throwback.

thinking back to the days of midori and amaretto sours (seriously, that was 15 years ago?), i decided to make my own sour mix. and drink it with some amaretto, which we apparently keep in the house.

i followed the recipe on a beautiful mess. the whole thing took 15 minutes and maybe $3. and it keeps for a few weeks, at least. it's not even 10am, so i'll be trying it out later.

periodic table of alcohol.

because, of course.

by mayra.artes.

the hour of hours.

 have i mentioned i love happy hour? the happiest hour: drinking delicious things for cheaper than usual AND it's still light outside. YES.

the above photograph is from the passenger. i don't remember what they called that rose-colored grapefruit gin cocktail with the cherries, but it was tasty. that bar is supposed to be amazeballs and this was our second visit. it was better than the first, which was late on a saturday night, and it's next to the bike shop, but amazing? not yet.

but! the best happy hour we've done so far is the one at the red derby. it's in petworth and an all-uphill bike ride, but all the beers are always in cans and the happy hour is $1 off all of them. that makes schlitz tall boys $3 and the following strohs and whisky shot special $5.

[the bag of spicy mangoes is from the fruit guy parked outside. i felt like i was on vacation with fruity spicy street treats. casey was less than impressed.]

36 hours in new york, new york.

about a week before this adventure, dominic, my friend and husband of one of my bestest friends, emails me to ask if i would be interested in coming to new york to surprise yelena (said bestest) for her birthday. he's throwing her a surprise party in their apartment and would like to get me a plane ticket to doubly-surprise her. of course i agree. he asks about my dissertation; i tell him that it can wait for another weekend. and thank him all the times for the offer. (a note: yes, this is an ode to the nytimes "36 hours" series in its travel section.)

FRIDAY.

noon
1. ready already.
i actually look out the window as the plane touches down at LGA, already a little nostalgic for it all. though i was in new york last summer, it feels like decades ago, and i know i won't be back until the fall. i had planned to take a bus to y+d's apartment but i am too excited and get in a cab. i text dominic, who is at murray's cheese. i am happy to meet him there (doesn't everyone love that place?), but he'll be home by the time i get there.

130pm
2. the one person.
since i am to be a surprise, i have pretty much told no one i would be in new york (except for my friends in north carolina who i have begged to watch chloe (one of them agrees) and take me to the airport, which i end up paying someone to do, and my mother, who would lose her mind if she later found out i got on a plane and she didn't know). the one person in new york who knows i'll be there is april, who i am hoping is grossly pregnant but mostly looks like she just ate a burrito (it's too soon for the giant belly anyhow). she nervously meets me at y+d's apartment and we go to mile end for lunch, consuming much of the vegetarian items on their menu.

we also venture to gristedes to pick up items for the party and i almost lose my mind because they sell tins of charles chips and mallomars, both of which i do not buy. because it's ridiculous.

400pm
3. the constant surprise.
at this point, i am mostly hanging out with dominic, cutting peppers and making barefoot contessa's onion dip, which something i promised to do (i used to make this dip if i was throwing a big party; it's always a hit and it's really important not to think about how fattening it probably is.). he gives me myriad instructions about setting out food, who is coming over, and how this will happen. i am nervous about the potential for late-arriving guests and early-arriving yelena, who is texting him to pick her up early from work. it's easter weekend and everyone's gone and it's her birthday, for christ's sake (she wasn't that demanding).

friends begin to arrive (i am a surprise each time, to varying degrees of excitement), as does the cake (and cake plate!) and strawberry shortcake decorations and streamers. we begin drinking who-knows-what. a note: we later learn that yelena does not know who strawberry shortcake is, because, well, USSR.

700pm
4. yes, yes, they are in the building.
it's all actually a surprise. she had no idea. it's insane. dominic's web of lies lead her to the apartment and we were all there with loads of drinks and foods and lots of vine-ing and cake and chatter and helium sucked from the balloons and suddenly it was 100am and friends are having very serious, very drunk conversations on marriage.

SATURDAY.

1100am
5. we've got to do our taxes.
we caffeinate. y+d go to have their taxes done (i know this is going to happen before i even arrive. moving this tax appointment would have added to the complexity of the surprise.) i need to buy jeans, as i am wearing a pair with a repaired hole in the crotch and another one forming (i blame the bike-riding), and am happy to walk around and look at people who don't look schlubby (get ahold of yourselves, UNC students) and remind myself that new york is lovely and remains the nombril du monde.

the new jeans already have bike grease on them.

130pm
6. all the merry.
we reconvene at five points because they have pitchers of bloody marys and eggs rancheros. it is at this moment that i remember that brunch in new york could probably be had as late as 300pm but in north carolina, we are lucky if anyone serves it at all (or it's worth leaving the house for).

