Okay, this is not what I was expecting to post about today. But then it happened and it is so freaking amazing and hooray!

So, I posted a list a little while ago of a few things I wanted for my birthday. Not really because I expected to get them, mostly as a reminder for myself. But I didn’t send that list to my parents.

Today, before dinner, my mother says to me, “we need to talk about your birthday present. Do you want it today?”

And I was like, “uhh, my birthday is more than a month off.”

My mother replied by saying that my present was something I could use if I had it now, and I might like having it now as opposed to later. So I told her that it was up to you.

“I hate to admit, though,” I said to my mother. “I feel a little bad. I have a birthday present list and I never sent it to you.”

“Well,” said my mother. “Send it to me now, and I won’t look at it until after you open your present, and you can tell me if it was on your list.”

I was doubtful that it was on my list. I told my mother that the list was very short, but mostly expensive things. (It is.) I also told her that it was up to her. If she thought it was more useful to give me my present now, she could give it to me now.

Anyway, we ate our delicious dinner (of which I took plentiful photos.) At the end of dinner, my parents asked again if we should get out the birthday present. I think I asked if it was something I could use for the rest of the summer, and my father said no, it was something I could use for the rest of my life. So I asked if it was a vibrator. I was told that this present had better last longer than a vibrator. And then my mother brings out a HUGE HONKING BOX.

I looked at the box. The box needed a knife to open it. I took my butter knife from the dinner table and went to work.

The box was full of brown paper. I pulled off the paper. Here is my reaction:

“IT IS ONE OF THE THINGS ON MY LIST!” I exclaimed.

Can you guess what it is? I promptly took it out of the box, and as it was too large to hug, I sat on it:

My father got concerned about me sitting on the box for such an expensive gift. Now can you guess what it is? Hint: it is not a vibrator.

(My mother kept trying to get me to pose for photos in spite of the fact that I I pointed out to her that I am in cruddy gardening clothes and my hair is a giant puffball today anyway so I wasn’t particularly concerned about these looking like glamor shots. I posed anyway, but these are the less-posed pictures of the bunch)

Can you tell what it is from that photo? If you can’t, you should be able to tell now:

OH MY GOD NEXT STEP IS WORLD DOMINATION. YESSSSS. OR AT LEAST FIORDILATTE.

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Here’s our nifty little strawberry patch:

They are covered, as you can see, with a little tent of netting that is high enough for people to go inside to pick the berries, and also high enough to keep birds away from all but the berries very, very close to the outer perimeter. We still get some slugs this way, but it is the best way to keep your berries from being eaten before you get to do the eating! Notice also that the wide netting means that bees can get in to pollinate! They are good at that.

When the strawberries are ripe, you go under the netting and pick them. Here’s a ripe strawberry along with some not-yet-ripe ones!

So pretty and red!

So far, we are getting tons of strawberries this year:

We got about 3-4 quarts the first week of strawberry picking, and 4-5 quarts the second. And they are big and ripe and juicy. We’ve had strawberries for a couple years now, and each week, we’re getting as many strawberries as we’ve ever gotten in a year before, which is pretty exciting!

We made a whole lot of things with strawberries in them! For two weekends!

Let’s start with a cocktail. I’m going to give you three variations on a similar recipe. I made one for my dad, who pretty much only drinks highballs and punchy drinks with a very little liquor in them, and then I’ll show you how to make a stronger and more sophisticated drink in two ways– one sweeter, one less sweet.

Here’s the Daddy Version:

Daddy Version Ingredients:

1.5 oz vodka
.5 oz limoncello
6 strawberries
Lemonade or Pink Lemonade to top

Daddy Version Instructions:

1) Put vodka in glass with strawberries cut into chunks and muddle well until strawberries are thoroughly pulped.
2) Add ice, limoncello, and lemonade

Here’s the Lady Version:

Lady Version #1 Ingredients:

2.5 oz Dogfish Head Brown Honey Rum
.5 oz limoncello
.5 oz cognac
4 fresh strawberries, plus one for garnish
1 Tablespoon fresh lemon thyme

Lady Version #2 Ingredients:

2 oz Dogfish Head Brown Honey Rum
.5 oz limoncello
1 oz cognac
2 fresh strawberries, plus one for garnish
1 Tablespoon fresh lemon thyme

Lady Version Instructions

1) Add rum, thyme and strawberries (cut into chunks) to shaker with ice
2) Muddle well until strawberries are fully pulped.
3) Add cognac and limoncello
4) Shake!
5) strain into chilled cocktail glasses and serve with a whole strawberry.

