the Fuckin Neat-o

Since I've been on the outs with food, we'll kick off this month with a drink.

This one is sunny New York summers with a slug of Texas trouble. Credit where credit is due, this was my mother's stroke of genius. We were mixing our first drinks - in honor of two June birthdays, mine and my mother's Texan friend - when my mom pulled out the jalapeno vodka.

As for the name, well, we asked my mom to do the honors, but she refused, claiming to be bad with names. Physicists are silly. Thus it was left to the children, and so in honor of my imaginary fan club, I present to you:

the Fuckin Neat-o

- 2 parts (oz.s) jalapeno vodka (or other spicy booze)
- 1 part (oz.) cucumber juice (approx. 1/2 cuke)
- Juice of 1 substantial lime wedge
- Strawberries, halved in sugar
- Cracked ice

makes 1 drink

Puree half a cucumber. Place mush in a mesh strainer or perhaps a cheese cloth and strain juice into a bowl. Combine booze and cucumber juice in a martini or rocks glass. Squeeze lime juice over the top, add strawberries and ice, stir and serve!

The strawberries, btw, where prepared beforehand. Halved and mixed with sugar and a dash of Grand Marnier or like liqueur. This brings the strawberry juices out a little, but you could simply use fresh ones if that's what you have on hand. It doesn't take long, however, for the sugar to take effect.

Consider mint.

By the way, genius in the arena of drinks and food is nothing new coming from my mother. Stacie Nunes is our resident gourmand up in New Paltz, NY. A physicist at SUNY New Paltz, she's begun catering friends' parties on the side and keeps threatening to start her own blog. Let's hope she makes good on this threat. What can we do to force her hand?

Things are Happening

So I've been on a vacation of sorts, but I'm back!

I think.

Depending on my travels.

Partly, I haven't been doing much in the way of cooking lately because it's just too damn hot. I lose my appetite at the beginning of the summer down here while my body takes some time to calibrate. It's much more difficult to write interesting things about food when you're don't find food interesting. However, there are some things to be said about that - about the things that have sustained me in my uncharacteristic period of eating to live.

Rather than living to eat. Yadda yadda.

Partly II, I've been away, and I will be away again starting tomorrow. The summer is the time to get out of the dirty south and head north, so it was New York and now Oregon and then a long drive back through California and across the desert. I don't expect to be doing much in the way of cooking on this trip, but I do expect to find some wonderful - in Portland - and wonderfully terrible - see: I-10 - food on my travels. Which means more Snob Reviews.

Last partly, pictures might be slow coming. As they have been. I'm adverse to posting without pics cuz it seems too dull, but I don't know that I'll get my camera set up on the tiny computer for the trip. You'll have to wait and see.

(A note on snobbing. It came to my attention, while I was home in lovely up-state New York, that my snobetarian lifestyle transcends the bounds of good eating. I discovered this when I tried to make the argument that people from New York were generally neither more upper-class nor more uppity than people from the mid-west. I then proceeded to snob on every topic that came up for the rest of the day. Possibly week. So. What does this mean? Well, what it means to me is that I need to really embrace the snobbing. Writing teachers are always telling you to figure out what it is you do that makes your voice yours and to work it. Apparently, what I do is snob. It doesn't come from a mean place, or a place of judgement, mind you. Not usually. Don't be offended. Expect more snobbing.)