300pm
7. not opening ceremony.
the three of us stroll around soho and its surrounding hoods, sucking down australian coffees (i had a flat white) from happy bones and looking for the next, newer opening ceremony. yelena buys a shirt that resembles a shirt she was photographed in when she was four (not to be confused with 3-year-old yelena at the top of the post).

we pass pearl + ash, a restaurant apparently named for me (y'all know yelena calls me pearl, right?).

we've barely finished brunch at this point and are thinking about dinner, but decide against this place because it's so meaty (she later reports back that it's pretty awesome if i want to consume some animals).

800pm
8. named for its hood.
part of the birthday lie was there would be a big dinner on saturday night at vinegar hill house. it was not true (ha!), but there was no reason why it didn't have to be. the only subway ride i took in my trip was to dinner and dominic even paid for my ride (he's really a catch, that guy). tracy joined us--really, it was like i had gone back in time, having dinner with these ladies on a saturday night. i can't really remember what i ate: beets, brussels sprouts, some sort of pasta something. more drinks.

by the time we left, it was late and my flight was early early. we went home and drank amaro (gifted to yelena the night before) and passed out.

SUNDAY.

700am
9. cabbing back.
i grab a cab and head to LGA. the cabbie repeatedly calls me "princess" and makes me guess where he's from (ecuador). i am home before noon. i could've stayed camped out in y+d's living room longer, but, well, work. and i should really hammer out that dissertation already.

the martin jay.

as mentioned, casey and i spent the end of 2012 in a cabin in the adirondacks. without electricity. i had long thought that a cocktail made with porter and bourbon would be delicious and this was seemingly the time for experimentation. 

start with a small glass (likely, a rocks glass) with one ice cube. we used a chunk of icicle, but you might not have access to such whimsy. 

add about an ounce and a half of bourbon or whisky. we used buffalo trace, but since it's a mixed drink, you could probably use blue state or even jack, if you must.

fill the glass 2/3 of the way with  porter. we used port city porter (from DC) but any delicious porter will do. nothing too sweet. none of those vanilla ones.

add a splash of ginger ale--preferably a spicy one. we had reed's ginger ale with us in the cabin but blenheim would rock as well. 

stir with your camping knife. do it while wearing flannel. it's really quite delicious. we've named it the martin jay, after the owner of our cabin and the town nearest to it.

p.s. sorry the lighting in the photos is weird. we only had fire and candlelight and that teeny light you can see above and the photographs just did not do what i wanted.

p.p.s. this year, i am hoping to stop taking so many photos with my phone and go back to the camera. those photos are just no good when you look at them on any screen bigger than the phone. and the filters make it all worse.

prince's plus.

back to nashville.

i don't know what to say about the hot chicken. but it was hot. and we ordered a whole hot chicken, a nashvillian specialty: medium hot, which is pretty damn hot. of course we went to prince's for this madness. you order, then you scour the place (the size of my apartment, which no one would call big) for a table covered by a plastic tablecloth, and then you wait. for us, it was an hour, and totally worth it (though this is the likely end of my attempts to consume animals on vacation).

 you eat it with white bread and pickles. not half-sours or anything special, just pickles.

so let's imagine how the recipe goes.
1. marinate chicken in oil with lots of cayenne.
2. make a dredge with lots of cayenne.
3. spread cayenne on the chicken?
4. deep-fry the chicken in oil with cayenne.

yeah. that kind of hot. and we did not order the hottest, as we wanted to be able to taste the chicken and just have our lips burn off.

we stopped into the patterson house later in the evening--lovely and beautiful and full of cocktails with spherical ice. i am not certain if this is shira's most favorite bar ever, or meat. it's really a toss-up.

our morning came with a crazy bloody mary bar, where i proceeded to put like 12 different hot sauces into my drink, along with a variety of pickled goodness.

 a lubricated morning for certain.

and is any trip to nashville complete without an overpriced yet super trip to the country music hall of fame? no. especially when it includes a poster-size photograph of dolly parton as the statue of liberty.

 

if we had more time, dollywood would have been on the itinerary. in my future indeed. 

in transit.

 

so, she left. well, i rode with her across the country to her new place of employment: chicago. there are a lot of places from here to there: north carolina, virginia, west virginia, kentucky, indiana, and illinois. we made a little vacation out of it, stopping in louisville. it was at an incredible bar called meat in a neighborhood called butchertown where we drank bourbon cocktails and decided that we should write travel books on cities in the south.

but, alas, we only stayed for the night, leaving for glorious (not really) state of indiana. i had never been and was able to add the thirty-seventh state to my list. we stopped through indianapolis, eating bagels on a corner not far from the state fairgrounds but across the street from a record shop.