But that is only Strawberry Cocktail #1!

Fraise

Ingredients
2.5 oz Rogue Pink Spruce Gin
.5 oz Ramazzotti
.5 oz Domaine de Canton
3 ripe strawberries plus one for garnish
2 dashes Fee Bros Whiskey Barrel Bitters

Instructions
1) Add gin and strawberries (cut into chunks) to shaker with ice
2) Muddle well until strawberries are fully pulped.
3) Add Ramazzotti and Domaine de Canton
4) Shake!
5) strain into chilled cocktail glasses, add two dashes bitters, and serve with a whole strawberry.

This past week, I had the sublime pleasure of having quizzicalsphinx in the house. The thing is, when it comes to our imbibement habits, we could not be more dissimilar. In that I drink copious amounts of excellent liquor and she drinks non-alcoholic beverages only.

So I made her her own very special strawberry drink:

Red Beer

Ingredients
6 strawberries, cut into chunks
3 oz GUS grapefruit soda
.5 oz grenadine
.5 oz pomegranate molasses
Newman’s Own Pomegranate Lemonade to top.

Instructions
Put strawberries in glass with ice and crush with muddler.
Add all other ingredients and stir!

And finally, the last drink, which is a more negroni-style one.

Fragola

Ingredients
2 oz Comb 9 gin
1 oz Carpano Antica Formula
.5 oz Fernet Branca
4 strawberries, cut into chunks
2 dashes Bitter Truth Grapefruit Bitters

Instructions
1) Add gin, ice and strawberries to shaker.
2) Muddle until strawberries are fully pulped.
3) Add Carpano and Fernet Branca, shake.
4) Strain into short glasses, add bitters!

But that isn’t all the strawberry things we made!

My mama also made strawberry shortcake. Let’s talk about strawberry shortcake a little. This is one of my favorite foods. When I was a little kid, there were a couple years when I asked for this instead of for a cake-cake on my birthday. Excellent, huh?

It doesn’t really need a recipe, because all you need to do is whip some cream, make a batch of your favorite biscuits, slice open the biscuits and there you go. Beautiful and delicious!

I also made strawberry ice cream. I’m not as good at fruit ice creams as I am at chocolatey and herbal and caramely type ice creams, but this one came out really well!

Ingredients
2 3/4 cup heavy cream
3/4 cup half & half
1/3 cup sugar
4 egg yolks
2 cups chopped strawberries

Instructions
Whisk the egg yolks and the sugar together until frothy and pasty.
Mix 3/4 cups of the cream and the half & half together in a saucepan, cook just until boiling, remove from heat, wait until it stops bubbling.
Add 1 Tb of the hot cream to the sugar and egg mixture, whisk quickly to keep the eggs from cooking.
Keep adding the hot milk to the sugar and eggs in small increments, whisking and pausing between additions, until 3/4 of the hot milk has been added.
Pour the milk/egg/sugar mixture back into the saucepan, heat over medium heat, stirring frequently until mixture thickens.
Remove from heat and chill for at least four hours.
Once chilled, add heavy cream and stir until well mixed. Stir in strawberries.
Put entire mixture in ice cream mixer and follow instructions for your ice cream mixer until frozen. Put finished ice cream in freezer.
Chill for at least two hours in freezer.
Serve with strawberries, whipped cream, or just plain!

That is the end of the strawberry adventure! FOR NOW!

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Now, there’s a little more of this story I might tell you another time…I *will* tell you another time…but I’ve been planning on making toffee bacon ice cream all winter, and then yesterday I came up with an idea that was either inspired genius or gross! So I had to try it!

