After a delightful dinner last week at La Bodega in Kansas City, my thoughts have turned Iberian.
What I love most in the food world is simple dishes with strong and direct flavors. These are especially welcome when 22 oversized millionaires are pounding the shit out of each other on our TV set. Spudalicious and I started a tradition of Football Sunday, wherein we start cooking and drinking early, then never stop until we pass out. Thanks be to all of the munificent gods, SP has kept up the tradition. And here’s some simple tapas recipes which are almost not even recipes because they’re so simple- but beware, this means you have to be super-picky about the quality of the raw ingredients, no cheating.
After you make these, pop a chilled bottle of fino sherry and start in on a food and drink coma. If you’re still awake by the end of the night game, you’re doing it wrong.
Tapas 1: Padron Peppers
Padrons are a wonderfully-flavored Spanish specialty. You can get them fried and salted at nearly every bar in Madrid, but they are unaccountably difficult to find here in the US. A reasonable substitute that’s easier to source is shishito peppers (or the equivalent Korean kuwari), but you miss the Russian Roulette- real Padrons are sweet, but in every bowl, there’s one that has hoarded all the Scovilles and you never know which one it is until it’s in your mouth.
4-5 tablespoons peanut or corn oil
1/2 pound Padron or shishito peppers
olive oil
kosher salt
Heat the peanut oil in a cast iron pan over medium-high flame until it’s just beginning to smoke. Drop in the peppers and spread to a single layer. Let them fry undisturbed until the bottoms are charred. Flip them over, char the other side. Scoop out, let the excess oil drain, then drizzle with olive oil, sprinkle with kosher salt and serve.
Tapas 2: Piquillo Peppers
Piquillos are what every sweet red pepper wants to be when it grows up. There’s no way you’ll ever find fresh ones to roast and peel, but the jarred ones are usually pretty good. And Trader Joe’s has them at a semi-reasonable price.
2 jars roasted and peeled Spanish piquillo peppers
2-3 tbs Spanish olive oil (you want a good, buttery oil here)
3 cloves garlic
1/2 c oloroso sherry
coarse salt (Malden)
Peel and slice the garlic thinly. Cut the piquillos into strips about 3/4″ wide. Heat the oil in a saute pan over medium flame, then add the garlic. Saute until the slices just barely begin to brown, then turn up the heat and add the sherry. Flame it and reduce by half. Toss in the piquillo strips, stir, then plate and then lightly salt. Allow to come to room temperature, taste for seasoning, then serve. If you really want decadence, grill some bread, brush it with olive oil, smear on some burrata, then top with the piquillos.
Tapas 3: Garbanzos with tomato
15 oz can garbanzos, drained and rinsed
Or if you’re ambitious, 1-1/2 c soaked and pressure-cooked garbanzos, cooled (and this does taste better)
3 tbs Spanish olive oil
1 sweet onion
1-2 ripe tomatoes, depending on size
2 cloves garlic, peeled and sliced
1/4 c dry white wine
1 tbs fresh rosemary, chopped
1 tsp fresh thyme leaves, chopped
salt and pepper
Peel and slice the onion thinly. Peel and seed the tomatoes, then cut into 3/4″ dice. Heat the olive oil in a saute pan, sauté the onion until it barely shows some brown, then add the tomatoes and garlic.
Cook until the tomatoes look wilted, then deglaze with the white wine. Add the rosemary and the garbanzos, then cook until the liquid has turned to a syrupy glaze. Remove from heat, drizzle with a bit more olive oil, then salt and pepper to taste. Sprinkle with the thyme and serve warm over a thick slice of grilled country-style bread. A young Rioja would be an excellent pairing.
Bonus Entries:
No tapas assortment is complete without two other things: some Manchego cheese layered with a thin slice of membrillo (a thick jellied quince paste), and tortilla espanola. I think the definitive tortilla is this one.
For part deux of this review I decided to go for a beer that is significantly less awful than Honey Brown. Given that everybody here loves pumpkin ales, I found a doozy.
This is my review of Grand Canyon Brewery Will o the Wisp Bourbon Barrel-Aged Imperial Pumpkin Ale.
Part 1 discussed some of the biases within the data that are making polls less reliable. Today I will touch on parts of the book that discuss methods professional pollsters use to account for these biases, and their drawbacks. This is the second part of the book. The first thing Wood points out is how the public at large misinterprets polls to begin with. Most people hear about polls through the media, who among other things, have a penchant for oversimplifying. It is because of the way the polls are presented that most people do not realize the confidence level the pollsters have in the poll results, or even how the margin of error works.
This factor makes it hard to definitively state that findings are wrong; more often, they are presented as simply imprecise. Probability samples using the standard 95% confidence level generally have a margin of error roughly equal to the inverse of the square root of the sample size.48 The confidence level tells us how sure we are that the true average lies within the margin of error.
[…]
If in our above example with a simple random sample of 836 registered voters wherein 45% state they will vote for candidate A, assuming there are only two candidates in the race and nobody claims not to know whom they support such that the other 55% state they will vote for candidate B, the real margin of error for that poll at a 95% confidence level is 6.8%. While this poll would report candidate B with a 10-point margin over candidate A, in reality this poll states with 95% confidence that candidate B’s lead over candidate A will be between about 3 and 17 points.
In closer races, this means election polls can claim to be accurate while having next to no predictive power. If in our example, the candidates instead polled at 48% and 52%, the candidate supported by 48% may actually have a lead of nearly 3 points.
This of course means the races could have been within the margin of error the entire time, within the confidence levels, and still come out with the “unexpected” result and the majority of the public would be none the wiser. Unexpected results as we have seen in recent events, have been met with shall we say, less than heroic reaction.
A way professional polls will account for some the self-selection and sampling biases is by weighing the results.
By its nature, weighting entails a lot of assumptions which do not necessarily hold up to scrutiny. It embeds the presumption that researchers somehow know the actual proportion of various groups within the study population such that deviations from those proportions within the sample can be detected. It also presupposes that each group behaves as a block with identical characteristics, rather than as individuals. This could be described as a form of scientific stereotyping, since it suggests that individuals have behaviors identical to the groups to which researchers have assigned them.
[…]
Let’s say the researchers who sampled ten people to determine their favorite colors ran the study again with a new random sample pulled from the same population. This time, a sample of 8 people are selected instead of 10. When this group is surveyed, the results are substantially different from the first group: four respondents pick green as a favorite color, one chooses red, and another three select blue. When looking at the sex of the respondents, the researchers notice that seven of the eight in this sample were male, with only one female.