 

we also saw the biggest wind farm i have ever seen in my life. and the iphones just could not capture the vastness of the place. 

more importantly, we came upon the albanese candy company: home of the world's best gummi bears. so, of course, we pulled over our dodge grand caravan (which was awesome, for the record) and drove 3 miles down a surprisingly-busy road to the kingdom that this is candy company. we left with about $3 worth of candy, all gummies: 12 flavors. indeed, world's best. at least for gummies.

no. 308.

 

nashville, tennessee: a lovely place that requires two posts. shira, alex, and i spent what seemed like an entire day at no. 308.  we went for a happy hour cocktail and stayed for hours.

yes, it was full of taxidermy. ridiculous, non-nonsensical taxidermy. but also delicious cocktails with housemade syrups and shots that involved pineapple slices and gifted salads and other snacks. we eventually ran off at 10 or 11pm or so, only so we could head to another place for some bluegrass/country/picking of sorts.

these girls. i love these girls. and we all love dolly parton, but that's for another post.

fox liquor.

i wanted to hate this place. but it's delicious. that cocktail is called THE CHAMP.

*photo courtesy of alex. nails courtesy of yours truly.

the drink-maker.

casey is making all the whisky drinks these days. we spent much of thanksgiving drinking a concoction of bulleit rye and dublin dr pepper, with a lime, in these incredible glasses at my parents' house. and last night, he made what i have dubbed "the gentle lumberjack:" bourbon, maple syrup, soda water, and lemon. a wintery cocktail for sure.

not at all like in shag.

did you ever see shag? i have been thinking about this movie. the girls (with awesome southern names like carson and melaina) throw their mama's jam out of the car and skip fort sumter and go to myrtle beach. and dance and have sex (one with a guy named buzz) and drink beer.  well, they were a little crazy. but it was 1963. and a movie.

and a million years (well, 21 years) after i saw that movie in the theater, i can remember it all. and finally set foot in charleston. after months of rambling about it to casey, whose age at the time of shag's release i will not calculate. 

CHARLESTON, south carolina. i just knew i would like this place. it was like the time i read about portland (in like 1995) in the magazine on the airplane and i was like, OH MY GOD I HAVE TO LIVE THERE. and then spent many years trying to get to portland, which i loved absolutely.

and charleston was perfectly old. older than the civil war. old, old cemeteries messily arranged everywhere, but beautiful gardens draping through them. and a jewish cemetery dating to 1762. seriously. 

and fort sumter is right there. in the water. with confederate declarations and statues and history throughout the city in a way that is completely acceptable, with no "stars and bars" flying around. 

you just feel like you are in another country. just like that. 

and oh yes, the eating was good.

within minutes of arrival to our rented apartment from 1840, we were at hominy grill. yeah, it won a james beard some years ago. it was lovely and homey and full of tipsy arnold palmers and buttermilk pie and boiled peanuts snacks and i swear, i don't know what i ate for most of the weekend, but it was all amazing.

we spent our mornings with the dog (also on vacation, sleeping all day in luxury) caffeinating at hope and union. it was seriously incredible single-brewed coffee. each morning i chose coffee (all fair trade, of course) from a different country, based on the descriptions on the chalkboard. and a pastry. 

you can see the remnants of the nutella-banana turnover. there was an almond croissant the next day. and a very relaxed casey.

yes, we continued on to other meals soon after. but how would we get to them without delicious, delicious coffee?

we spent our saturday afternoon on a fancy drinking tour. starting in the husk bar, i had 2 different peach-bourbon cocktails. and after the chef brought in AN ENTIRE LEG OF PIG, proceeded to trim it, and then offer a bite, we could not refuse. it was frightfully exciting and decadent. and i knew it had to be something special when casey put a piece in his mouth.

soon after romantic stories of george washington, we went to mccrady's for another cocktail and deviled eggs, followed by the gin joint for 2 more drinks with homemade pretzels and fancy cheeses. and blissfully asleep before 11.

what else? fried-green tomatoes benedict. belgian fries. a huge pile of thai food, because you can't eat southern all the time. lots of strolls through the college of charleston and surprising parks. with streets of houses that are more than 250 years old. that is old old old for america.

and the tree.

about 10 miles outside of charleston, this tree: the angel oak. on someone's property. just growing like crazy. this photo barely does it any justice, but it is the best one i've got.

you have got to go there. next time, i swear i am staying for a week. and beaching and all. 

carolina.

lemon balm in the CSA this week. what to do with it?

put it in a cocktail, of course.
that's gin and soda and lemon and lemon balm.
the taste of summer.