Cracked Pepper and Sea Salt Ice Cream

Ingredients
3/4 cup whole milk
3/4 cup half & half
1/2 cup white sugar
1/4 cup piloncillo sugar
4 egg yolks
2 Tbs honey
1 Tb vanilla bean paste
1 tsp cracked black pepper
1/2 tsp fine sea salt

Instructions
Whisk the egg yolks and the sugar together until frothy and pasty.
Mix the milk and half & half together in a saucepan, cook just until boiling, remove from heat, wait until it stops bubbling.
Add 1 Tb of the hot milk to the sugar and egg mixture, whisk quickly to keep the eggs from cooking.
Keep adding the hot milk to the sugar and eggs in small increments, whisking and pausing between additions, until 3/4 of the hot milk has been added.
Pour the milk/egg/sugar mixture back into the saucepan, and add honey and vanilla, heat over medium heat, stirring frequently until mixture thickens.
Remove from heat and chill for at least four hours.
Once chilled, add heavy cream and stir until well mixed. Stir in salt and pepper.
Put entire mixture in ice cream mixer and follow instructions for your ice cream mixer until frozen. Put finished ice cream in freezer.
Chill for at least two hours in freezer.
Serve with cracked pepper and additional shavings of piloncillo on top.

I can’t even tell you how awesome this was. It is so lovely. I really wasn’t sure if it would even be edible, but holy wow, I want to eat it all the time. I am making another batch of it up here at the barn for my parents.

Story number 2: In which Tea actually makes a drink with vodka that isn’t something for her dad.

You know how sometimes things all come together in funny ways so that weeks have themes? Well, here’s how my week went as far as my libation imbibement for the week.

trouserminnow posted something about vodka earlier this week, and pretty much the question of what cocktail there might be that is actually better with vodka than with any other spirit, where the vodka is actually tasteable as the centerpiece of the drink (many vodka cocktails are all about covering up the flavor of the vodka). Which I’ve been thinking about now on and off, because I can’t *not* take that as a challenge. And I have a theory which I will be trying out later this week at home.

Then, I was over at Astor, and apart from getting an excellent little daiquiri-style drink, I discovered Boyd and Blair, which is very possibly the greatest vodka I have ever tasted. Seriously, this thing has a depth to it that I’ve been starting to see in some newer vodkas, but it just goes beyond anything else I’ve ever had.

Then, tonight, my mom bought a bottle of Comb, which is distilled from honey. I love their gin, Comb 9, and the Comb was ostensibly a “We need a good vodka for guests who hate gin” purchase. Because pretty much anytime my parents have friends up to the house, they want vodka, and we have barely any (at least compared to anything else in our cabinets).

Also, today, I sent karnythia a drink recipe, and I know she’s a vodka drinker, so I was messing around with vodka in my headspace to begin with, and then I wanted to try a variation on what I gave her. So, karnythia, this drink is also for you!

Split Hive

Ingredients
2.5 oz Comb vodka
.5 oz rhubarb-honey-white balsamic syrup (recipe below)
10 blueberries
1 4 inch narrow piece of rhubarb stalk.

Instructions
Add everything but the piece of rhubarb to a glass or pitcher, muddle until blueberries are well-crushed.
Strain into a chilled cocktail glass, add stalk for garnish.

Ingredients for syrup
4 small rhubarb stalks
2 Tbs honey
2 tsps white balsamic vinegar
1/2 cup water

Instructions
Chop rhubarb into very small pieces.
Add to small saucepan, add water to cover.
Add honey and vinegar, heat until boiling.
Once boiling, stir intermittently to keep rhubarb from sticking to pan
When liquid becomes syrupy and rhubarb has cooked down completely, remove from heat. Strain into a bottle.

And finally, for the most exciting news of the day!

I went out to Long Island after work, and met my mom to drive up to Connecticut, with a stop at Suburban Wines on the way (which was incredibly disappointing; this place used to have an amazing selection. I don’t know if it’s a reflection of the clientele or staff turnover or what, but while their bourbon selection is still pretty okay, that’s pretty much the ONLY selection that wasn’t completely decimated. It was sad! But I digress. Anyway, I get into the car, and when we stop at a light, my mom tells me to be quiet and listen.