[…]
The findings from this second study and those from the first are both equally considered valid. However, the first study made it appear that green and red were the only colors preferred by the population. Due to sampling and weighting errors, it completely missed the fact that blue is also a common preference for some. Additionally, in the second sample, a single data point was used to represent the entire population block of females. A larger sample would have reduced the magnitude of this error, but this example shows how weighting can misrepresent the data and increase error while theoretically accounting for sampling bias in both cases. Weighting trades precision in the hopes of increasing accuracy, yet it can actually detract from both.
All Mexicans with libertarian politics like beer. We can say that, because you all have me as that single data point.
Further into the book, a third section begins to present potential solutions towards obtaining more accurate, and precise poll results. The first seems obvious:
Questions are inherently subjective because they must be interpreted by the person answering the question. Researchers require objective, quantified data rather than a collection of individual interpretations. While some question formats may appear to make quantification possible, such as a “For/Against” question, no two responses are truly comparable when individuals are responding to questions with their own subjective interpretations of the question’s meaning. The same core concept, that different people must answer the same question for the data collected to be comparable, is behind the importance of using identical wording when asking the same question at different points in time to measure changes between the two periods.19 However, because every individual has a different understanding of any given word’s definition, the folly of asking questions at all becomes apparent.
Definitions are probably the most difficult thing to define between individuals with dissimilar viewpoints. Lets pick on the statement, “everyone has the right to free healthcare.” What is a right? What is free? Healthcare in of itself is not a right, but a commodity. We can probably give the pollster the benefit of the doubt and think perhaps they mean access to healthcare, which in of itself may not be a right either, but not something anybody is necessarily going to deny…..Wait, what in the hell do you mean for free!?
One can see how such obvious differences in opinions can lead to differences in how one answers qualitative questions like this.
A potential solution is by using social media algorithms to continuously take in information on the user, and by accounting for self selection biases by measuring sentiment amongst a like minded people. This is not without other issues.
In doing, so these platforms are collecting data that are inherently subject to multiple biases,including social desirability bias. Social media posts are often directly tied to one’s identity, so making taboo statements or posting certain perspectives may have ramifications. Therefore, individuals using social media have incentives to portray themselves in a specific way based on the perceived preferences of their chosen social circles.
[…]
As far as samples drawn from social media populations themselves go, there is a fair amount of self-selection bias at work which is closely related to the social desirability bias contained within the data. Many individuals, even those who nominally use a given public or semi-public platform, will react to perceptions of facing social disapproval for their beliefs or group membership by simply opting not to make statements at all, effectively withdrawing from such platforms. Some views are consequentially likely to be proportionally misrepresented. As Anne Halsall, co-founder and CPO of the company Winnie, noted, “Online representations of self must be carefully designed and maintained; a well- cultivated social media account has taken the place of the well-manicured lawn in signaling wealth, status, and general got-it-togetherness to peers.”39
Indeed. My social media accounts all include pictures of me wearing a fitted suit, and generally have little controversial content posted. Why? Perhaps I like to think of myself as an adult, and present myself as such.
The strength of large, properly collected datasets can allow for active proportional sampling. A large dataset may not itself be perfectly representative of a given population, but it is likely to contain representative samples of any given population. Once such a dataset has been assembled, the proper sample for a particular study need only be identified from within that broader dataset.
[…]
In cases where specific representation is necessary, researchers can repeatedly randomly sample an existing large set of data until certain parameters are met and study that sample. Since the data has already been collected and researchers in this scenario are only conducting sampling to determine which data to pull, rather than who to attempt to reach, results can be synthesized without worrying about sampling bias, self-selection bias, or the increased error associated with traditional sample adjustment methods. This sample can even be tagged and repeatedly referenced in the future to examine change over time. It can also be isolated from the larger dataset before again running the sampling process until the same parameters are met in a new sample without using the initial sample group, in order to conduct verification checks.
I am going have to go ahead and disagree here. While I accept that virtue signaling is a thing, and one that is not going away anytime soon. There are a number of ways I avoid giving information about myself on the internet. I use as few Google products as possible, along with other no brainers like using a pen-name. Plus when I go on Facebook I will screw with the ad-bot by listing any and all political ads as hate-speech, and saying that NowThis news is sexually explicit. I get ads like this now…
Whatever the results of the election in two weeks, because of this book I am more interested in seeing how the results of poll predictions play out. I have an itchy feeling in some places, they will be dead on, and in others….well…
This is not a beer for the faint of heart. It is a level of insanity that most of you will happily accept, given you are receiving it as a gift. This falls in the “overdone, gluten-free dunkel” category. The bourbon is rather overpowering, but it goes well with the pumpkin since most of us associate it with sweetness, except it does not taste at all like pumpkin pie. It is one to savor the complex palate for a long time. So if you show up to chug it, you are going to have bad time. Grand Canyon Brewery Will o the Wisp Bourbon Barrel aged imperial Pumpkin Ale 4.8/5
As for the book, it is now available on Kindle…unfortunately it may no longer available gratis, but I highly recommend it!
Ever get a call from number you don’t recognize? Ever make the mistake of answering it? I know I have.
Recently, the people that own and operate the site were given the rare opportunity to preview an advance copy of a book! Being that that the subject was something that is going to be a highly relevant topic upon its release date, I took the bait. My issue however is that I was unsure how to approach such an article. I will say upfront this is well researched, all the arguments made in the book flow logically, and are diligently cited by respected academic sources. Do I do this right and feature a worthy beer, or do I do this right and generate as much interest as possible? In the spirit of the book’s subject, I decided to review the comment total as a proxy for the interest in my past articles and determined Glibs are much more interested when I drink something terrible.
This is my review of Honey Brown
The book is titled DatainDecline by Steve A. Wood
Given the recent headlines going from predicting blue waves, crimson rushes, brutal mobs, silent majorities, et cetera, all coupled with standard internet tough guy talk between all sides, it seems all too timely in its release. Everyone in the media are driving narratives based on polls, that suggest national or local political sentiment. The problem of course is in several recent elections the polls were wrong, most notably the 2016 Presidential Election. We can speculate how these broken polls affected current political discourse, given that both sides insist they are in the majority thus agendas should fit accordingly and the other side can just shut up. The truth is we really don’t know because there is no reliable way of determining that outside of election day, and quite frankly even then it shouldn’t matter because our system of government is designed to respect the opinions of the minority.
