Not location specific, No rules: Welcome to ILX heaven

Sorry. . .

When I lived in Dallas I got in the bad habit of doing Tuaca shots when out. Men would often buy them for me and I would stupidly drink them and become black out drunk. This is not a drink to puke.

That whole period of my life was stupid. blehh.

KIDS??? (xpost)

Cake ideas:

Soak cherries in it, make cherry sponge
Add to thickened sugar syrup, use as jam in victoria sponge
Whip into buttercream, use as chocolate sponge filling

I assume most people have heard of the classic French apéritifs, the Kir and the Kir Royal, named after Félix Kir a mayor of Dijon, but I discovered another cocktail with crème de cassis in it last march, called a Parisienne. It's essentially a wet martini with a twist but instead of vermouth, you use the crème de cassis. It's quite delicious.

I would drink cocktails if Michael was making them.

I really like tequila neat, these days.

So last night I was having a drink at my local den of iniquity and the bartender was telling me about a 'classic' 21st birthday (legal drinking age in California) shot that is often given to the celebrant by the kind of 'friends' who like to make sure that s/he vomits copiously, called a cement mixer. Apparently, you take a shot of Bailey's in your mouth without swallowing it, then a shot of lime juice, then vigorously shake your head from side to side. Baileys is scary enough stuff to begin with, but it certainly doesn't mix with lime, especially since it causes the Baileys to curdle!

yuck.

Tequila is meant to be sipped. But you need high quality for this.

A friend sent over this tequila from the states. Long story short including cost of customs and couriering etc. it came to about 130 euro. I don't much like tequila and thought I'd give it to someone who liked it. Another 'friend' opens it JUST TO HAVE A SMELL!!!

I, too, would drink cocktails made by Micheal White. I imagine he would also do good bar nibbles.

Tequila is meant to be sipped.

Except for summer margaritas, this is the only way I have it, and if it's not good enough to be sipped, I'll have something else.

It's funny that y'all think I'd make good cocktails. I hardly ever have anything but wine in the house and I only drink about four or five kinds of mixed drinks on average, though I will splurge on a 'fancy' cocktail at a nice restaurant if it sounds appealing. I mostly drink gin & tonics, gibsons, an occasional shaker mary at brunch or a screwdriver as mixed drinks but I more often than not drink cider or wine.

That's a far broader range than I drink.

Also, margaritas have no season.

Teenagers, kv!! Not like, 8yr olds, although given that we were in Bermondsey...

Baileys curdle. Oh horror. Oh BIG horror. No thanks at all for that image MW.

Aldo all those ideas are good! I will totally experiment. I AM going for a drink tonight thank goodness so I will see if I do DRUNKEN BAKING when I get home! A Kir Royale is pretty darn lovely I've got to say.

Am looking forward to a friends forthcoming party - there will be gin. There will be champagne. Where there is gin and there is champagne, there is a French 75 whup whup.

this thread on great form today I shd say.

ilx in general very pleasant today, compared to the last week or so.

Michael, I am disappointed. I could imagine you in this get up mixing drinks and coming out with choice bon mots:

http://www.gentlemansemporium.com/store/media/000941_full.jpg

I dunno, always had you pegged as a classy guy... Today has really been a day of disappointment...

Sarah, glad to hear you're not corrupting teh youf.

The waistcoat should be lighter in colour, I think. Twin with a tilted back boater.

Also lose the cowboy tie.

I think I am going mad from stress :(

I think the tie is alright - I mean - it couldn't be a BOW tie...

No, he's not in vaudeville... because that's dead ya see?

I am less and less inclined to mix good liquors. I even feel a bit bad about Kirs; if the champagne is really good, why adulterate it and if it's not, why am I drinking it? I've found a lot of tasty crémants and vins mousseux of late that are cheap and which I don't mind mixing.

Ah let's get over this insistence that champagne by itself is somehow amazing. Champage is ALRIGHT. It is better with other stuff! Seriously!

like cocaine.

i've heard, i've heard..

Tequila is meant to be sipped.

Slamming it with ginger ale wasn't a wise start to my 18th birthday breakfast then?

I have heard horrible Bailey's curdle thing before. Someone told me if you swill it around long enough it goes solid.

baileys with milk or ice, or never. that curdle thing is just nnnggrr!

Slamming it with ginger ale wasn't a wise start to my 18th birthday breakfast then?

