I always feel like Himalayans look like Yoda-sized Wilford Brimleys. And the way this dude is chowing down, he should probably wash everything down with some Quaker Oats. Watch to the end for actual video…though the stills are very much worth it!

Have an awesome weekend guys! Be sure to pass the word about the fundraiser. Only 8 days left!

Don’t beat your kids, guys.

(Via TopCultured)
Also, despite her ham-handed promotion of said “twittah” feed, it’s pretty funny.

March is awesome for a number of reasons: the weather gets a teensy bit warmer (I can rock a hoodie without hiding it under a winter coat), baseball returns from its 3 1/2 month hiatus (my wife wishes it would stay away permanently), and I move from beer & wine mode into something a bit more fun—spring cocktails!

Taylor Mathis is a NC-based food photographer who also dabbles in foodie-ism and mixology on his blog Taylor Takes A Taste. He recently wrote a post about his adventures in spirit-infusion that got me super-excited for even warmer weather.

In it, he describes his usual process for infusing stuff like vodka. Some important tips he shares:

1. Be patient: Infusing takes time (about 2-3 weeks), and until you’ve done it a few times, it might be up to snuff based on the need to adjust ratios of the flavors you’re attempting to infuse.

2. Surface area is key: The more surface area of the flavorings you expose to the spirit(s), the more flavorful the end product will be. Unless you’re dealing with citrus rinds (which contain potent oils that contain intense flavor without the acidity of the fruit’s actual juices), you’ll want to remove as many impediments as possible; skins, seeds, etc. Note that Taylor slices his cranberries in half—otherwise very little of the tart flavor of the berries is going to pass through the tough skin.

The most exciting thing about infusing spirits is its relative ease—it doesn’t involve the expensive equipment and long wait that beer-brewing requires. Definitely a fun weekend project worth looking into.

And I highly recommend poking around the rest of Taylor’s site to see some very impressive food photography!

(Via TaylorTakesATaste.com, by way of Liqurious.Notcot.org)

Sorry for missing yesterday; the Ms. and I were wrapping up our periodic “oh right, this is why we could never live in New York” trip. Nothing against The Center of the Known Universe© (other than the Yankees); it’s just not our preferred stress level (that is, EXTREMELY HIGH, ALL THE TIME). Full disclosure: me being sick and it being extremely cold the whole time may have played a role.

It wasn’t all bad, though—there were a lot of great things about the visit. So to that end, this week’s list is actually a 5-item list of our favorite parts of the visit:

Top 5 Best Things About Our NYC Visit:

5. Visiting and catching up with  some of our friends and family
4. Getting to walk down Broadway in Soho and visit all the different boutiques and see what other designers are up to and into
3. Experiencing Strand Books for the first time. That place is incredible (though the organization is not at all intuitive)! If you’ve ever been to the Amoeba Music in Los Angeles, it’s like that, but with books; kind of paralysis-inducing, it’s so full of books. You just don’t know where to start, and before you know it it’s been three hours and you’ve only scratched the surface. I wanted all of their beautiful leather-bound classics (sorry cows! Let’s hope it was synthetic.) But I did pick up a very cool book on modern poster design for inspiration.
2. Our dedication to food tourism is well-documented here, so it was great to discover Cocoa V in Chelsea Saturday night, a tiny, very cute and romantic chocolate & wine bar that sells artisanal bon bons and caramels that are so pretty you almost don’t want to eat them. Following our visit to Cocoa V, we ate at Pure Food and Wine (between Union Square and Gramercy Park) on Sunday evening and had a raw food extravaganza. The food was wonderful, the service impeccable, and despite it being a little on the loud & crowded side, a really cozy, romantic atmosphere.
1. Le Scandal burlesque show Saturday night at the West Bank Cafe on 42nd St. Sooooo hilarious and entertaining; completely made up for the rocky trip up. Not for the straight-laced, but if you enjoy bawdy humor interspersed with occasional pasty-covered breasts (who doesn’t, amirite?!), then this is definitely worth checking out.

Also, I am super-envious of NYC’s cab fleet. Nice, new-ish, clean vehicles with TV’s that take cash AND cards? Sign me up!

What about you guys? What are some of your favorite things to do in the Big Apple? Let me know in the comment section below!

After several days of not cracking 30°F (with no snow to show for it), I can safely say I’m over winter. Here are some things I’m looking forward to in the next few months:

10.Wearing t-shirts as my primary upper-body article of clothing: This sort of ties in with number three, but gets it’s own slot because it’s integral to me being able to pimp my wares to you fine people when I’m out getting drunk.

9. Longer Days: I hate Daylight Savings. Just because time is a human construct does not mean we can just tug it back and forth willy-nilly.

8. Groundhog Day: The movie, not the holiday. I will admit to a very slight desire to trek up to Pennsylvania and see Punxsutawney Phil peek out of his little hollow, but it’s purely out of love for the 1993 Bill Murray masterpiece that a) introduced us all to Ned Ryerson, and b) inadvertently named one of the best bands to ever come out of Washington, DC.

7. Foster kittens: OK, I’m not really looking forward to this; in a perfect world, people would be responsible about fixing their pets and feline procreation would result in a manageable amount of kittens that could all be adopted into safe, loving homes, and the need for fostering them wouldn’t exist. But since it does, I do feel lucky that I get to help out. Because of the cute!