Still, there must be a better way of performing these polls, but not until first identifying what is going wrong with present methodology. Because of the complexity of the subject at hand this is not a book that should be reviewed in a single article. Today the excerpts I am going to focus on are internal biases that arguably drive poor polling results.
A cliche that comes up in discussions in right of center circles about polls is that nobody in the comment section claims to ever be contacted by a poll. Personally, I have—on multiple occasions—during the campaign season of nearly every election since I was old enough to vote. The only respite was 2008, but I was in Middle East at the time. I will let everyone here speculate as to why they keep calling me but sampling biases are always a cited reason. An interesting thing Wood points out, is it may not be the biases of the pollers rather than the pollee being revealed.
Canvassing also creates both a self-selection bias for the simple fact that people don’t often like stopping to talk to people on the street. A canvasser’s cause is generally readily apparent, so individuals with a particular interest in a given subject are thus far more likely to stop and talk to the canvasser. In contrast, others may project their negative biases onto the canvasser and deliberately ignore them as a result. While this can help researchers reach certain quotas, it skews the perceived level of support because little information is gathered from those with less substantial interest in the subject matter.
In the last few weeks I was contacted four separate times by somebody working for a campaign, all of whom were looking for information from me along with gauging my interest in voting. For those interested in knowing: yes, all were from Democrat campaigns. Two attempts were from actual volunteers that came to my door. While I do not believe I am an intentionally sour person to speak with, it is something I have been accused of in the past. I made no attempt at hiding my distaste for their being at my door from while maintaining as polite a tone as possible. At least that is my side of the story—it is not like I pulled a gun, or that they can prove in court I wasn’t under duress at the time.
One simply wanted me to register to vote in the Democrat primary. The conversation took about 3 minutes in spite of my having to explain that not being a Republican does not make me a Democrat. The other actually did ask me what issue I cared about the most, and instead of the standard Glib retort (gay, pot-smoking Mexicans) I asked if he had a list on the tablet he was carrying; I thought it would help reveal who he worked for. The canned response, “not trusting republicans in power,” with no analogue for the other side suggested who was paying this volunteer. In the end my only response was, “the economy.” He then left me alone.
I continued further into the book where Wood discusses potential reasons why the polling data itself may be subject to sampling bias. He provides thoughtful suggestions why this is the case, and presents examples with citations to corroborate his claims. Such as:
If strongly partisan Democrats are far more likely to respond to an opinion poll than strongly partisan Republicans—which is arguably the case since these same polls indicate 52% of strong Democrats trust polls compared to 27% of strong Republicans14—the results of those polls are likely to contain bias. The effect is comparable to Literary Digest’s oversampling of Republicans in 1936 by drawing respondents from populations made up of voters who tended to be more Republican than the overall electorate.
That this disparate impact comes at the same time as the rise in narrowcast media, which allows individuals to curate and filter which information makes its way into their consciousness, makes obtaining participatory buy-in from study population members much more difficult than it has been in the past. People are becoming far more accustomed to actively filtering what information they take in. Everything from ad blockers to phone call filters have allowed confirmation bias, “the seeking or interpreting of evidence in ways that are partial to existing beliefs,”15 to flourish in our daily lives.
True. We all live in a bubble of our own creation. Don’t think you live in a bubble? Guess what this website is. If past discussions here and other dark corners of the internet are indicative of the overall sentiment to polling is they are as trustworthy or more appropriately, untrustworthy as the media outlet reporting it. Its to the point others will simply cite betting odds in Europe as more trustworthy or even use crude methods to neutralize the bias in the data (i.e. just add 5 points to the Republican’s result).
Another example cited as a reason the data is subject to bias:
Facebook defines advertising fatigue as “[w]hen everyone in your target audience has already seen your ad many times, it becomes more expensive to achieve desirable results.”35 More broadly, over-tasking human awareness with frequent interruptions and distractions substantially reduces peoples’ overall functionality;36 populations which have been inundated for extended periods are already operating at a base capacity of 60% at best.37 As audiences become saturated with ads, it becomes increasingly expensive and difficult to reach them, capture their focus, and engage them by any means.
Indeed, I ignore things on my screen as I tire of reading it. It certainly helps that many web pages all put the ads in the same place which is allows for more efficiency in ignoring. These ads sometimes lead to a survey. This is not the only bias that suggests the only people responding to a poll are people that actually want to respond.
Although the Bradley Effect has largely been written off by social scientists, the term has evolved to essentially cover all cases in which respondents lie or otherwise deliberately provide false data to pollsters. The concept continues to live on because the general principle of survey respondents misinforming interviewers has seemingly manifested in other forms.
The Shy Tory Factor is one of those manifestations, one which focuses on political parties and philosophies in general rather than specific individuals. This phenomenon was first discovered in Great Britain, where it was found that Conservative voters may refuse to answer pollsters honestly, indicating that they supported the Tory party less than they did. This effect has also been found to understate support for the Republican Party in the United States.66
[…]
However, due to the already questionable nature of polls, it is possible that the Shy Tory Factor as it is observed is in truth a manifestation of compounded sampling bias and self-selection bias.67 This is difficult to reconcile with the fact that the effect seems to be more pronounced in surveys where the respondents have higher levels of personal contact with the research team, but is worth considering.68
Sounds like there is a some level of truth to the theory that in 2016 people were not willing to tell somebody outside their inner circle they supported Donald Trump. To be perfectly fair, I only mention this because it does confirm my own biases.
If there are so many problems within the polling data that seem so obvious once it is spelled out logically like this, why has there not been any drive to update polling methods?
Just as politicians can suffer from record low approval ratings yet are continually re-elected, pollsters’ clients keep committing themselves to the same groups and practices which have increasingly failed in the first decades of the 21st century. Congressional representatives and senators who keep their jobs despite their track records have about as much of a reason to change as researchers who keep their jobs despite theirs.
Right. There is no incentive in changing anything if the desired result of staying in power continues to be achieved.
Data in Decline, by Steve A. Wood will be made available on Kindle on 15 October 2018. Stay tuned next week for part two where I will provide more excerpts that discuss the problems professional polls encounter when accounting for sampling biases, and their failure to address them.
As for the beer…Honey Brown is terrible. It tastes like adult onset diabetes in a can, and I cannot in good conscience recommend it. I would almost rather have purchased another Earthquake in its stead. Almost. Honey Brown: 1.8/5.
