A Productive Friday afternoon.

This Friday, Geoff and I got a bit burnt out at the end of the day. Sometimes you push through. Sometimes you just give up and smoke a cigar. We lit up a Tabak Especial Red Eye. This 4.5 inch maduro has an open foot and two bands lovingly wrapped around it's 54 ring gauge. (Remember to remove the lower band before smoking . . . People forget and it tastes nasty when it burns)

This is from Drew Estates and is technically a coffee infusion, so the tip is a bit on the sweet side, but you really can't taste any coffee. As smokes go this is pretty much middle of the road. It's well crafted and burns well. No harsh notes but you don't get much beyond campfire and leather until the second half, when there is a touch of pepper and, well, straight tobacco. Almost a pipe tobacco.

Homemade pasta redux.

So the first recipe that we tried for pasta was, well, disappointing. This weekend Sioux and I gave pasta another try, but this time we tweaked things a bit.

We only made linguini for reasons noted below and we also wanted the pasta to have some flavor this time so our base recipe got kicked up a couple of notches.

Ghurka G5 Avenger Cigar

Had a box-pressed G5 Avenger toro on the ride home the other night. I'm not normally a box-press kind of guy, but it was staring at me from my humidor, so what could I do, right? First blush - a very dark and smooth oily wrapper - the band slid off with the cellophane - and the promise of a big-boy smoke. I wasn't sure how it was going to go, frankly. Immediately upon lighting, I was impressed with the easy draw and the big but not overwhelming flavor- mostly leather and aged tobacco.

Pathetic Pasta Problems

We ran out of places to dry our pasta. Yes, that's a chair.

So for a brief moment last week our kitchen looked remarkably like a 54 year old British prank.

Sioux and I tried our hands at pasta making, and this time we were given the unique opportunity to learn from our mistakes.

The recipe we choose to use--it was on the back of the sack of flour--involved 2 cups of water, 2 eggs, a pinch of salt, and "enough" warm water. No recipe should ever call for "enough" of anything.

Fenway Face Off.

Fenway Park. (photo credit: Sioux)

Sioux and I got treated to a sox game the other day. This is in no way a vice. It's just pretty cool.

It did however set up a showdown that's been brewing for a while. My lovely girl friend has maintained that a Fenway Frank is best hotdog in the Boston area.

I, of course, know better.

Super Sausage Update

Sausage in a bun with extra peppers and onions, and some blanched Pak Choy

We got back to the DePasquale's sausage today, but we supplemented it with the sauteed pepper and onion, and a honey-mustard reduction sauce.

I decided to cook the majority of this dish on the grill, because, well, its still hot out.

A new slice on a classic

So I've been drinking gin and tonics for about 15 years.
When I started I was in college and my contemporaries were swilling down "Captain and Cokes" or "Jack and Gingers" so drinking something that was not directly tied to a brand of budget priced alcohol seemed cool and aloof... Or perhaps "Gilbey's and Polar" just doesn't roll off of the tongue. Yeah, I drank Gilbey's. I was a poor college student.

I love a good Caucasian... (*)

The mason jar didn't work out: too many coffee beans in my glass

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It was hot-as-hell in Quincy today, So I decided to make myself some iced coffee.

Given that it was after noon on a weekend when I was alone around the house, I decided that I should make that iced coffee a bit more memorable. Unfortunately a quick survey of the liquor Cabinet suggested that I didn't have anything that would pair well with coffee. (Scotch, gin, vodka,) except some Brazillian Rum, but I wanted to save that for caipirinhas when Sioux got home. . .

A Little Link of Heaven

So tonight's life-shortening goodness comes from DePasquale's Sausage factory via the grill. This is the type of family run business that's way too busy with word-of-mouth traffic to build a website, so that link heads over to Yelp.

My buddy Geoff suggests that their sausage is amazing because it is unpolluted with fennel. By definition that should mean that this is not, in fact, Italian sausage. However, after wandering through the Nonantum section of Newton--where the side streets are painted with spumoni--and walking into an easy to miss store front where there is more Italian than English on the labels, that's a tough argument to make.

Getting Started

So it's two AM, and I'm in bed next to my sleeping girlfriend. I'm totally stressed out over the number of things I'm supposed to be doing at work and in my personal life, and that's before I even start to consider what how I'm going to pay to do all of the things I've committed to doing.

The only obvious thing to do is to commit my self to one more project, right? At least I'm going to give it a try.