I hear this sound. It goes, peep peep peep.

PEEP PEEP PEEP.

It takes me a second.

“Holy shit, is that in the car?!” I ask.

“It’s in the car,” my mom answers.

So then when we stop the car at Suburban, the first thing I do is open the back door to see the new babies.

PEEP PEEP. They peeped all the way home! It is the most joyous noise in the universe, all the little peepings! So cute! So exciting! Chickens! I do not even know where to begin with how awesome this acquisition is!

I HAVE CHICKENS, PEOPLE. CHICKENS.

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What! The Easter Bunny is bringing grills now!

What is that, Easter Bunny!

Holy crap, that grill is bigger than my last apartment.

We made hot dogs for lunch, and then my mama and I went to the garden and weeded the shit out of that thing. We have so much asparagus this year; I am so excited for the asparagus. We also moved the mint to its own home so it stops killing my much more tender herbs– it was strangling the tarragon, which is not okay. A load of herbs made it through the winter, which made me excited– the horehound, the sorrel, two kinds of sage, the tarragon, lavender, mint and oregano. I’ve decided mint is like the insidious evil mastermind of the herbal kingdom. It smells and tastes delicious, so we don’t dig it out like the weed it is, and instead we let it come perilously close to murdering our tarragon. Evil!

Then I picked like a bajillion violets to try to make creme de violette, but after macerating the shit out of them, I think I need to pick a bajillion more tomorrow. The base for this stuff doesn’t taste even remotely violet-y enough. We will see how this goes. I may split a bottle of good vodka in threes and do a batch with fresh violets, a batch with violets macerated in syrup, and one with dried violets, and see if one is better than the other. If I have enough violets! Seriously, I picked like a hundred and fifty of them.

Then we decided to play with the Easter Bunny some more and made these:

That’s got blue cheese, mozzarella and bresaola with fresh arugula.

That one is smoked gouda, beer-steamed clams, and bacon. Yum!

Oh, the Easter Bunny also brings things for my father:

That is bright pink Burnett’s pink lemonade vodka. It smells and looks like nail polish remover. It tastes like nailpolish remover mixed with Crystal Light. I feel like I should make a post about the drinks I make for my father sometime. In case any of you want to drink like a fifteen year old girl.

Okay, time to check on my violets and then sleeping!

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I took a couple days off work during my mama’s Easter break and the two of us went down to New Orleans!

I feel kind of silly because the whole time I was there I was like, OOH I need to post about this! But I didn’t really have a lot of time on the interwebs so that didn’t so much happened. And now I’m like, oh, umm, I guess posting about my cab ride on the way to the airport isn’t that exciting anyway, is it?

So here are the highlights:

1) There was something I was going to put in #1 and then I got distracted!

2) PARADES. We went to three parades, and only one was on purpose!

I don’t think my mom has ever been in New Orleans for a parade-oriented holiday, unless it was when I was really little and we were visiting my dad (he worked in New Orleans for a while when I was, like, two. I remember almost nothing of visiting except for the time my mother accidentally left me on an elevator, except for the eerie flash when I’m looking at something that looks strangely familiar). Anyway, the upshot was that she was super excited and a little girl we know back here in NY is getting a LOT of shiny beads.

We also got these:

Yeah, my mom arranged them on the hotel bed when I wasn’t there.

Specifically, we got this:

Watch the video. No, seriously.

3) I finally got all the split ends cut off my hair! Doing so cost less than a third of the discount price at Bumble & Bumble where the split ends were NOT cut off.

4) Green Goddess is ALWAYS one of my favorite things, and we ended up there every night that they were open from the time we landed. We were planning on going over Saturday, but then our flight got in an hour early and my mom wanted a drink, so I was like HEY I KNOW HOW TO FIX THIS.

Chef Chris is one of the awesomest chefs I know and you should go and eat his food.

Scotty is not only the awesomest bartender but one of the awesomest people I have the pleasure of knowing and all of you should go and have him make you drinks. When we came back on Saturday, I sat at the bar so we could chat (which mostly involves geeking out about liquor), and I told him about the Easter Peep Cocktail Tradition (God, that last one is the first one I did, and it was really pretty but kind of awful. There’s no picture of the third and probably best of the drinks, which was a rum and chocolate liqueur concoction with a chocolate peep in it, but I think that is from the Era of No Camera). And he told me that if I brought over Peeps the next day, he would make me one! Like I said, AWESOME.