Barrel-aging booze is literally nothing more than pouring liquor from one container into another. That’s it; if you can handle drinking out of a glass rather than the bottle, you have the necessary skill-set. I discovered barrel-aged cocktails on a fishing trip this year, and thought “I gotta give that a try.” This is my story (for the TL/DR crowd: its dead easy, as far as I can tell its very difficult to impossible to actually wind up with booze that’s worse than what you started with, so why not give it a go?)
Barrel-aging your own liquor and cocktails is done in small white oak barrels that have been charred on the inside, just like the big barrels the big boys use. I got a couple of one liter barrels from Oak Barrels Ltd., because that’s who made the barrels at the bar on my fishing trip. I have no basis for recommending any of the many barrel makers over any others.
So, how’s it work?
First, think about what size barrel you want to use; they range from one liter on up. As with everything in life, there is a trade-off: The larger the barrel, the slower the booze ages. You can use a barrel probably 4 times, maybe 5. I’m refilling the barrels immediately after emptying them – you can leave them empty, but they need to be cleaned and stored full of water. A one-liter barrel will deliver around a gallon or so of booze before its done, and mixed drinks don’t store forever, so you need to think about how fast you will drink whatever you barrel-age.
To prep the barrel, rinse it out (it will have a few splinters and bits of charred wood loose in it), fill it with water and let it sit for a day, empty it out and rinse it again. It may leak a little when you first fill it with water until the wood expands, but mine just got a few stains from the charred insides around a few seams. If yours are leaking and won’t quit, you can use beeswax to stop the leaks.
Fill with your concoction of choice, right to the rim. The holes on these small barrels are pretty, well, small – if you don’t have a small funnel, you will need one. You will start losing volume due to absorption/evaporation. At this point, recommendations differ: you can either top it off (what I am doing), or you can rotate the barrel a quarter turn each way every day or so to keep the wood from drying out. In a dry climate (like mine), apparently what evaporates is mostly water, but in a more humid client its mostly alcohol.
A new one-liter barrel generally ages the first batch in a week or so. Every subsequent batch takes longer. Taste test periodically, and decant when you think its done. I do think it’s possible to over-age liquor in these small barrels, since one batch of the Manhattans I am barrel-aging was getting really, really woody tasting. Make sure you save some empty bottles, by the way, so you have something to decant into.
I’m using one barrel for Bulleit Rye, and the other for Manhattans. A barrel is only supposed to be used for one kind of booze or cocktail, as the flavors soak into the wood. For the adventurous, this is a challenge rather than a prohibition, and any scotch drinker knows that many fine scotches are aged in barrels originally used for something else (rum, port, you name it). But I’m sticking with the recommendation that I dedicate each barrel to a single, delicious libation.
The first batch of rye took about 9 or 10 days before I really felt the “burn” had rounded off, but it was more woody and not as sweet as I recalled from my fishing trip. It is a noticeably better rye than I started with – deeper/richer, with an oaky flavor. Perhaps most importantly, Mrs. Dean now insists I use the barrel-aged rye for her cocktails, so I will be getting a bigger barrel when the current one wears out so we have an adequate stockpile of the barrel-aged stuff. The barrel-aged Bulleit makes a phenomenal whiskey sour, one of her favorite cool weather cocktails.
The Manhattans age faster – I used Bulleit Rye (again) and Carpano Antica vermouth in the classic 2:1 ratio. I think the sweeter vermouths might be too sweet for barrel aging. The first batch was done in a week, and subsequent batches each took only a few days longer than the previous batch. Doing a side-by-side with an unaged Manhattan, I can definitely say that I prefer the barrel-aged, which has a deeper flavor and starts getting some cinnamon and cherry flavors. Needless to say, I use real maraschino cherries (sour cherries simmered briefly in maraschino liqueur and refrigerated), because the candied grocery-store maraschino cherries are an abomination. I’m using a brighter bitters for these – currently, the Dashfire Old-Fashioned Bitters. I think the more traditional bitters just get kind of lost in the oak and cherry flavors.
In doing a little research, I have run across some variations/recommendations. Some of your artisanal types “season” the barrels for cocktails with port or possibly another kind of booze – I skipped this, but may try it sometime. Opinions differ on whether to put the bitters in while aging, or when serving – I’m going with when serving because I like to try different bitters. Some recommend going with 90 proof or stronger liquors, on the theory that they hold up better to barrel-aging. I can’t recall ever objecting to higher-proof booze in my entire life, so Round 2 will involve a high-proof rye, if I can find one that tastes decent and isn’t obscenely expensive. I’m still pondering what cocktail I might try barrel-aging next – I tend to like cocktails with citrus, but I’m suspicious that the acid will not play well in a barrel.
The other thing that barrel-aging can supposedly do for you is take cheap liquor and turn into the equivalent of something you can’t afford. I think I’ll be trying that with tequila with my next set of barrels by getting some barely passable 100% agave plonk, and see how it goes.
Bottom line: Barrels are pretty cheap (one liter barrels are less than $30 each, or about $6 – $7 per use), and the results have been easily worth it so far. The “work” involved is mostly taste-testing and topping off the barrels. If you like experimenting and getting a little more hands-on with your liquor, either straight sippin’ liquor or cocktails, you should give it a try.
Predictably on schedule the grey gloom of winter hit New York on the 1st of October. This weather is a blessing and a curse. Mostly a curse, but it is a blessing in that I am fully embracing soups this year.
Last week I made this delicious green chile potato leek soup that my husband says is the best thing I’ve ever made. (I disagree, but my comfort foods are all Asian.)
This soup uses zero dairy, and is still delightfully creamy. You’ll need an immersion blender to whir it up at the end and blend it smooth. I use this one.
You can adjust the spice by adding or subtracting green chile. I used sauce because I had a jar made up in the fridge already, and it was a lot easier than cleaning green chiles just for the soup. But you could use freshly chopped green chile just the same.
Right before serving, I topped my husband’s dish with some freshly shredded Havarti, and then I stole a taste. It’s delicious. If you’re #notvegan, I highly recommend you add a little at the end.
Green Chile Potato Leek Soup
6 medium white potatoes (peeled and chopped)
3 leeks (cleaned and chopped)
1 large sweet onion (diced)
1 tbsp butter alternative of your choice
1 cup hard cider
1 cup green chile sauce
8 cups vegetable or not chicken broth
1 tbsp soy sauce
1 tbsp thyme
black pepper (to taste)
salt (to taste)
Havarti cheese for garnish if you're #notvegan
Clean the leeks and chop off the rough dark green ends. Leave a lot of green. Slice into thin rounds.
