I actually had a really cramazing Thirsty Thursday post lined up for today, but it’ll have to wait until next week — I have an exciting announcement to make (well, two actually):

First up: my Diver Riding Shark shirt was worn by Jimmy on FOX’s Raising Hope this week!

The full video won’t be up on Hulu until next week, but rest assured, it will be embedded ASAP (provided Congress doesn’t destroy the internet between now and then). There’s something vaguely satisfying about Jimmy passing his GED test while wearing one of my tees…

But even MORE exciting than this teeny-tiny step up the ladder of fame is the addition of ART PRINTS to the Ex-Boyfriend product line! While a limited selection to start, I hope to be able to add to the collection of available art prints in the future. Each 11″ x 17″ print is digitally reproduced on 100 lb. glossy cover stock, ships for FREE in sturdy cardboard shipping tubes, and is guaranteed to get you mad high-fives & fist-bumps at your next dinner party (if your dinner parties are typically held at the Jersey Shore. And if they are, the high-fives might be for your delicious rum-ham.)

This time of year is when I usually transition from beer & cocktails to wine. It also helps that Meredith & I made sure to stock up our wine rack at Trader Joe’s when we were visiting my family down in Virginia for the holidays. Maryland really needs to start allowing grocery stores to sell booze. Sigh.

Anyway, a very cool design/culture/miscellany blog my friend Adrienne turned me on to called A Cup of Jo recently ran a fantastic (and hilarious) post of wine-drinking (and serving) etiquette tips written by Joanna Goddard and illustrated by artist Gemma Correll. I won’t load the thing wholesale here, but definitely check out the original post here, and check out the whole blog and Gemma’s other work here; it’s great!

(Via A Cup of Jo; illustration by Gemma Correll)

I am a man, and thus inherently lazy. So anytime I can kill two pigs with one angry bird, I’m excited.

You see, we threw a NYE party on Saturday, and one of our trays was filled with these delicious little bite-sized Asian summer rolls served with a ginger-sesame-miso dipping sauce that was pretty out of this world. However, ginger (being the kick-ass root that it is) is insanely potent — you don’t need much to give something a ginger-y kick.

Unfortunately, it’s sold in its raw, natural state, and we always end up with way more than we need, and struggle to come up with ways to use what’s left. Man cannot live on stir-fry alone.

Thank goodness for this cocktail recipe, though! Courtesy of Nick at CocktailRemedy.com, it features a lot of stuff I like. However, I’d probably make a couple substitutions:

Pear Ginger Smash
(makes 1 drink) 

Ingredients:

1/2 pear, wedged and cored
.5 oz. lime juice
1.5 oz. whiskey (Ed. note: Because I’m a wuss and can’t man-up enough to enjoy whiskey, I’d probably use a nice mid-priced cognac or brandy instead, or some dark rum in a pinch.)
.5 oz. Domaine de Canton ginger liqueur (Ed. note: See Nick’s comment below re: ginger syrup — I’d use that instead since I’m trying to get rid of this ginger!)
Ginger Ale (Ed. note: I’d have to make two of these: one with ginger ale, and one with ginger beer. I ordered a Dark & Stormy once that was made with ginger ale, and it was abyssmal, so I’m inclined to use ginger beer instead since I can control the sweetness by adding as much or as little ginger syrup as I want, rather than taking what the corn lobby gives me with their dreaded high-fructose corn syrup. Corn; I say thee, nay!)

To make:

Muddle the pear and lime juice until the pear is pulverized. Add the rest of the ingredients, ice and shake vigorously in a cocktail shaker. Strain with a julep strainer over ice. I like the julep strainer because it has larger holes and tiny bits of fruit can escape into the drink. Which I love. If you’d rather a smoother drink, a regular cocktail strainer will do. Then, top with ginger ale.

The Domaine de Canton is a nice way to add ginger flavor to your drink, and an interesting alternative to ginger syrup. Though, they’re probably somewhat interchangeable here.

(Ed. note: I was just thinking that dropping in 2-3 small pieces of candied ginger might also be a nice touch, but between the ginger ale/beer and ginger syrup, be careful not to kill that delicate pear flavor!)

I bookmarked this cocktail recipe a few weeks ago — I can’t remember if I found it via Liqurious or Serious Eats — but it’s ultimately courtesy of Olga at Mango & Tomato, a great foodie blog featuring original recipes and restaurant reviews from Olga’s adventures in food-tourism.

Much like Olga confesses in her post, as a kid I was more likely to spring for a glass of tomato juice or V8 (seasoned with a ridiculous amount of black pepper) than a milk shake or soda.

Unfortunately, really awesome Bloody Marys are hard to come by. I tend to hate pre-maid mixes, and usually “fresh” ones consist of little beyond ice, tomato juice, rail vodka, and a sad stalk of celery.

This one, Naked Jay Vodka’s “Slippery Tomato”, sounds awesome though:

When it comes to cocktails, Fall is a great season for drinking them. Cinnamon, nutmeg, pumpkin, apple—it’s all just so delicious!

In the spirit of the season, I present to you Pumpkin Punch w/ Cinnamon-Infused Rum, courtesy of Kelly Carámbula and Serious Eats.

