Grown-Up Soda

I read a post over at the Kitchn, called "A Low-Alcohol, Grown-up Soda", and I was intrigued.

So I gave it a try and guess what?  It was pretty good!


It was good enough that I wanted to keep experimenting with it.

Here's why:
-I like having something nice to drink in the evening
-I don't really like soda (too sweet! blergh.)
-I live in Los Angeles, and so it's rare that tea or coffee sound nice in the evening (too hot!)
-I like alcoholic drinks on occasion, but having your regular "nice to drink in the evening" item be alcoholic is bad for so many reasons

So, I started experimenting, and I've come up with something I think is pretty good.

It all hinges on the bitters: bitters are alcoholic, but they're alcoholic like vanilla extract is alcoholic, i.e., the alcohol is used to extract nice, strong flavors from the aromatics, and so you use them very sparingly. Bitters are so strong that they're measured by the "dash". So, unless you're doing something extremely odd, you're using such a small amount in your drink that just adding bitters leaves your drink essentially non-alcoholic.

But they add SO much flavor.  And for someone like me, who likes bitter better than sweet when it comes to drink, they're just perfect for adding that "little something" to your drink.


So. Here's my recipe for "grown-up soda", sans vermouth.

mmm, mango and raspberry!

Ingredients:
-juice, your favorite kind (I used a mango blend this time)
-seltzer (i.e, soda water. Go ahead and get a flavored kind, if you like, but I recommend one without sugar or sweetners. The juice makes it sweet enough)
-bitters. I used Angostura, but use whatever you like best.

Steps:
1. Add 1/4-1/2 cup juice to your glass. (The more juice you add, the sweeter the final product.) Add ice if you want it colder.

dig the Green Dragon glass.

2. Fill the rest of the glass with seltzer.
3. Shake a few dashes of bitters in that glass.

Ooh, look at the pretty bitters!

4. Stir, and then enjoy!


Hope you enjoy the recipe - and please feel free to share! :)


Peace of Christ to you,
Jessica Snell

Weekly Links: Writing, the Drought, Word Nerdery, and more!

"Things I Can Say About MFA Writing Programs Now That I No Longer Teach in One":

After eight years of teaching at the graduate level, I grew increasingly intolerant of writing designed to make the writer look smart, clever, or edgy. I know this work when I see it; I've written a fair amount of it myself. But writing that's motivated by the desire to give the reader a pleasurable experience really is best.

"The Scorching of California": So, this is properly terrifying . . .

"9 Things You Should Really Know About Anglicanism":  Useful info here.

"10 Words We've Forgotten How to Pronounce":  fellow word nerds, click here!

"That Way We're All Writing Now": Oh, and here, too.

"A Brief Defense of Infant Baptism": as someone who is still coming to grips with the practice, I found this helpful.

"Not Angry: At Least Not for Long": on a hard virtue.

"Introverts and Extroverts Brains Really Are Different, According to Science": more personality fun!


Finally, on the very important practice of nosing and tasting whisky ("and this tells you . . . absolutely nothing").  Enjoy the accent!

A Libation for St. Luke

Today, October 18, is St. Luke's Day, and I have a drink for you in celebration of the feast day!

Now, I fully admit that the origin of this drink is a little silly - okay, more than a little silly: the origin of this drink is a pun.

St. Luke is sometimes referred to as "Luke the physician". So he's a doctor. And he lived during the days of the Roman Empire.

The drink is a rum & Dr. Pepper. (Like a rum & Coke, but oh-so-much better.)

A rum'n'doctor.

A Roman doctor.

Groan.

I know, I know, I'm so sorry.

BUT. If you do want to raise a toast to St. Luke in all sincerity, and you'd like to use a punny drink to do so, here's how you make a St. Luke:

To make a "St. Luke":
-1 can Dr. Pepper

-1 oz. rum

Mix and enjoy! (Responsibly, as a legal adult, etc.)



Peace of Christ to you,
Jessica snell

Weekend Links - wine, vaccines, and more!

Interesting reading from around the Web:

"We made a sommelier taste all the Trader Joe's Two-Buck Chuck":

Here's the thing, though: some of it's actually pretty damn good, and could easily be sold as Nine-to-Eleven-Buck Chuck without anyone being the wiser.

So we brought in two devoted tasters to blindly drink eight different types of Charles Shaw Blend, hit us with detailed notes, and determine 1) which bottles are totally palatable and even enjoyable, and 2) which should be avoided as if they were made by Chuck Woolery, who, it turns out, makes terrible wine.

"Growing Up Unvaccinated":

Pain, discomfort, the inability to breathe or to eat or to swallow, fever and nightmares, itching all over your body so much that you can’t stand lying on bed sheets, losing so much weight you can’t walk properly, diarrhea that leaves you lying prostrate on the bathroom floor, the unpaid time off work for parents (and if you’re self employed that means NO INCOME), the quarantine, missing school, missing parties, the worry, the sleepless nights, the sweat, the tears and the blood, the midnight visits to A and E, sitting in a doctor’s waiting room on your own because no one will sit near you because they’re rightfully scared of those spots all over your kid’s face.

Those of you who have avoided childhood illnesses without vaccines are lucky. You couldn’t do it without us pro-vaxxers. Once the vaccination rates begin dropping, the less herd immunity will be able to protect your children. The more people you convert to your anti-vax stance, the quicker that luck will run out.

"Celebrating Epiphany": I love Ann's ideas for month-long celebration! Very creative and family-friendly.