That sounds completely disgusting. It's fantastic on it's, as an unslammed shot. You shouldn't mess up the taste with anything but triple sec and lime juice.

Chocolate maybe?

My booze stock just now:
about half a bottle of Glenmorangie
bottle of Whyte & Mackay (wtf I didn't buy that!)
about half a litre of Spiced Rum
bottle of dark rum
about half a litre of Wild turkey
about half a litre of Southern Comfort (I can't look at this stuff any more, I feed it to visitors)
bottle of Jameson's
1/3 bottle of Malibu (I think Anne drinks that with pineapple juice)
4 bottles red - random supermarket cheapos mostly
2 bottle white - see above
2 bottles of sparkly white (a Spanish and an Aussie I think)
bottle of pink shampoo
beers & beers & beers

Morning/afternoon/evening, y'all!

I've just barely caught up on all of today's posts -- my head is still stuffy and it's making me really slow. I would totally be up for going to the pub, though (yes, even though it's 9:37 - I like to think of it as less 'alcoholic' and more 'dedicated').

At home update:

Bossa Glogg mulled shit from Ikea (opened, couple of mouthfuls)
Warninks advocaat (opened, not much gone)
Mount Gay sugar cane brandy (opened, mostly gone)
another bottle of Tanqueray gin (unopened)
Emoor Punch (unopened)
Jim Beam Black bourbon (opened, 1/3 gone)
Wild Turkey 101 bourbon (opened, 3/4 gone)
Olorosso (opened, for cooking, half gone)
port (unopened)
Havana Club unaged rum (opened, nearly gone)
Amaretto (opened, for cooking, half empty)
Martini bianco and rosso (opened, for the ladies)
cinzano vermouth (opened, can't think why)
Pimms (opened, nearly empty, summer is over)
Absolut raspberri (opened, had a good bash at it since it tastes like cough medicine)
triple sec (opened, for margaritas)
caprinha or whatever it's called (opened, half drunk)
schlaederer (opened, nearly finished thank the lord)

I definitely feel like an alkie now. :-(

Ah let's get over this insistence that champagne by itself is somehow amazing.

chacun à son goût and all, but a really good champagne is a thing of beauty to me.

I know the market is presently awash in new liquors and whatnot, many of them vile, but has anybody tried this stuff?

St. Germain Elderflower Liqueur

Their branding/website is annoying in the extreme, but I had a 'martini' made with it and something else I don't recall the other night, and it was really quite good.

I'm kind of only weighing in on this at the end, because I don't give a crap about spirits, really, but good vintage champagne is FANTASTIC.

But, you know, bring on the wine for me anyway. I know nothing about it, so don't be all "oh hey, don't you love the Mercurey", but I just do love it. It's terribly moreish.

to make aldo feel better!
http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1237/1450142898_2f8f922a9d.jpg
the heap of flammables:
starting in the left back:
Pitu Cachaça (for caipirinhas), Kahlua, Torada tequila (rotgut and ancient), Maker's Mark (from a party).
next row forward: Bols triple sec (as old as the cheap tequila), 2nd bottle of Kahlua (2 for one sale), with a short XO vodka (delicious!) in front, Tito's Handmade vodka (local yum), Ciroc vodka distilled from grapes (eh), Campari (+soda, my favorite).
2nd from front: 2 bottles Jamesons 12 year both half knackered, Dr. Faust white wine (gift from friends), Noble House ice wine (bought for a party, unopened), 3rd bottle Kahlua (I have no idea), Antigua Cruz silver tequila (a present for Mr. P), Knockando 12 year (ditto), buffalo grass vodka (brought from Poland by dear friends).
front row: fruitwood stain, Bols cherry flavored brandy (anyone know what to do with this? we ended up with it by accident), Bushmills, Balvenie Doublewood 12 year (Mr. P again), Freixenet brut (wedding present? who knows), aerosol sunblock (50 spf), Midleton very rare (in box, a present to Mr. P).

freezer: 2 bottles of vodka (Tito's and the one in the aluminum bottle), one nearly empty bottle of ouzo.
top of fridge: 3 bottles of wine. there's also one more bottle of bubbly somewhere that was a gift.

p.s.--broke a fever while typing, and didn't touch a drop of any of it.

At the moment all we have in our drinks cabinet is things like bols and grenadine. We are out of proper drink. Unless you consider icewine to be proper drink. (Yummy for winter.)