6. New music: November through January is a pretty fallow period for the music industry; the really good stuff doesn’t start rolling out until February. I might do a list next week of my most-anticipated releases due out in 2011!

5. New vegetables: Specifically, fresh stuff from my garden. Sadly, this won’t actually be ready-to-eat until, oh, June at the earliest, but at this point I’m actually dying to get out into the back courtyard and sweep out the dead leaves and plant new stuff.

4. New fruit: Don’t get me wrong, I love citrus, but I’m really looking forward to berries.

3. Not spending a full five minutes outfitting myself with layer upon layer of clothing before leaving the house.

2. Walking to the gym: The only thing one of countless things better than going to the gym regularly is being able to stroll along the Patapsco River on the way there.

1. Baseball: Let’s be real; I would happily watch meaningful baseball 365 days a year. Hell, I even tuned into the World Baseball Classic in 2009 because I was so desperate for the MLB regular season to start. At this point it’s only a couple weeks until pitchers and catchers report to spring training facilities in Florida and Arizona, and I’m giddy at the prospect of watching meaningless* exhibition games. Though it makes me crack up every time my wife calls the winter months the “hot oven” instead of “hot stove” season. Much like when she asked if the American League played against the Justice League.

* I hear my wife in my head right now: “ALL baseball games are meaningless. And slow. And boring. I hate you; you’re a terrible husband for making me watch this.”

Everybody with even a casual appreciation of sushi or stir-fry is familiar with Kikkoman soy sauce. It’s not going to set the world on fire with its relatively pedestrian flavor, but it’s cost-effective and gets the job done. Strangely, they decided to beef up their rep as the world’s #1 soy sauce producer with this bizarre ad and jingle that features, among other things, a condiment battle-to-the-death and kitten lynching, all done in what appears to be MS Paint with a MIDI synthesizer backing.

This alternate version includes English subtitles that don’t really clarify anything, and “softens” the impact of the hanged kitten by instead forcing him to stare at the corner like a dunce. That will teach him to put soy sauce on an omelette! Futhermore, why is Kikko-Man enjoying a post-sex canoodle with a strange woman? The lyrics do not explain this AT ALL. Also, Kikko-Man calls out Ketchup and Worchestshire, but who’s the guy with the yellow vase-head who keeps urinating out of his mouth? He needs more character development.

Well-played, Japan.

I know I just referenced Bad Idea Jeans yesterday, but man, does it every apply to this post.

Apparently Flor de Caña rum thought a good way to spread the word about its new line of rums would be to use it in sandwich-flavored cocktails (which makes some small bit of sense, considering one of their rums is bacon-infused), so its team of mixologists decided to conjure up some unique drinks inspired by American lunchtime favorites, including the cheeseburger, the BLT, and the peanut butter & jelly sammie.

Now, granted, as a vegetarian, I’m not the target market for this sort of thing. But I still remember what a lot of meats taste like. And as a staunch girl-drink drunk, I do not want beef jus in my martini. DO. NOT. WANT.

(Via Gothamist)

It may still be September, but it’s felt like Fall here in Baltimore the last couple of days. Dreary, overcast, rainy and cool (at least in the evenings), it’s hard not to feel the seasons changing in real-time right before you. Between the weather and my recent obsession with seasonal beers, it’s no wonder that I want to try out this Pumpkin & Gingerbread Cocktail.

Ingredients
2 oz Goslings Dark Rum
1 tbsp gingerbread essence
1 oz Pumpkin Molasses
1/2 oz chilled coffee
Splash of Kahlua
Garnish: Ginger bread cookie

Directions
Shake all the ingredients in a cocktail shaker with ice. Strain the mixture into a chilled martini glass and garnish with a ginger bread cookie.

(Via Liqurious, by way of Fun and Food Cafe, who snagged it from Cocktail Times, who got it from mixologist Eben Klemm.)

I love salads. Actually, no, I LOVE salads. Big, dirty salads with every kind of garden veggie present, drizzled with a nice Italian or vinaigrette. But the star of a salad, for me, is always always always the tomato. So it stands to reason that in the absence of lettuce, carrots, celery, etc, a simple Caprese insalata will always be a great, simple alternative: tomatoes, mozzarella, fresh basil and balsamic reduction.

As the weather’s been cooling off, it’s made me crave tomatoes even more, knowing the really awesome in-season ones at the store and from my garden won’t be around much longer.

So what better way to send off the wondrous fruit until next summer than a toast with a tomato-based martini?

This recipe is from TasteOfOregon.com, and originally called a tomato martini, but I feel like that conjures images of something akin to a Bloody Mary, rather than the crisp, clean light cocktail pictured above. To obtain the tomato water called for, check out the following from Saveur.

To make:

Mix 2 parts tomato water with 1 part vodka (I bet a cucumber-infused vodka would be great with this, or perhaps Hendrick’s gin, which has a subtle cucumber flavor) in a chilled martini glass
Rub rim of glass with fresh basil leaf
Garnish with cocktail spear containing grape tomatoes, bite-sized fresh mozzarella ball, and fresh basil leaves

This recipe is pretty open to modification; I think a very teensy drizzle of reduced balsamic vinegar would be a nice addition—feel free to add your own!

For vegans, I think Teese vegan mozzarella is the best bet as a non-dairy alternative to the real thing, as the logs it comes in are most conducive to converting into balls. For the authentic look and flavor, try using a small melon-baller and soaking the balls in some lemon-water for a few minutes before garnishing.

(Via Liqurious.com)