A conversation with Will that happened on Friday:

Will: Are you going to blow anything up on Sunday?
Shu: No, nothing really planned.
Will: Come on… What are you, some sort of communist?
Shu: If anything, I was going to just drink Pimm’s Cups all day. It’s a traditional drink of British aristocracy.
Will: < < Throws rain water on me >>
Shu: So definitely not communist, but probably Royalist.

At the corner of 51st and Guadalupe in Austin, there is a huge city block of athletic fields and tennis courts. This area is home to a very large colony of Quaker Parrots. They’ve built their nests on the lights. We must have counted almost ten nests and about a dozen and a half Quakers.

Gallery album of wild Quaker Parrots in Austin

More about wild parrots in Austin.

About two weeks ago, we were at a Thundercloud and saw a flyer for 69 Love Scenes, a local theater’s production based on Steven Merritt’s masterpiece 69 Love Songs. The play is 69 short sketches, each one based on a song from the albums. It takes place over three nights, with each night being one of the albums. I figured it was going to be horribly bad or awesomely good.

I wouldn’t describe it as awesomely good, but it’s pretty close. It’s extraordinarily cute, and in the good way – not like how School of Rock with Jack Black was cute, but in the obnoxious and awful way. 69 Love Scenes is funny at times, almost always clever, and has a few gaspy touching moments. It’s designed to be enjoyable for those familiar with the Magnetic Fields, and those who are not (for shame, for shame). However, I think I’m getting a lot more out of the play as a Magnetic Fields fan.

We’re done with the first two albums, and I’m stoked about the third this weekend. I post this because from June 10-12, they’re starting over and playing all three albums, one each night. If you’re in Austin and you have good taste, you should go to this.

Amusing promo trailer here.
Read more, buy tickets, etc.

I woke up this morning in the mood for something sweet, like pancakes or a waffle. I also needed my standard eggs. The problem is that I would have to get dressed and go outside. You all know how I feel about outside. What to do? The Sherry Flip was in the answer to everything.

From Dale DeGroff’s Essential Cocktails, with slight modification:

2 oz Sherry (I used Lustau)
1/2 oz simply syrup (DeGroff calls for 1 oz. I dropped it to 1/2 oz because I want to actually taste the Sherry)
1 medium sized egg (If you’re going to use extra large or jumbo, use only half the egg. Don’t say I didn’t warn you)
Fresh ground nutmeg

Shake like a madman. Seriously. Much more than a regular cocktail. Shaking is so serious to this, I called Señor Misterioso to oversee the shaking.

Shu’s rating: Yum. Smooth and creamy. Essential part of a nutritious and balanced breakfast.

Picon Punch! The national drink of the Basques! Brought to the national limelight by San Francisco! My first drink that features the Amer Boudreau batch!

From Ted Haigh’s recipe:

2 1/2 oz Amer Boudreau
1 oz Brandy (I used Leptano)
1 teaspoon grenadine
Soda water

Grenadine and Amer Boudreau in a glass, fill with soda water, top off with brandy.

Delicious! The brandy is subtle. The grenadine and soda water softens up the burn of the vodka of the Amer Boudreau. I can drink 20 of these in a row!

No I can’t. Here’s the problem: The Amer Boudreau batch is about 20% 100 proof vodka. So with 2 1/2 ounces, you get almost a shot of vodka. So yeah, WOW. Much more potent than I expected. At about three quarters of the way through, shit got *real*. Quoting Gob, “I made a huge mistake.”

Tuesday morning, I hear a crash in the kitchen. It doesn’t sound too bad, but when I get out there, I discover our youngest cat and spawn from Hell, Festy, knocked over my bottle of Green Chartreuse. A bottle costs about $50 and the thing was about 1/3 full. So the little brat flushed $16 down the toilet. The real horror was, knowing my schedule, I wouldn’t be able to get a new bottle that day.

In other words, no Last Word for me that night. Tragedy of tragedies indeed.