Oh God, I had forgotten the icewine. There's a couple of bottles of that too. And a bottle of mandarin liqueur I remembered about when I was in the pub.

(yes, all that booze in the cupboard and I was still in the pub last night.)

We have several bottles of sparkling wine, two bottles of Moet Chandon, two boxes of red wine, several assorted bottles of red, white and rose (mostly supermarket cheapos, a couple of nice ones that were presents), vodka, bacardi, whisky, jack daniels, morgan's spiced rum, some honey rum that my mum bought me from spain which is nice on ice cream/in coffee, brandy, marie brizard, baileys, grenadine, gin, some miniature tequilas which my old boss brought me back from mexico about six years ago, cointreau, tia maria and some horrible-looking alcohol from Thailand which I am frightened to open as it looks like urine and probably tastes like paintstripper (present from friend). We used to have glayva and drambuie as well, but I appear to have finished those and haven't replaced them yet.

I remembered to put my skins in to soak this morning, so I will definitely be doing sossies when I get home.

I have four cans of carlsberg. You are all drunks. For shameWell done!

And now I have a Sky HD box as well. Bye everyone! See you when the sun comes back!

Oh, by the way, in case anyone feels very rich, my brother is running the Dublin City Marathon this year in aid of Console, which is a charity that provides counselling services for people in Ireland who are bereaved by suicide. It's an issue close to our family, because my cousin committed suicide a couple of years ago, and it hit us all very hard, as it does everyone.

Here's the link if you've a few spare quid. If not, no biggie, but I hope you don't mind me asking.

http://www.mycharity.ie/event/edbyrnemarathon/

(yes, all that booze in the cupboard and I was still in the pub last night.)

I didn't go to the pub. I went to Tesco for milk & bread & stuff and OH LOOK A "WINE FESTIVAL" and spent about £20 more than I intended. Then we polished off a bottle and a half :)

My Dad's just sent me a text about going to a dodgy pub quiz he goes to on a Friday at teatime. Going means leaving work really early and therefore ending up totally hammered by closing time :-/ That said, it's a piss easy quiz, got 22/25 last week (despite stupid questioner asking questions wrong*) and the nearest to us was on 17. £20 prize = free drinks for an hour or so - we were thinking of splitting into 2 teams to win the £10 2nd prize too :)

Football tomorrow as well, I hate being onimoed at the football.

*that was the one I texted you about aldo - turned out the answer was "no-one, ever, unless I change the question when I read out the answer"

Don't you lot skive on a Friday? At this rate I'm going to end up w*rking!

the horror! anyway, back to work.

I'm currently in "what am i having for lunch?" mode.

And these old computer game threads are giving me the urge to download an emulator or two.

I'm just out of a FUCK! PANIC! WE ARE BANKRUPT! meeting, which has given me a pile of work for the rest of the day. Which I might not do, obviously.

I haven't set up MAME since I bought my last computer, I must have another go at it - though it pains me to discover I'm now shit at games I used to be expert at. I used to complete Ghosts & Goblins for 10p, now I couldn't do it with £10 worth of continues.

I do have good SNES and Megadrive/Genesis emulators courtesy of Mr Cowpat. I might dig them out over the weekend for a wee game.

I'm always disappointed by Speccie games when I replay them. Nostalgia just isn't enough in most cases.

I agree that the vast majority of spectrum games don't stand up anymore. I still one or two maddeningly addictive, though.
I always found Ghosts'n'Goblins incredibly hard - how much money did you put into the arcade machine to get that good?

please to instruct on emulator attainment.

I always found Ghosts'n'Goblins incredibly hard - how much money did you put into the arcade machine to get that good?

Loads. The worst thing was the bit when you finally fight through to the 6th(?) boss for the first time ever only to find it won't let you through unless you have the shield "weapon".
Other coin ops I was v good at: Salamander, SiniStar (RUN COWARD! BEWARE, I LIVE!), Robotron, Shaolin's Road (I used to play that in the local shop during my school lunch and had to leave it running after 40 mins still on my 1st credit). I also loved Commando, Centipede and Double Dragon but could never get top scores in the arcade.

My older brother was like a machine on Robotron. He got to the stage where the screen was just full of bad guys with barely a space between them and he'd have to shoot himself a path to run through. It was mesmerizing watching him. Robotron's a shit game to play on emulators as you need the two joystick control to do it justice.