(no subject)

So apparently one of the Canadians upstairs is embarking on a research project on the gay history of the University of Chicago. I'm hazy on the scope of this project and its goals, all I know so far is that it's turned up this:



(Yes, I still have that dress. No, I cannot fit into it any more.)

Bears with me

I love my wine-drinking friends and my beer-drinking friends and even my teetotaler friends, but, boy, is it ever nice to invite over some real cocktail drinkers for a change. Of every drink I made, I poured a shot for myself, so I got to try out a Bombay, a Depth Charge, and an Incredible in addition to making a Royal Union for myself and breaking into the Armagnac Nuphy brought us a while back. (It's an hors d'age Marie Duffau and it's really quite nice.)

What they all have in common is cognac, though I couldn't find ours and ended up using a Spanish brandy instead (except for the Bombay). Of the three, I think I liked the Depth Charge the most. There's an equal amount of Calvados with grenadine and lemon juice as mixers, so it ends up pretty balanced and with a pretty red tint. The Bombay was complex but--in the words of an experienced taster--"a little flat in the middle". He stirred in some lemon juice and pronounced it a great improvement. The Incredible I've made before trying to find a good use for the Orchard Cherry; here it's combined with Chartreuse for an interesting fruity-herby effect.

Dinner was simple. After all, when you're cooking up a standing rib roast from a real butcher, you don't want much to distract from it. For dessert, I heated up the pumpkin purée (after mistakenly defrosting last year's applesauce) and made a custard using a streamlined version of the instructions I followed before for pie. It was a bit of a flop. I made the last-minute decision to use a bain-marie, which dilated the cooking time to the point where it was going to throw off monshu's time plan, so I had to fire up the heat to get it out of the oven. The result was a runnier custard than before (as I put it away I noticed it was beginning to weep) with a weaker flavour. So enough experimenting; next time I'm doing the recipe exactly as written.

Our guests were Scruffy and Graysong, two interesting men the GWO wants to know better. They've been coming to my cocktail nights for about a year, but those kick off after the Old Man's bedtime. What did we talk about? Oh, cute guys, our cats, food allergies--what do middle-aged gay men talk about these days? Graysong and I spent a fair bit of time trying to talk Scruffy out of his tribal prejudice against pork (really, how can anyone say pork chops are "disgusting"?) but to no avail; however, he eats bacon, so there is still hope. It seems whenever I proclaim anyone in my social orbit a great new find, it's their cue to flip out on me and disappear, but they've been around long enough at this point that I think the curse may be off.