”
*Mother audibly signs* (some things you can only ask mothers)

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