Melt butter alternative over medium heat. Add leeks and cook down until soft. Add the chopped onions. Cook until the onions are starting to go translucent. The leeks will be just starting to brown. Add the hard cider and turn temperature to a simmer.
Add potatoes, broth, a little freshly ground black pepper, thyme, soy sauce, and green chile sauce. Simmer until potatoes can be mashed with a wooden spoon.
Remove from heat, and whir up with an immersion blender until creamy. Add salt and pepper to taste. If you’re #notvegan, serve with some grated Havarti on top.
This potato soup uses zero dairy, but if you’re just going vegetarian and you’re not vegan, add a little Havarti right before serving.
When one has sourdough starter, one is obligated to use it regularly. I am one of those people who can’t stand to throw out the discard when I feed it, and, happily, with this recipe, I don’t have to.
1. Some recipes will tell you that you do not need to do an alkali bath. They are wrong. It is crucial to getting the outside texture and color right. DO NOT SKIP IT.
Usually, I use a simple homemade concentrated baking soda (which I also use when making bagels), but this time I didn’t realize I was out until time to add to the pot of water. Oops. So, regular baking soda will definitely do in a pinch. You’ll lose some of the deep mahogany color, but that’s OK! I can assure you that the pretzels will still be pretty and taste fabulous.
2. Many bakers, including Peter Reinhart, will tell you that you don’t need to do a boiling water bath for the alkali dip. When I was first learning to bake, I was taught to do the boiling water thing, so I still do. YMMV. Experiment! Whether doing boiling water or room temp, using a “spider” skimmer when removing the pretzels will minimize the amount of residual water you add to the baking sheet.
3. I like to weigh all my ingredients for baking, instead of using a volume measure. (I use this scale.) However, since many people lack a kitchen scale, I’ve written the recipe out in volume approximates. You may need to adjust as you go.
4. You are going to want to dive into these immediately upon removing them from the oven, but you really need to wait 3-5 minutes so as to not scorch the roof of your mouth. Use the time to portion out some mustards or other dipping sauces, and take photos for your social media or to share here.
5. You can certainly serve these with cheese sauce. I use my regular queso recipe, but any would work.
6. These are obviously great with beer, if you’re into that kind of thing (I’m not). I prefer to pair with a margarita if serving with my queso, which is quite spicy.
SP's Sourdough Soft Pretzels
Super simple, super scrumptious.
For pretzels
3/4 cup warm water
1 cup sourdough starter (either unfed or fed will work)
3-1/4 cups unbleached bread flour ((approximate))
1/2 tbsp sugar
1 tbsp olive oil
1 tsp salt
2 tsp instant yeast
whole wheat flour, as needed (optional)
coarse salt for sprinkling on pretzels before baking
For alkali bath
1/2 cup baking soda
4 cups water
For the dough
Mix water, sourdough starter, flour, sugar, olive oil, salt and instant yeast in a medium bowl until well combined. If the dough is too wet to knead, mix in whole wheat flour until a kneadable dough is formed. This will vary based on how liquid your sourdough starter is. I usually add about 1/3 cup whole wheat flour at this point.
Knead the dough until it comes together in a smooth, slightly tacky ball.
Place the dough ball in an oiled bowl and cover. Allow the dough to rest until puffy, about an hour. It doesn’t need to double, but it’s fine if it does.
Shape the pretzels
Preheat the oven to 425F. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper or a silicone baking mat. Set aside.
Deflate dough and divide into 8 uniform balls.
On a floured surface, shape each dough ball into a long rope, at least 18 inches long. The final shape and size of your pretzels will depend on this step. Make the rope longer and thinner for a more open pretzel form.
Form a large U shape with one dough rope, with the open part of the U facing away from you. Cross one end of the rope over the other, forming an X at the top center of the open space with about 3 inches of extra rope at the ends. Twist the ends around each other once more, and bring the ends toward you to rest on the curved section of dough that is closest to your body. Press the ends onto the dough. (See linked video above for shaping help if needed.)
Gently lift your formed pretzel and place on the lined baking sheet.
Repeat until all pretzels have been formed.
Bake and serve
Place 4 cups water in a sauce pan and add the baking soda. Mix until thoroughly dissolved. Bring the water to a boil.
Working one at a time, gently lift a formed pretzel and place in the boiling water. Boil the pretzel for 15 seconds. Turn over and continue boiling for another 15 seconds. Lift the pretzel out of the water using a skimmer and place it back on the baking sheet.
Repeat until all pretzels have been boiled.
Sprinkle the pretzels with coarse salt to taste.
Bake pretzels until deep brown, approximately 16 minutes. Remove from oven and place on a rack to cool for 5 minutes.
Serve with a variety of mustards and dipping sauces, or cheese sauce.
Once again, I am going to search the comments and distill the ones most likely to be an effective writing prompt.
Which upon the dreaded realization that at the time it was August and they already had pumpkin beers out, you can probably appreciate my self-control for waiting until October to actually put this out for general consumption.
This is my review of Southern Tier Pumking Imperial Pumpkin Ale. H/T Bob Boberson
Of course, this also means that there were number of others things about October that people have little self-control in talking about—namely Halloween. Which means today we are going to discuss the top 7 libertarian Halloween costumes, because 7 makes sense.
#7 (slutty) Rape Apologist
This one is actually pretty easy to complete. Just dress up as a lawyer if you happen to be a unicorn female–bonus points for showing a little leg. If you happen to be a libertarian male, just wear what you are wearing anyway, and leave your pants open. The key for both is to simply demand hard evidence for everything, and in every conversation. For example, did somebody spike the punch? Demand evidence that it was spiked, or that there was even any punch to begin with.
#6 Rick Sanchez
I don’t know why Rick is libertarian, to be honest. I never watched the show, but I am willing to entertain any arguments as to why or why not.
#5 (slutty) Gender-Fluid Handmaidens Tale
Again, this is also a simple to costume to create. Get a red smock, a bonnet and grow a beard. Once again, bonus points for showing more leg than required.
#4 (Slutty and/or Gender-fluid) Ayn Rand
Objectively, this costume is superior to all the others, because it allows for a level of morality…okay I can’t do it. If you have the stomach for it, I WANT TO SEE IT. The downside, is everybody asking you why you are dressed like a peasant lady.