It has Miller’s Gin, Crism Hibiscus, and Mandarine Napoleon in it, and it was super delicious.

5) But now I got ahead of myself, because before we went over there, we went over to Cure, which came on Brendan’s recommendation. He had been coming over to my desk and saying “Pancetta-wrapped figs!” to me. The only sad thing about this place is that it was like three blocks from liret‘s old apartment, and I had never been there when she was living there. Because this place was like my porn:

So I texted photos to Brendan solely for the purpose of making him jealous (it worked!)

6) Then, on Monday, my mother and I went to the Museum of the American Cocktail:

It’s this little tiny place with a giant bar in it and all kinds of awesome cocktail stuff ranging from historic to kitschy. They had an absinthe display, and I found all my bottles (that they had; they didn’t have Tenneyson in the display)

They also had a TEMPERANCE HATCHET.

I kind of took enough pictures of the displays in this place for a whole other post because I am that kind of nerd.

The only problem with last weekend is that it is over.

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This year, I’m using turnips for mine, but you can use beets, rutabagas, celery root, potatoes, parsnips, or carrots, and some other vegetables are yummy cooked this way. I’ve done a similar soup with cauliflower and with asparagus, and both worked well.

Here is what you will need
About 3lbs of root veggies.
About a half-gallon of whole milk or veggie stock if you like vegan soup
Salt and pepper to taste
Seasonings: bay leaves (1 or 2), thyme or rosemary (about 3-5 sprigs), and whole garlic cloves (2 or 3) are good in this.
1 stick of butter or 1/2 cup of olive oil if you like vegan soup

Here is what to do
Cut the root veggies up into 1″ chunks. They don’t have to be perfect, since most veggies are round. But pretty close is good, like this:

Put them in a pot and fill the pot with milk or vegetable stock:

Add in your seasonings and cook it on high just until it boils. Then lower the temperature back down to medium and set the pot top askew, like this:

That will keep the temperature high but allow some of the steam to escape. Cook it like this for about 20 minutes, then start checking your veggie chunks. They should be soft enough that a fork will go into them easily, but not so soft they’ll fall apart. The timing will be a little different based on the size of your chunks, the type of veggie, and hot hot the pot is, so check every few minutes starting at 20 minutes; they should be done between 20 and 40 minutes.

Once they’re done, take the cooked veggie chunks and split them up evenly into batches that will fit in your blender. Remove any twig-like seasonings from your milk or veggie stock (thyme or rosemary, or things like whole peppercorns) and split the hot liquid into the same number of even batches. Take the butter or oil and split it into the same number of batches, and add it to the hot liquid for that batch.

Now blend each batch one at a time. Add the vegetables and the hot liquid to the blender and just hit the highest setting. It should be blended in a matter of seconds. If you don’t have a blender, a food processor will work for this, too.

Here’s what it should look like when you are done:

You can store this for several days in the refrigerator. It’s great with croutons, bacon bits, nuts, or dried fruit. Deep frying thin slices of root vegetables can also make a nice garnish for it. When you need to reheat it, just stick it back in the pot, and have a little spare milk or veggie stock to thin it if you need to. You can also reheat it one bowl at a time in the microwave, but I find stovetop reheat to work better for large batches.

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The owner of the local wine shop near my grandparents in Delaware also makes his own bread using fresh, local (if possible) ingredients, and we love his bread. We bought a nice big ciabatta and brought it up to Connecticut with us, sliced it for supper…

…and promptly forgot about it till the next morning. So, while we were getting ready to leave, I toasted up some slices of the bread and topped them with (Delaware-local) goat cheese, with figs and arugula from our garden on some slices and our new homemade elderberry jelly (which my mother made last week) on the others.

This could make me eat bread and jam every day again.

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The bees are so friendly and happy! I love having them in the garden! They buzz around all day working hard and then they sleep at night and when you open the hive, the honey smells like cinnamon!

