So, yeah, the overtime is still kicking my ass. I leave home at 8, I get home 12 hours later, and I don’t feel like much other than the classics–aviation, martini, old fashioned, Manhattan, etc. Not much creativity these days. I do have a pretty bottle of Canton ginger liqueur that I’m playing with (more [...]

What do you drink with oysters on the half shell? Jen and I usually have wine, normally a Muscadet, but we recently found ourselves with BeauSoleil oysters but no appropriate wine.

So Jen challenged me to come up with an appropriate cocktail to pair with oysters. We wanted something crisp, aromatic, and lightly briny. We had [...]

Jen and I dine out a lot, and one thing I want to discuss in this space is the cocktail menus in the restaurants we frequent.

We’ve all been to eateries that don’t have a full bar; they’re beer and wine only or–horrors!–they have no liquor license at all.

Worse, in some ways, are the places that [...]

For no good reason, I’ve absented this blog for a few days, but I wanted to point out this good article from the LA Times about boutique gins. (Be sure to check out the tasting notes while you’re there, too.) Among the gins reviewed are several that Jen and I have talked about sampling ourselves–most [...]

What’s pig, but a foodie-blog emotion?

I know, this ain’t a cooking blog, but one thing I do want to discuss here is using spirits in cooking. I’m just a novice here, but it should be fun to discuss what works well for us and what fails miserably.

One night last week, my lovely wife brought home [...]

Stimulate your palate with some fun apéritifs, courtesy of the fourth Mixology Monday (hosted this go-around by Jimmy Patrick of jimmy’s cocktail hour).

Jen and I wanted to try something a little different this time. Since we so often get apéritifs along with appetizers when we’re out a good restaurant, we talked about doing some food [...]

Jen just noticed the following ice-cream flavors on the website for il laboratorio del gelato:

aromatic bitters orange bitters peach bitters

Wow, those sound great. I doubt il laboratorio has them always available, but I swear on the graves of Bruce Wayne’s parents, I’ll not rest until those killers are safely imprisoned in my belly.