#3 Kochtopus
Amazon has plenty of octopus costumes for which you can wear, add top hat and monocle accordingly. However, you can take it to the next level by creating this lovely top hat with tentacles sticking out of the top. Simply add a monocle, some body paint, and you are golden.
Things will get real ugly
#2 Walt (Gran Torino)
Halloween means a bunch of kids are going to be running around your lawn; there is only one effective way to keep them off your lawn and that is a M-1 Garand from your days in Korea and explaining it to them you wish for them to get off your lawn. If you prefer to chase them down, a Colt M1911 A-1 to the face after tackling those damn kids, will also do the trick.
#1 Zombie John McCain
Too soon?
My friends, BRAAAAAAIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIINS!
Its never too soon, Cowboy.
So is this beer any good? You will not like it if you are not down with pumpkin ales. I however, happen to enjoy and appreciate the history behind the pumpkin ale therefore I will likely purchase this one again. This one is intense in its alcohol content and does not apologize for anything, just like all of these costume ideas. I give Southern Tier Pumpking Imperial Pumpkin Ale a solid 4.5/5.
We’ve had a number of vegan recipes lately. I don’t have any issue with vegan food, like all food it can be quite good if made properly. But I thought you all might be interested in an esoteric non-vegan recipe (it has butter in it, sorry vegans.) I call it “steak.”
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: there are times I draw inspiration from the audience. This time around…..
…so this is my review of Cigar City Maduro Brown Ale. H/T Ed Wuncler
No, this is not a bizarre reference to our favorite South American dictator. Maduro is a reference to a style of cigar wrapper.
Let’s take a step back. There are three parts to a cigar: the filler, the binder and the wrapper. Each comes from a different part of the plant, and when done correctly will blend together to form what many argue is the perfect companion to a glass of Scotch. On a handmade cigar the filler is made from long leaf; oily in texture and slow burning. The binder is somewhat loose and its purpose is to serve exactly as the name implies. The wrapper on the other hand is made from the silky leaves on the bottom of the plant, shaded from the sun and providing the subtle texture against the lips and much of the flavor.
There are many kinds of wrappers, some are natural, some are darker and some even claim to be grown in Connecticut. For our purposes, a Maduro wrapper comes from the same part of the plant only left to ferment for longer periods of time until the leaf turns a deep brown. Some will take it to another level called Oscuro, but this adds a lot of cost and in the past has led me to clearing out a smoke pit. Maduro wrappers add a nice complexity to the smoke; often giving hints of chocolate and spiciness. Being that I happen to like darker beer than light, it should come as no surprise that a cigar with a Maduro wrapper is right up my alley.
Steady…See? Nice and easy.
To smoke a cigar, you need to cut the cap clean and plum. Many use a device that simply punches a hole into the cap, others will cut a slit into it, but the more popular way to do it is with a guillotine style cutter. If you have a sharp blade and a steady hand however…
A crooked cut will cause an uneven burn which does affect the smoke characteristics, not to mention make you look like a noob. If you’re going to roll with it my way go slow, and know the cap is paper thin, and held together with a mild adhesive. Nice and easy.
Do not use a lighter, unless you are in a pinch and even then if you are in a pinch why are you smoking? Use a wooden match. Yes, it does make a difference. By the way, Ed…this was good, very good. We can hang out.
Now I didn’t drink the beer with the cigar, before anyone asks. This one is quite robust with the malts but also does have a bit of hops to balance it, therefore it is not a proper Scotch Ale. Like the other from this brewery I tried, and reviewed it is well made and one I can recommend. Cigar City Maduro Brown Ale 3.8/5.
It’s not Christmas, but still. In one of the other cooking post comments, several of the Glibertariat complained that their stir-fries were just not… right. And most of the stir-fries I’ve gotten outside of heavily Chinese areas have been somewhere on the line segment between mediocre and really shitty. And that includes 95% of Chinese restaurants run and staffed by Chinese, but located in white, Hispanic, or black neighborhoods- they’re giving the people what they want (in the case of Jews, pork and shellfish- that was the code word for forbidden meats, “Chinese food”).
So sit back and I will attempt to make a Guide for the Perplexed. I clearly am not Chinese, or of Chinese origins, but I have decent cooking chops, traveled a lot over there, lived in Asian immigrant communities, and am not bashful about asking questions to chefs when I taste something really good, and that has reduced my level of ignorance. The word “Chinese” will be used a lot here, because that’s my personal epicenter for stir-fry cooking. But really, there’s a whole lot of other Asian cuisines that do these same sorts of things, so think Thai, Vietnamese, Laotian, or what-have-you, the principles are the same. Shit, you can even appropriate Chinese methods to prepare Italian-style food; that’s why America is great. Likewise, though I’m a vegetarian, what I’m talking about here is generic and applicable to the protein of your choice. If you prefer dead pig to seitan, you’re still making shitty stir-fries, and I’m still going to save your ass despite that offense to Yahweh.
We regularly fuck up stir-fries. Stir-frying is just a technique, widely applicable and flexible, and we still fuck them up. Here’s a partial list of the things that are most commonly wrong:
Too soggy. Everything in the dish is more like an Irish stew.
Singed ingredients that are raw in the middle.
Uneven cooking, so you get a combo of vegetables that are mushy and raw.
Gloppy. There’s a weird sauce-fetish that I think derives from old school American Chinese take-outs. The ingredients are drowned in a thick gooey brown or white sauce. And the sauces’ flavors tend to dominate the dish as well.
Sweet. And the worst offender is the sugar-fetish.
In order to help you avoid the common traps, I’ve got a couple of recipe-ish things here, but what I really want to harp on is some stupidly simple methods which come up again and again. While I’m at it, I’ll also beat you up about the shitty equipment you use. I hope that one or another of my random pieces of brain lint give you an easy fix so you’ll stop making shitty stir-fries.
Step One: Ingredients
The rule of thumb for good Chinese cooking is 60-30-10. 60% of your time should be seeking and obtaining good ingredients, 30% of your time doing preps, and 10% or less actually cooking.
By “good ingredients,” I don’t mean “exotic ingredients,” but rather quality stuff whose flavors and textures don’t need obscuring. The Chinese have been great about adapting their cuisine to local ingredients and freely appropriating. Yeah, it’s fun to use things like Szechuan pickled radish or fermented black beans, but that won’t make your shitty stir-fry less shitty. It will just be shitty but now exotically shitty. Here’s a crazy idea: buy great green beans or peppers or bean sprouts or mushrooms or chicken/beef/pork/seafood and don’t worry as much about the spices and condiments. Now you have a shot at a decent dish, even if you’re fresh out of huangdou jiang.