We will have honey in September! In the meantime, we still have honey from the people who gave us the bees!

I used the honey to make three cocktails this weekend! Here they are!

1) Ginger Bee

Ingredients for Two Cocktails
6 oz Pyrat XO Reserve Rum
1/2 oz honey
1 oz Cointreau
Ten leaves Cinnamon Basil plus two sprigs of flowers for garnish
1-2 oz candied ginger chunks plus two chunks for garnish

Instructions
Add honey, ginger and basil to shaker with ice and muddle well
Add rum and cointreau, shake
Pour into two chilled cocktail glasses, add basil sprigs and ginger

2) Bee Leg Fizz

(This is a variation on a Bootleg Fizz, but with bees! And de-highballed!)

Ingredients for Two Cocktails

6 oz Greylock Gin
Juice from one Meyer Lemon
1/4 cup chopped lavender plus two sprigs lavender for garnish
1/2 oz honey
1/2 oz lavender syrup
1/4 cup stiffly whipped egg whites

Instructions
Add honey, syrup, lemon juice, and lavender to shaker with ice, muddle
Add gin and egg white, shake like crazy
Pour into two chilled cocktail glasses, garnish with lavender sprigs.

3) Spicy Bee

Ingredients for 2 drinks
6 oz Dogfish Head Jin
1/4 cup fresh chopped mint, plus two sprigs for garnish
1/2 oz honey
1/2 oz dry vermouth
6 rings oil-packed deep fried hot peppers, plus 2 for garnish

Instructions
Add mint, honey, and peppers to shaker with ice and muddle
Add gin and vermouth, shake
Pour into chilled cocktail glasses, add mint and pepper garnish

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I haven’t played the Ravin’Rabbids game (I have the first one and enjoy it immensely, but I have been enjoying the Wii Fit, although that thing is seriously all about the insults. Man! And it makes this sound when you step on it like you’re hurting it or something. But the games are fun and extremely challenging.

I don’t think that one full week of exercising produces many visible results, but I wasn’t expecting it to. But by the end of the week, many of the exercises I tried to do the first day that were too difficult, and that I was certain would be impossible forever, were much easier by the end of the week. Some of them were still really difficult, and make me feel like a weakling, because they were beginner exercises and I couldn’t for the life of me even do them the “modified” way that was supposed to be easier. I still can’t do all of them, and some of them I can only do the modified way, but ten minutes feels like a short time and not an unending amount of time now. So I think I am improving.

Here are this past Friday’s photos for comparison to last week’s– as I said before, not much discernable difference. But I’m waiting till there are a bunch of them and in a few months it will look awesome!

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The highlight of the weekend for me was really getting to meet all kinds of people whom I talk to on the phone every day for the first time! That was kind of amazing. I finally met Hilary Price, whom I have been working with on stuff for a year and a half now, and I was sitting next to her when she won her award for best comic panel! And I met dozens of other people who were all totally awesome (I am not listing out lots of folks for fear I might forget people) and had an amazing time. (By the way, King Features cartoonists swept Best Comic Panel, Best Comic Strip [Zits], and Cartoonist of the Year)

My friends Shaenon and Andrew came in from California and I got to see them for the first time in two years, and then they spent the week with me, which was pretty great!

Friday was a cocktail party which was mostly full of introductions and cookies! Then Saturday, Brendan, Rina, Alex, Alex’s boyfriend Duncan, Terri and I went into the city, had a nice walk around and went out for really amazing pizza.

Then we went back to the hotel, got all dolled up and went to the Reubens, which started off with an hilarious Godfather parody starring lots of famous cartoonists, and ended with drinks at the hotel bar and then the afterparty, where I mixed drinks and stayed up till a very embarrassingly late time of night, mostly hanging out with Jay and his girlfriend Kate, who were both super awesome.

Then Sunday, Rina, Brendan, Jay, Kate and I went for a nice walk along the Hudson, and went back in time for Rina to participate on the Six Chix panel. And then we went home!

All in all, it was a really cool weekend and I got to dress up and meet all kinds of awesome people and spend time with awesome friends!

More pics after the cut!

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