Juggling about a thousand things I want to get out of the way before the Auto Show next week, and of course none of them are finished. What to do?
When in doubt, pause and eat a sandwich. Here’s a good one:
- barbecued pulled pork (homemade, or the good kind from the butcher’s. The kind in the tub at the grocery store is way too salty.)
- potato chips (Ruffles or other thick, wavy chips)
- low fat ranch dressing
- 100% whole wheat buns or sandwich thins or flatbreads
Heat the pork almost to the boiling point, and pile it on a whole wheat bun. Make one sandwich at a time! Do not use too much pork– you want the sandwich to be compact, not overflowing. If you are feeling healthy, use one of those thin sandwich buns or a flatbread. The crust ends of a loaf of whole wheat bread will work in a pinch, but regular sliced bread is not tough enough. Do not use white bread. That would be disgusting. Drizzle on a little of the low fat ranch dressing, and at the very last minute add the potato chips. Don’t put them on and pour yourself a drink, let the dogs out, or move a pile of old car magazines off your chair. Put them on and eat the sandwich immediately while the chips are still totally crunchy. Serve with a tall rum and coke with lots of lime juice.
If you are still hungry, make another sandwich. Then fill in the corners with some Greek yogurt. Put some fruit in it Pineapple is particularly nice.
There. Don’t you feel better about everything?
All good advice, even if I prefer my Rum and Cokes with a generous splash of Roses Lime Juice instead of fresh lime…
…although I prefer my Bloody Marys with fresh lime instead of Roses. Go fig.
I’m afraid around this house you don’t normally get either Rose’s or fresh lime juice. Day in and day out, the big squeeze bottle of ReaLime in the fridge is good enough. We’ll buy the occasional bottle of Rose’s when we want it for a specific drink, but normally nobody needs the extra sugar. Actual limes that grow on a tree only appear on special occasions or when guests are expected.
Huh. Well, the talk of Bloody Marys led me to check my inventory this morning, and I had everything in stock but the fresh lime, so it was off to the grocery store, where one fresh lime cost me 40 cents.
My recipe, to which many of my friends have given the thumbs up:
Fill one 32 ounce boomba mug with ice, pour in a generous glug (apx 4 ounces) of cheap vodka.
Shake in four dollops of Lea and Perrin’s soy sauce. Shake in three dollops of tobacco sauce (less or more to your own particular taste). Pour in a good glug, but no less than one ouce, of Melani Dill Sauce. Shake on a generous shake or two of celery salt. You can add more salt to taste if needed. Fill boomba mug with V-8 original vegetable juice. Mix well. Cut good sized slice of fresh lime, squeeze in on top, give gentle stir. Add dill pickle spear or stalk of celery for garnish if desired. Serves one, for two to three hours, and adds all the time spent mixing a second or third cocktail to your quality drinking time.
Enjoy!
Umm, tobaSco sauce, not tobacco sauce, LOL
Re: tobacco sauce: let’s hope you were talking about Tabasco, as tobacco is pretty darn poisonous. I like the Bloody Mary recipe, but you lost me on the dill thing. I am not a huge fan of dill in any form. If we are trading cocktail recipes, here is a drink we were enjoying here last night:
Take a small, clean, plain juice glass (the kind you used to get at the dime store but now have to buy at IKEA at six for five dollars) and put two small ice cubes in it. Add a generous slug (2 or 3 ounces?) of the Ardbeg Uigeadail. Drink slowly because it is really intense and awesome, more peaty though less smoky than the Lagavulin with a complicated sort of dark chocolate and leather note and a very long finish. For fun while drinking, study the label and try to teach yourself to pronounce “Uigeadail” in case you every get to go to the kind of bar where they serve whisky like this.
(Hint: It’s “oog-a-dal”, with the accent on the “oog”.)
Remember that I used to be a person who didn’t like the brown goods. I blame Mr. Santman himself for this change in my lifelong drinking habits. He was the one who was sitting next to me in a Japanese restaurant and left his after dinner glass of the Yamazaki (was it the 18 year old?) on the table where I could smell it. What the heck are you drinking, I asked him, already fairly well along from several mediocre mai tais. Single malt scotch, he replied, and he offered me a taste. I took one, and it was godawful. Smelled horrible and tasted worse. But, man, was it interesting. I think poor Santman only got to drink about half of that Yamazaki.
Direct quote from Ms Bliss concerning Yamazaki: “This is COOL.”
Hmm, I woulda guessed OY-ga-dal, so not far off…
All this talk of Bloody Marys… I wasn’t expecting the drink, I was expecting the…
Bloody Mary, Bloody Mary, Bloody Mary…
What? Who’s there? AAAARGH!
So, Pam. If we start talking about scotch again, will Wolfie regale us with a tale about an infamous bagpiping golfer?
We could find out. What are you currently stocking in the single malt section?
Glenfiddich 15 year old, a Christmas gift from my beloved, and a bottle of Lagavulin for the nights when I want a flightier dram, and of course, Dewar’s White Label. Dewa’rs is the kitchen scotch of choice here at Casa Santman. I’ve always found it to be a perfectly acceptable scotch, good for adding to coffee or mixing up the odd scotch and soda (with a twist of lemon of course) for sippin’ during construction or other projects.
Certain other people who live in this house use the Bowmore “Legend” for the same purpose. I love that term “kitchen scotch”. I have a bottle of kitchen rum, myself.
Alas, I can’t claim credit for the phrase “kitchen scotch”, I hijacked it from the phrase “kitchen whiskey” which I read in a Travis Mcgee novel, “Pale Gray for Guilt”, where it was used by a character with whom Travis is having a conversation. This is the gist, although not a quote, I’m not quite sure where my copy is at present.
“Well, as you’ve turned down my generous offer of dinner and kitchen whiskey, I’ll wish you good luck with your endeavors.”
That’s certainly the context, and the phrase kitchen whiskey has stuck with me for decades now, and I have adopted it as my own