If you use canned bean sprouts or green beans or asparagus, I will personally come over and explain your porn history to your spouse and children.
The only real necessities peculiar to Chinese stir-fry cooking are soy sauce (have both dark and light on hand), toasted sesame oil, and Shaoxing cooking wine. Use a high smoke-point oil like peanut. All else is negotiable; I keep a variety of pastes, spices, and vinegars handy for specialty dishes, but my everyday stir fries do fine without ’em. Whatever you do, avoid the brand name generic “stir fry sauces.” Read the ingredients; most of them lead off with water and sugar. There will be other forms of sugar listed as well. And xantham gum for extra gloppiness. That stuff is a sure path to shittiness. Unless you like shitty, in which case, go get some deep dish with pineapple and spare the rest of us.
MSG frankly is rather common and not the devil that excess sugar is. Use it wisely and sparingly, but don’t reflexively avoid it.
Step Two: Tools
Since prep should be an outsize part of your time investment, it goes without saying that you need really good sharp knives to make the work go smoothly and quickly. I have a rather, um, eclectic collection. My default knife for stir-fry prep is a cheap Chinese cleaver. It says “stainless” on it and it isn’t. Which is OK, it takes a nice edge, but needs honing every ten minutes or so. Which is also OK because I bought it about 40 years ago for $8 at a Chinese grocery, given it a lot of hard use over the decades, and it’s still doin’ its thing. So while a $300 Shun is a delightful thing, it’s not really a necessity- I didn’t see many of them used in great kitchens in China.
My second-most used knife for stir-fry prep is also a cheapie, this one a 10″ Victorinox. It feels good in the hand, sharpens easily, and has held up well since we got it a few years back. Costs less than a couple of movie tickets and popcorn.
Victorinox Fibrox Pro Chef’s Knife, 8-Inch Chef’s FFP (I use a 10″ because of large hands)
Third most used knife is also a Victorinox, a 3.25″ paring knife, and cheaper than a slice of pizza and a Coke. Great for fine trimming (like the stems of tomatoes or the eyes of pineapple). I think these knives are Swiss, despite the lack of noticeable holes.
Victorinox 3.25 Inch Paring Knife with Straight Edge, Spear Point, Black
And obviously, you want your knives sharp. There’s folks among the Glibertariat who are masters of getting the finest possible edge. I am not one of them, so I cheat and use one of these, a Chef’s Choice Asian sharpener. It gives a good enough edge that I have no problem getting paper-thin slices of garlic or cutting through the skins of over-ripe tomatoes, and it’s so fast and easy, I can sharpen mid-prep without losing much time.
OK, next we bring the heat. Do you have a trendy wok, nicely ceramic non-stick coated and heavy stainless-aluminum clad construction? Toss the fucker, it’s a piece of shit. Ditto the abomination of cast iron woks. Donate them to a homeless turtle shelter or something, they’ll do more good there than on your stove. Know what you need? Something cheap, thin, and unlaminated steel. The kind of piece of shit you get for $20 at the Chinese grocery. Unlike nonstick, you can get these smokin’ hot. Unlike laminated or cast iron, you can get them smokin’ hot very rapidly. And when you turn down the heat, they cool very rapidly, so all in all, the shitty steel woks give you much better temperature control.
Shape is important. Round bottoms are the best BUT you have to have the right kind of cooking surface for that- I have a wok stand from Thailand which is superb, putting out approximately the same amount of heat as the engine from a Saturn V booster stage. I can get the wok to literally red heat in 20 seconds. It is absolutely the best stir-fry cooking I’ve ever done, with the food taking on a subtly smoky “wok hei” aroma and the food cooking in record time. THIS is the right way to do things. I shit you not, wok hei is the difference between indifference and real difference.
Unfortunately, there’s a catch- you either need a professional ventilator hood or you have to cook outside. And our outside cooking has been limited recently because of a heavy mosquito season. After our first frost, I’ll be able to do this again.
Lacking a wok stand like that, don’t even THINK about using a round-bottom pan on a flat cooktop, even with a wok ring, unless you have something like a 100,000 BTU burner. With normal stoves, you will have really shitty heat and that means really shitty, soggy, badly-cooked stir-fries without even a trace of wok hei. Find a thin steel shitty wok with a flat bottom. Not optimum, but you can at least turn out some half-decent product. Here’s mine:
Whichever you use, you want it well-seasoned and to maintain that seasoning. It’s the best non-stick surface you can get. I’ve got about 20 years of season on this wok, and as you’ll see below, I can fry difficult foods like eggs with no sticking.
You also need another utensil for the process- a steel spatula or wok turner. I don’t have one, so I get by with a big steel spoon (seen in the videos below). It works, but I’m a shitty person for not getting the right tool. Don’t be like me. Don’t be a shitty person. Get the right tool.
Techniques:
Did I mention heat? You want the ability to get that wok screaming hot, and the courage and attention to use it properly, which means not getting distracted and letting food burn, and most importantly… mis en place. You want EVERY ingredient to be prepped, chopped, measured, and handy. If you don’t make at least ten dirty little bowls and dishes for you ingredients, you’re doing it wrong and that’s why your stir fries suck. God invented dishwashers and orphans- make use of them.
Second, precooking. Most stir-fries use ingredients from their raw state, added sequentially. And that’s another reason most stir-fries are shitty. To get the best and most even degree of doneness with disparate ingredients, you need to precook (slightly undercooking) each of the major ingredients in advance, then bringing them together at the end. Typically, the protein will be cooked first, removed, then set aside. Various additives can be either parboiled and refreshed (i.e., dunked into an ice bath after boiling) or stir fried separately to get each one to the optimum cooking point. Then the actual building of the stir-fry commences by cooking aromatics (garlic, ginger, scallions, and the like), then adding the cooked ingredients and seasonings/sauces to reheat and finish.
I can’t overemphasize the latter point: stir-fry should be done in discrete stages which are brought together at the end. For years, my stir-fries were shitty because of misguided ideas about trying to time the sequence so that the ingredients were added on top of one another in the right order and would magically cook properly. This is an especially bad idea because not only does the timing become terribly critical and can’t be adjusted on the fly to accommodate variations in ingredients, but you also lose control of the cooking temperature- the first ingredients put in the wok will insure that later ingredients cook at a lower temp and with higher surrounding moisture. That is not generally a good thing.