"The God of the Coming Year":

And Osteen’s books be damned, you may have the worst year of days you have ever seen.

"Resolve to Resolve":

In the place where hope meets grace, there is God. God is where resolutions become effective. God is where change happens. Grace is the answer to the naysayers, those voices both within and without who say that you cannot start afresh. Grace is the breath of fresh air in April when the resolutions of the new year and even the Lenten promises look like one big heap of failed attempts at perfection. Grace reminds us that His power is made perfect in our weakness and the true growth in holiness is in the soul’s earnest effort. Grace is sufficient. Sufficient? It’s abundant.

"Rainbow Rowell and the World with No Rules":

. . . YA novels should be written for teen readers, not adults who just want the teenagers in the books to hurry up and grow up. I’m not advocating for the teens in this book to grow up already and have their worldview and ethics all figured out. I just want them to have something, preferably Christianity, but something, to push against, to wrestle with, and possibly to grow into. 

"The Invisible Anglicanism of CS Lewis":

It is striking that as much as Lewis spoke about mere Christianity, when asked to speak about his own spiritual life he constantly returned to his roots in Anglicanism. Lewis might have written about a broad Christian orthodoxy, but the spiritual experience that enabled him to do so was much narrower. 

Links: prayer, American Catholics, "The Casual Vacancy", and more!

"Praying With Children":

Its so important to pray with children, just like it is to do other hard things with them like Cook and Eat Dinner, Carry on a Conversation, Fold a Single Solitary Basket of Laundry, Pick Up the Blocks, Remember What It Was You Came Into This Room For Will You Stop Screaming So I Can Think For A Minute. And so on and so forth. Prayer, as many of us might remember, is a foundational part of the Christian Life and children should be included in it, even if it kills you.

"Where I'm Coming From":

But now the shadows of the past are looming large over Catholics in America again, and the battle to redefine marriage has become the weapon of choice for those who would really prefer it if Catholics went back to their little Catholic ghettos and didn't mix much with the "real" Americans, or expect to be able to hold certain public offices (anything pertaining to marriage, for instance) or jobs (anything where you have to sign a "diversity statement" that is actually a denial of your faith) or own businesses (anything where you have to maintain the fiction that two men or two women are a "marriage") or run adoption agencies or charities where they will be forced to repeat the lie that it is bigoted and hateful to claim that marriage is one man and one woman or that children need a mother and a father...

...and pointing any of this out at all is "uncivil," or so I'm told.

 "J. K. Rowling's 'The Casual Vacancy'":

The catalyst of the story is the death of a good man. He leaves a vacancy. His death is the casual vacancy, which is a phrase used to describe the opening created by the death of a local councilor. The book is about the void left by the death of a man who was his brother’s keeper, and the story shows that the main reason others can’t fill the void he leaves is because they don’t love like he did.

"10 Questions a Pro-Choice Candidate Is Never Asked by the Media":

4. If you do not believe that human life begins at conception, when do you believe it begins? At what stage of development should an unborn child have human rights?

5. Currently, when genetic testing reveals an unborn child has Down Syndrome, most women choose to abort. How do you answer the charge that this phenomenon resembles the “eugenics” movement a century ago – the slow, but deliberate “weeding out” of those our society would deem “unfit” to live?

"A Beautiful Testimony from a Christian About His Wife’s Death":

Was this a good life, NO. But this is what God had prepared for us to go through together. 

"How I Went From Writing 2,000 Words a Day to 10,000 Words a Day":

When I told people at ConCarolinas that I'd gone from writing 2k to 10k per day, I got a huge response. Everyone wanted to know how I'd done it, and I finally got so sick of telling the same story over and over again that I decided to write it down here.

So, once and for all, here's the story of how I went from writing 500 words an hour to over 1500, and (hopefully) how you can too

"Beer for beginners, part VII: Stouts and other British stuff":

I tried Samuel Smith's Oatmeal Stout and liked that very much. It seemed almost thick and viscous. "It's not, and you should know better," scolded Mark, "the viscosity of beer can't possibly be much different from water. It's not like it has a significant fraction of polymer suspended in it or something."

"Then what makes it that way?" I asked. "I can see when I pour it that it's not obviously viscous, but it feels that way in the mouth. Like cream." I took another pull and thought. "Could it be the bubbles?" I asked, beginning to ponder the Stokes-Einstein equation, but mostly I just wanted to drink the beer.

Links: Whiskey, Weight, Word and more

This is a recipe for something called a "hot skin". I don't know why it's called that, but it's made from lapsang souchong tea and whiskey, with a few other ingredients, and it is smoky goodness.
Why do you gain weight when you start a new workout? This is the most clearly I've ever seen it explained, and I think knowing this can save you a lot of discouragement when you start that new weights or yoga routine!
This made me laugh so hard. To my writer friends especially: check it out. It's an autocorrect hack for Word. "No! No! No!"  Ha!
Staying on the topic of books, I've learned a lot about publishing in the past year, but I did not know about signatures. Apparently, the possible page counts for your masterpiece were determined hundreds of years ago by none other than Johannes Gutenberg.
I've been thinking a lot about how I use my computer, and I appreciated reading Challies' thoughts about how he moderates his use of technology. (Here is the computer verse: "All things are permissible, but not all things are beneficial. All things are beneficial, but I will not be mastered by anything." Emphasis mine.)
Here's an easy and super-cute Valentine's Day craft for the kids.