Ingredients:

For the cinnamon infused rum:

1 750-mL bottle of dark rum, like Flor de Caña, Gosling’s Black Seal, or Myer’s Dark
3 cinnamon sticks

For the punch:

10 ounces pumpkin purée
10 ounces cinnamon-infused rum
10 ounces sweetened condensed milk (vegan? Just melt some vanilla soy ice cream—but not that Soy Delicious Coconut Milk stuff. The coconut flavor will overpower the delicacy of the pumpkin)
10 dashes Angostura bitters (seems a bit excessive, but keep in mind it’s for an entire punch bowl)
Freshly ground nutmeg (for real—fresh nutmeg is not that expensive, and you can totally tell the difference)
Ice block or cubes

To Make:

Infused rum: Combine the cinnamon sticks and rum (keeping the rum bottle) in a large ball jar (or any wide-mouthed jar.) Seal and place in a dark area for 3 days, gently shaking daily. Once the cinnamon flavor is bold enough, remove the cinnamon sticks and pour back into the liquor bottle.

In a large punch bowl, combine the pumpkin purée, rum, condensed milk and bitters. Gently stir until fully combined.

Sprinkle freshly-grated nutmeg over the entire punch bowl.

(Check out Kelly’s blog Eat. Make. Read. for more of her recipes!)

We already know about how Swedish moose like to party. But now we get a little insight into the mysterious lives of Swedish elk!

Snapped by Peter Lundgren of Lindome, Sweden while getting some fresh air on his balcony, these three elk were just hanging out, nomming some (let’s face it, probably fermented) apples before they got down to business.

Apparently elk business is conducted in much the same way dog business is, but with input from the elk in the cubicle nextdoor. Someone needs to proof these contracts before we get them notarized, Larry!

(Via Daily Picks And Flicks)

Serious Eats recently profiled Jim Meehan of NYC speakeasy-era bar PDT for his selection of artisanal apple-themed cocktails, and the one I’m most desperate to try out myself is the Nouveau Sangaree. The combination of red wine, apple brandy, sloe gin and maple syrup really gets my taste buds going! Plus, it just looks awesome with the cinnamon-sprinkled apple slice garnish:)

Ingredients:

Admit it: you’ve always wished there was a slightly more convenient, less-liquid-y way to consume your alcohol. Or maybe it’s just me.

Anyway, thank goodness for Camper English, the L.A. Times’ resident booze guru and acclaimed inventor of the Honey Badger shot. He had the same idea, and has been researching and developing the best methods by which to create solid forms of our favorite adult beverages. However, his (thus far) favorite method was actually passed on to him by Lauren Mote, the mixology half of Kale & Nori Culinary Arts, a Vancouver-based catering service. Click here to get the details at Camper’s Alcademics blog, but it basically centers around boiling down spirits to reduce the amount of water, and then agitating the resulting syrup until it begins to crystallize into a very adult-friendly form of rock candy. Once the syrup has been turned out onto a silicone mat and cools, just break it up into rocks and pulverize it in the spice grinder of your choice for a powdery libation, a la these campari crystals:

I’ve got two words for you: FUN. DIP.

(Pic & “recipe” via Alcademics)

Recent Medal of Honor recipient USMC Sgt. Dakota Meyer (Ret.) just had one request when he went to pick up his hardware at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue: dude wanted a beer with the prez.

Fair enough; I’d probably make the exact same request, and despite some push-back from certain citizens that think it’s perfectly reasonable to expect the person with the HARDEST JOB IN THE WORLD* to remain tee-total for 4 to 8 years, I don’t think it’s a particularly unusual request.

*Seriously, if I was the President of the United States, I think I’d have to be baseline buzzed 24/7 just to motivate myself to get out of bed in the morning and deal with Congressional ass-clowns all day—from BOTH parties.

But the most amazing part of this story is the revelation that they were drinking Barack’s House-brewed beer—in this instance a couple bottles of “White House Honey Ale”. Delicious!

According to CBS News, the Obamas bought brewery hardware and had it installed in the White House (on their own dime, so fear not, tax-payers) and officially became the first First Family to brew its own beer IN the White House. How baller is that?!

This actually happened:

Moose saunters out of the woods on the outskirts of Särö, Sweden, finds some rotten apples at the base of a tree, proceeds to get blasted on the fermented (and therefore alcoholic) fruit, and gets stuck in the tree while climbing in search of more hooch. Rescue workers were called in, and were able to free the be-hooved lush. He then promptly collapsed to the ground to sleep it off, and was seen stumbling off in the morning with what I can only assume was a brutal hangover.

My first thought when I read this? “Hahahaha, animals can be so dumb!”

And then I remembered the storied list of places in which I have passed out drunk:

• Bathroom floor
• Hotel hallway
• Drunk tank (yes, in a real, actual jail, in a really uncomfortable chair, next to a really smelly drunk who kept elbowing me all night because he was shaking with the DT’s so badly)
• Stairwells
• Bathtub

I guarantee you there are others, but that’s the fun of getting blackout drunk—memory loss! A less-optimistic person might find that…depressing? But I like to think of it more like time travel!

(Via Daily Picks and Flicks)