The other advantage of the cook-shit-separately is that distinctive flavors and textures will remain distinct and not all blend together in a mish-mash. This is why German or British cooking is shitty and Chinese cooking is great. And why you need to spend time getting great ingredients.
Two Examples:
These are sort-of-recipes, but each illustrates points made before. Neither is “authentic,” but they each use mostly non-exotic ingredients and (when cooked right) show off the quality of the main ingredients. And each is linked to a video showing most of the process; the videos are pretty shitty because we didn’t have time to block out the shots or to do editing/voice-over, but future ones will be better.
Because of the aforementioned mosquitoes, I had to use my kitchen stove and the flat-bottom wok, so the heat was somewhat inadequate. But still, they turned out delicious.
Stir Fry Green Beans
This is loosely based on a classic Szechuan dish and is an example of a dry stir-fry. The Szechuan version uses pickled radish and Szechuan peppercorns, so feel free to exotify it if that’s your desire. Traditionally, the precooking is done by deep-frying in coolish (300 degree F) oil instead of the water-blanching that I do, and yard-long beans are used. Again, feel free- the important thing is to have the beans pre-cooked before the stir-frying commences.
1 lb fresh green beans, ends trimmed
1/4 cup raw peanuts
2-3 cloves garlic, sliced thin
5 or 6 dried red chiles
2-3 white parts of scallions, chopped
1 tsp Korean red pepper paste (gochujang); can substitute garlic-red-chile paste or chile-black-bean paste
1 tsp light (not lite!) soy sauce
oil to cook
Drop green beans into a pot of rapidly boiling salted water. Boil for 3-4 minutes or until the beans are about half-done. A few beans may need to be sacrificed to determine this; cook’s privilege. Drain and toss into an ice water bath, then after they cool completely, remove from the bath and drain. Set aside.
Mix the pepper paste and soy sauce together. Set aside.
Heat the wok until it’s smoking, then add in one or two tablespoons of oil. Toss in the sliced garlic and toss it around until it gets aromatic and starts coloring a little bit, 15 seconds or so. Remove the garlic from the wok. Add the dried chiles and stir around until they start to brown, then remove and set aside. Add the peanuts, and stir around until they start to color, 15 seconds or so. Remove the peanuts and set aside. Optionally, you can lightly crush or chop them after cooking for a finer texture.
Seeing a pattern?
Now it’s time to bring everything together. Add the chopped scallions, stir for a few seconds, then add the green beans. Stir-fry until the green beans are starting to show some black spots, a minute or two. Add the pepper paste/soy sauce mixture and a little extra soy sauce if you think it’s needed. Stir for a few seconds, then add the sliced garlic, the dried chiles, and the peanuts. Stir to combine, then remove to a serving bowl and eat up.
This is a standard Cantonese dish, seen in every university cafeteria in the province, and a home-cooking favorite. It’s stupid-simple and delicious. As with many standard dishes, every family makes it a little differently and will swear everyone else is doing it wrong. By contrast with the last dish, this one is very saucy, but the sauce comes mostly from the water in the tomatoes and is amazingly flavorful.
5 eggs, beaten
4 scallions, white and green parts separated and chopped
5 medium or 6 small tomatoes, cut into wedges
2 tbs ketchup
2 tbs soy sauce
1 tsp sugar (omit if your tomatoes are really good)
1 tbs shaoxing cooking wine
1/2 tsp toasted sesame oil
1/2 tsp white pepper (or more to taste)
1 tbs minced ginger
1 small onion or large shallot, slivered
1 tsp cornstarch dissolved in 2 tbs water
oil to cook
Mix together the ketchup, soy sauce, sugar, shaoxing, sesame oil, and white pepper, set aside. Heat the wok until it’s smoking, then add a couple tablespoons of oil and swirl around. Pour in the eggs. Let them fluff up a bit, then stir them around for a minute or so until done- they should be set but not browned. I like my eggs a bit loose, SP prefers them somewhere in the middle of the Mohs scale. Your choice. Scoop them out of the wok, chop them a bit with your spatula or spoon, and set aside. Wipe out any leftover egg.
Put a bit more oil in the wok. Add in the ginger and stir it for a few seconds. Lower the heat a bit, then add the whites of the scallion and the onion. Stir for a minute until they are fragrant and softened slightly, then bring the heat back up and toss in the tomatoes. Stir-fry for a minute or so until the tomatoes are heated through, then push them to the side of the wok. Add in the ketchup mixture and bring that up to a boil. Then stir everything together, stir in about half of the green parts of the scallions, and add the eggs. Stir, then add in about half of the cornstarch slurry (make sure the slurry is stirred before you pour it in) and cook until the sauce thickens. If you want it thicker, add more cornstarch.
Turn out into a serving bowl and sprinkle with the remaining chopped green parts of the scallions. Serve over rice.
Tapas 1: Padron Peppers
Tapas 2: Piquillo Peppers
Tapas 3: Garbanzos with tomato
I am going have to go ahead and disagree here. While I accept that virtue signaling is a thing, and one that is not going away anytime soo
First, think about what size barrel you want to use; they range from one liter on up. As with everything in life, there is a trade-off: The larger the barrel, the slower the booze ages. You can use a barrel probably 4 times, maybe 5. I’m refilling the barrels immediately after emptying them – you can leave them empty, but they need to be cleaned and stored full of water. A one-liter barrel will deliver around a gallon or so of booze before its done, and mixed drinks don’t store forever, so you need to think about how fast you will drink whatever you barrel-age.
The Manhattans age faster – I used Bulleit Rye (again) and Carpano Antica vermouth in the classic 2:1 ratio. I think the sweeter vermouths might be too sweet for barrel aging. The first batch was done in a week, and subsequent batches each took only a few days longer than the previous batch. Doing a side-by-side with an unaged Manhattan, I can definitely say that I prefer the barrel-aged, which has a deeper flavor and starts getting some cinnamon and cherry flavors. Needless to say, I use real maraschino cherries (sour cherries simmered briefly in maraschino liqueur and refrigerated), because the candied grocery-store maraschino cherries are an abomination. I’m using a brighter bitters for these – currently, the 
are going to discuss the top 7 libertarian Halloween costumes, because 7 makes sense.
#5 (slutty) Gender-Fluid Handmaidens Tale
#3 Kochtopus