Luckily, that evening, the best bartender in Austin, Lara Nixon just gave me this little bottle she got recently from a trip out to the Chartreuse Monastery. You can’t buy mini bottles like this in the U.S. It’s the cutest thing ever. Most importantly, I got my Last Word that night. Thanks, Lara!

And of course, Señor Misterioso is involved with this intriguing mystery.

So I got an Oregon 450. A couple of nights ago, I go online to buy a city map for it. Great! Garmin allows you to buy the maps online and download it for instant installation! Awesome!

Not so much. I go through the process and I get an error at the very end of the payment submission. “Try again” it says. I did. Just to make sure, I went to my bank’s site and found no charges, so no harm, no foul. I tried two more times, changing really the billing name parameter. Same error.

I wonder if it’s a browser issue. I was using Safari. I switched to Firefox. It works! Ok, Garmin, you suck, but at least I have my maps.

Fast forward to today. This morning, There’s FIVE charges from Garmin. $560 total. So they report an error to the user, the maps are not available for download on my account page, meaning in their eyes, the transaction truly never did go through. However, their payment system sure considered it a successful transaction.

This is what happens when you try to follow the rules. Garmin’s whole scheme sucks so bad in many ways. They lock maps to device serial numbers and owner information. They say this is to help prevent theft, but it’s really to prevent software piracy. The problem is 1) Pirates have long circumvented this. For the past three years, you can download maps on torrent sites and bypass this. 2) It hurts the resell value of your devices because you have to tell Garmin you sold this device and give them the new owner’s info, etc. Of course, Garmin doesn’t mind that the used device market is being damaged at all. That’s just a side benefit.

Moreover, their account management website has always sucked. They use confusing terminology, there are technical errors all the time, and the interface is confusing.

This sucks because their devices are always so awesome. How can a company be so amazingly good at one thing then hire a bunch of buffoons to run other parts of their business?

I called Chase, which has surprisingly good customer service. They credited my account and marked those transaction. If they go through, I’m reporting this as fraud. Good. I hope Chase marks those idiots at Garmin as thieves.

Back in November, under orders from my friend Sean, I purchased Ted Haigh’s Vintage Spirits and Forgotten Cocktails. In it, there is a recipe for the Brooklyn cocktail. Now, I have a very personal relationship with the borough of Brooklyn. I love the Dodgers, and I never really understood why. I have a weird fascination with Park Slope. The only reason I can think of is that I lived there in a past life, from about early to mid 1940’s to 1960-ish. I am serious as a heart attack about this theory. It is only natural that I *had* to make the cocktail named after my favorite borough.

So, ok. Brooklyn cocktail. 2 ounces rye, 3/4 ounce dry vermouth, 2 teaspons Amer Picon, and 2 teaspons Maraschino. Rye? Check. Dry vermouth? Check. Maraschino? Check. What in the world is this Amer Picon? Long story short, it’s a French orange liqueur. The problem is that 1) It’s sold in France, and I’d have to order it online. 2) They changed the recipe in the 1970’s. They lowered the proof and the orangeness. Torani makes a substitute, but it’s still nowhere near the same. After some googling, I found Jamie Boudreau’s Amer Picon substitute, the Amer Boudreau. Who’s Jamie Boudreau? One of Seattle’s best bartenders. God bless you, Seattle. You have given us not only the Amer Boudreau, but Murray Stenson of Zig Zag brought back the Last Word, my favorite drink. I read The Stranger on a regular basis. I love you so much, Seattle. You’re so classy. You’re the best city in the whole wide world. I wish I was there right now and not in this trashy sauna called Austin.

Back on topic again, I set out on a quest to make Amer Boudreau. First step – eating a lot of oranges and saving the peels. I used California Navels. I ordered the Ramazzotti Amaro from Crown Wine and Spirits in Florida because Texas conspires against liquor. Two months later, I had my very own batch of Amer Boudreau.

