My happening lifestyle

Delivered as an insert with the morning paper. Captivating. As adverts go, one hell of a job dun.

In other news, the perfect bloody Mary still proving to be elusive. Do I have a future in food photography? Think not.


With the annual liquor license renewal drama in effect in these parts, practically any kind of booze is elusive in the neighborhood. It's like the tramp said "who do you have to f*** to get a quart of Vodka around here?" We try and get by. The booze shops remain closed. A lacky hangs out nearby. You slow down and peer. The exchange takes place fifty yards away near some shrubberies. So much for law enforcement.

I've devised a drink, which, for some reason I call The Hotshot Russian :

2 1/2 oz Vodka
3/4 oz fresh lime juice
rock salt/kosher salt to taste
1 tsp tabasco
Black pepper powder (optional)

Stirred with lots of ice. Garnished with black olives. We like.

All you who sleep tonight

A gust of wind in early evening. No, slightly stronger, a gale. Yes, it's a gale. As in, not a storm. With all due promise of a good nor'wester, it peters out. Not a drop of rain. Branches rubbing up each other's thighs. Leaves and twigs blown in on our bedspread through the open third-story window. A whoosh here, and a shoo-i-eee there. Then. Suddenly. No, I don't think Dennis did it. The lights are out all over the neighborhood. Remember that all black panel from Hank Ketcham?

Seven-fifteen post meridian . Early days yet. After an hour's wait lights are back. Not on our street, they aren't. We fret. Fume. Cuss. And call up maintenance. Repent that decision of not buying battery backup before this summer. Head out of home. No choice but. Bad moon rising. Listen.

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Turns out there's a snag at the transformer. Maintenance people work out a wonderfully equitable solution. They cut off the substation and go home to sleep. Back to black. Whole square furlong. Thanks to that gale, it ain't that hot a night. Meaning, just below 30 degree c with 75% humidity. Forty winks? Forget it. Me too worked up as it is. Why does my blood boil every time there's a power cut deep into the night and nobody tells me ghost stories?

Toss. Turn. Sweat some. On about my eighth wink, phone buzz. Who the, what the heck's the time etc. My senior colleague at 2:33 AM. Wants me to go to the steel plant and try and fix something some mother's messed up. No it won't wait till morning. I feel kinda relieved, actually. Wasn't getting much sleep anyway. Mustn't let it show, though. Show righteous indignation, fool.

Next afternoon, asleep. Evening, groggy. Now I understand why firefighters write so very few blogs.

Well, everything has to pass, I imagine. That was two nights ago. Tonight we're back in business. Tonight I'm tossing pasta. Oh, how I love to cook. And when it's pasta, I go with my gut. Penne in bianco con salsa di pollo e verdure. La mia bambina mi ama cucinare la pasta. A bit easy on the sauce, all right?

My fav corner of the universe. Ah yes, the drink. Haig. With some ice and water. Like they say, Don't be vague, say Haig & Haig.

Heart of the run
(Of grain whiskeys and Royal Bhutan)

The desired spirit is called ‘the middle cut’ or ‘the heart of the run’ and starts to come through as the alcohol content reaches about 75 percent. The heart of the run is the only part of the distillate that will become whiskey. 20 minutes into the second and final distillation the heart of the run start to come through. This so called ‘heart’ is the only part of the distillation that is used. The process of collecting the ‘heart’ takes 3-4 hours. The alcohol concentration of the heart is between 60 and 72 percent, and has an average concentration of 68 percent. This raw spirit is cut with water to 63.5 percent, which is considered to be the optimal strength for the spirit to interact with the casks during storage.

One has sampled some sacrosanct single malts( few and far between), some just about palatable single malts, some hallowed big names of blended scotch, some overhyped BAD blends, some surprisingly good underrated ones, and more than anything else, stuff that barely escape being in the hooch category, in one's not so illustrious career.
G-E-L-E-P-H-U. Name rings a bell? Nope? This blogger has written about the distillery there and it's products. Much as the prime offering is a well known brand in certain circles (picture right), this correspondent found CSJ an average whiskey with unusually strong flavors and a fast-acting blend. This is the best they have on the shelves, priced at about $10 a 750ml. However, the whiskey I really want to discuss here is the ambitiously named "Bhutan Highland". The label honestly says it's a grain whiskey, as opposed to "blended scotch malts", whatever that means in these parts. With a curious looking yellow ribbon tied around the neck of the bottle. Dirt cheap, just above $4 for the same quantity. For that kind of pricing alone, my friend and I had at first taken it for modified tharra. Grave mistake it would have been.
Don't know if it was the cute ribbon, the honest proclamation, or the lighter color of the fluid that made me buy a bottle. For the next three evenings, my friend had I, over diverse terrain, in extremities of weather, under various states of physical exhaustion, have only happy happy memories of the whiskey to recount. Ah, the clarity it struck you with! The energetic delivery! The effortless follow through! I rate it none inferior to Ishant Sharma.
Fooling apart, what I seriously felt about the spirit is :
a) That it's obviously a single grain whiskey, technically, from only one distillery and all, much in the mold of the eminent Cameron Brig or, Invergordon, none of which I've had the pleasure of tasting.
b) The gelephu people, who had a quality whiskey on their hands( blame it on the fabled highland spring waters or the quality of Bhutanese hop) didn't go the fancy maturation in wooden cask route, which explains the absurdly low price. It was bottled fresh off the distillery, like many other whiskey makers in Asia do.
On the third evening, when we finally and truly realized the enormous potential of the whiskey (by which time the bot was empty too) we wanted to travel to Gelephu, kiss the hand of the brewer and congratulate him, and urge him to barrel his fine produce for at least six years before bottling. Then he could give m/s Whyte & Mackay a run for their money.

How not to open a bottle of wine




Once upon a time (day before yesterday, as a matter of fact) there were these two friends meeting over Sunday lunch. Between them was a bottle of red, which had been lying somewhere in a cupboard for some time. With a view to open the bottle and have a glass of wine each, the friends were seriously impaired by the absence of a corkscrew which must've been there, but could not be found after searching all over the household. In situations like this the world over, people have been known to gain access to the contents either by pushing the cork into the bottle ( sacrilege!), or perhaps a better but more extreme method, by breaking the neck of the bottle carefully.
But these two fellows were bright and innovative practising engineers. They used their heads and common household tools and tackles, and the result is there for all to see!
Ladies and gentlemen, I now present to you my very good friend in dino , whose face has been given an appropriate coat of Gaussian blur, to protect his identity from prowling headhunters who call, sms and mail him all the time, invariably trying to avail of his technical genius.
About the genie in the bottle. Sula Red. Cabarnet Shiraz. Full-bodied, yes. Fruity, maybe. The label promised a faint aroma of peppercorn but I couldn't discern it with my poor nose. Bit on the drier side. Little too much tannin for my taste. Otherwise okee-dokee.