Lifestream

I was bitterly complaining in my head about how this Ramen soup did not have any egg..

Continuing in my attempt to document the mixers and liqueurs I've been sampling recently, I will now focus on Benedictine, a French, brandy-based, herbal liqueur.

The name conjures up images of secluded monks guarding secret recipes handed down for generations (see my article about Chartreuse, another monastically themed libation, for a similar background) but according to Wikipedia the real story is a bit more prosaic: it was apparently invented by wine merchant and industrialist Alexandre Le Grand who later tried to link his concoction with the Benedictine Abbey of Fécamp in Normandy to boost sales.

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About a year ago, I bought a bottle of green Chartreuse. I bought it because I stumbled upon something called a Bijou cocktail and decided that I wanted to try it.

Chartreuse is a liqueur made by French monks from a secret recipe purported to be hundreds of years old. It's usually described as tasting "herbal", but I find that's about as useful as saying that something tastes like "chicken"; it's the word you use when you can't think of anything else to say. For my money, I find that it's very sweet and tastes strongly of anise (which I don't mind; I like Drambuie, which also has a strong anise flavour) but also has a kind of "vegetable" aftertaste that I find a bit off putting,

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The Fine Art of Mixing Drinks, David Embury's classic, is notable for being somewhat rigid in its definition of a cocktail. He basically divides all of cocktail-dom into two camps: the aromatic ones (Manhattans, Martinis, Old-Fashioneds), and the sour ones (basically anything with lemon or lime juice in it, though never enough to overpower the main liquor).

For Embury, a cocktail is consumed before dinner, stimulates the appetite, and isn't very sweet - or it isn't a cocktail. As such, though mixed drinks like the Brandy Alexander and its cousins do show up on the pages of his book, they are (justifiably, though somewhat condescendingly) classified as desserts when made the traditional way (equal parts brandy, cream and creme de cacao) or grudgingly allowed to stand alongside the real cocktails when made according to his modifications (basically upping the brandy by four times the usual amount relative to the other ingredients) - though with a loud admonition that the result is vastly inferior to his tried and true favourites.

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Is it just me or is pound cake basically Shortbread with eggs?

Lately I've been experimenting with "mixers". By "mixer" I mean aperitifs, liqueurs, and digestifs that almost always appear as secondary ingredients in a cocktail, but that one almost never thinks of drinking on their own. The intention here is to write a series of articles about each one.

It started with the Vesper, a mixed drink well known in cocktail circles. The recipe comes from an iconic scene in Ian Flemings's Casino Royale, where Bond instructs the bartender as follows:

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After a good run, I've decided to retire YAWT for the time being. I found the workflow I set up to be a bit complicated, and I found myself wanting to concentrate more on writing rather than the nitty-gritty of publishing. I also got a bit tired of the lone wolf thing and I wanted to try using piece of software that other people actually use.

But I still liked the basics of my workflow. I still liked writing blog entries with a standard text editor (Emacs in my case). I still liked the idea of keeping my site under source control, as plain files. In other words, I did not want to switch to Wordpress.

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The Moon is a Harsh Mistress: possibly the first time I've ever seen an Ayn Rand reference in a science fiction novel.

I didn't even watch the debate. Still though: NO YOU'RE THE PUPPET!

UNBELIEVABLE COMPANY!

I HAVE A WINNING TEMPERAMENT!

' "She doesn't have the stamina" says the guy who has been sniffling all night.'

And I fear that if the last year wasn't enough to show Trump the door, this debate isn't going to do it (though it clearly should)

NOBODY CALLS SEAN HANNITY!

TREMENDOUS JOBS!

The thing is, this debate was basically just more of the same.

HACK INTO AMERICANS!  Crap that was Hilary...

Wait, the standard python library includes sqlite?

“This wasn't just plain terrible, this was fancy terrible. This was terrible with raisins in it." - Dorothy Parker

I googled "In defense of the IDE" and got a whole bunch of shit on the Indian Defence Estate Service. I don't know why I find this funny.

Evelyn and I went to Poland this past May, with her dad, uncle and cousins. Her second cousin was getting married and we were invited to the wedding.

I have to admit, I didn't know what I was going to get out of this trip. Poland was never really on my list of places to visit. The Lonely Planet guide, a book whose job is to make you excited about the place you're visiting, said that Poland "wore its charms lightly". What was that supposed to mean?

I mean...one of the main draws of Kraków is...a decommissioned salt mine? A salt mine?

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Reactive programming feels like wiring a circuit.

7 albums

We visited Poland for a wedding. A literal Polish wedding.

I have nightmares about the mess in my basement.

Things learned today: 1. Dry pressed cottage cheese is not the same as paneer. 2. Saag "Dry Pressed Cottage Cheese" still tastes pretty good