Oh man is it ever delicious straight. The other night, I concluded my journey. I made the Brooklyn. It was totally awesome. Hands down my favorite rye-based drink. The vermouth is balanced out, and very hidden. The intent is for it to be a supporting spirit, and it plays the role wonderfully. The rye, I used (ri)1, is beautifully tamed. The star of the drink is, of course, the Amer Boudreau. Even though it’s only two teaspoons, it is very present and very forward.

Just think. You probably will never see this on the menu at a bar. And if you did, I seriously doubt any bar would go through the trouble of making the Amer Boudreau. They’ll probably order the shell-of-its-former-self, the Amer Picon, or the American substitute, the Torani Amer. Shu Chow recommends you partying like it’s 1899 by going through the Amer Boudreau process. You’ll learn a lot about yourself. Then make yourself a Brooklyn. Well worth it.

Wow, imagine that. A politician who’s worried about solving problems and not about a reelection. By the way, congrats, Rand Paul!

Here is a history of my relationship with alcohol.

My first drink came at age 17. It was a Long Island Ice Tea purchased by a girlfriend who was of age. I didn’t abuse her legal powers, though. Maybe a glass of wine here and there, another Long Island once in a while, but that was about it.

Then came college. It was embarrassingly typical – Coors, Boone’s, Zima, MGD, and Jose Cuervo. We all knew it was crap, but it was a rite of passage, so we did it anyway.

After college, my first real job had me end up in a department where I was one of two guys. The others were all women in their 30’s. Whenever there was Happy Hour drinks, it was basically naive me and a bunch of mid 30’s women. They introduced me to Cosmos, and not the good kind. I’m talking about the Sex and the City kind. Immediately it didn’t really feel right. Something was very, very wrong. I felt awkward and dirty.

I needed something else. I needed a signature drink. At work, we took a winery tour once. That was full of edutainment but let’s face it: Wine doesn’t taste great. It’s kind of interesting, but all your major wine types have basically the same flavor profile. Did I want to spend the rest of my life as another boring, new money douchebag that blahs and blahs on and on about the subtleties of Pinot A versus Pinot B? Anyone that wastes their time on that is a bullshitter anyway. It’s scientifically proven.

I remember the day so vividly. It was at one of these Happy Hour gatherings with my coworkers at Bistro 33 in Sacramento. I expressed my reservations about the Cosmo to the bartender. He said, “Yeah it’s a little…” and did that thing with the outstretched hand, palm down “iffy” rotation motion.

I asked, “So what manly thing should I drink instead?”

“You want Scotch,” he said, “with some water and a twist.”

From that point on till maybe about 2 years ago, so let’s say between the ages of 24-34, it was Scotch Scotch Scotch Scotch Scotch Scotch and more Scotch. I went from blendeds to singles very quickly. I dropped the water. It was always either on the rocks or straight. I dove right into the Islays. Highlands, Speysides, then Lowlands. Scotch Scotch Scotch Scotch. I WAS A MAN. Or more like I was afraid of getting myself into a Cosmo situation again.

Scotch and I learned to love each other like Hindus in an arranged marriage. Don’t get me wrong. I still very much like Scotch and just finished of a bottle of Speyside a few nights ago. A couple of years ago, though, my friends Sean and Brenda kept going on and on about Tiki this, Tiki that. They were knee deep in the Tiki movement and they were dragging me into it. Slowly, they got me into the cocktail scene more and more. I had a favorite drink – the Suffering Bastard. Then I had a new favorite drink – The Last Word. Then another one – The Latest Word. It continued on and on. Campbell Apartment, Varnish, Bourbon and Branch, Tiki Ti. We went to all the swanky places. Next thing I knew I knew more about gin than the average guy on the street, and I was in the Cocktail Movement, too.

Three months ago, my sister in law, Jessi, alerted my of the Tipsy Tech class. Taught by Austin bartenders Lara Nixon and David Alan, it’s basically cocktails and spirits from a historical and culinary perspective. We signed up, took the class and it just ended. We learned in detail about different type of spirits, classic cocktails, and strange ingredients.

Why is this all important? It’s really just a long winded explanation that 1) There’s a new “Booze” category 2) The next few posts will be alcohol related 3) Vodka sucks.