Melinda’s Monsters at Sister Sorel

Tonight a number of us went to Sister Sorel in the South End for the opening reception for Melinda’s show, Melinda’s Monsters. Here are some pictures of the event.

MUAHA HA HA I am taking over Blake’s post and adding photos. ~Liv

Become a fan of Benson

Do you know which fish that lives in Brambleberry has his own fan page on the Face-books(question mark).  It is Benson!  If you a fan of Benson and have always wished there was a place on the Internet to share your favourite Benson stories and Benson related gossip, your dreams have come true!

Brambleberry Drinky Recipe wiki page!

Hello.  Now there is a place on the Brambleberry Wiki where you can post your exciting cocktail recipes!  Its URL is as follows:  http://www.brambleberry.org/wiki/index.php?title=Brambleberry_Drinky_Recipe_Page

Climb that Mountain

On Saturday some of us went to climb some mountain.  It was fun and we all learned about metamorphic rock.

Liv is such a good drinker.

Our Magical Trip to IKEA

Yesterday Kat, Liv, and I got a Zip Car pickup truck and drove to that Swedish domestic fantasy themepark:  IKEA.  Our mission:  Liv and Kat both needed chests of draw-ers (because you draw them out) and I wanted to check out their selection of picture frames.  It was very snowy on our way there.  I think Liv got some good pictures of the snow while we were driving, which maybe she’ll add later.  I was operating the motor vehicle and so as per standard operating safety procedure was not also operating a camera.  I did take this picture from the parking garage, though:

Kat and Liv tested some couches:

Next Liv read a traditional Swedish romance novel in a contemporary middle class Swedish living room.  In Sweden it is customary to display the prices of all of your furniture components in case any of your guests want to buy furniture from you.

We helped Kat size up the perfect lockable metal storage system for her to sleep in.  Kat likes to use space efficiently while also getting a secure night’s sleep.

Kat sampled the free invisible espresso.  IKEA cuts costs by requesting that customers provide their own invisible mugs and we short-sightedly left all our invisible drinking vessels in the car.

Liv has been looking for a long time for the perfect mixing bowl to put her head into.  Could this one be the one?

Tuckered out from a long day of pretending to live in well kept and nicely appointed assorted Swedish rooms, Liv and I enjoyed a complimentary invisible breakfast.

The end!

What’s on our Fridge: Where’s Paladin Kitchen Corner Edition

Can you find him? What is all this other crap? Click the picture for a close up view.

Duckling videos!

Adorable!

Phillip K. Duck’s secret past

Recently discovered photos of Phillip K. Duck have been unearthed recently, suggesting there may be more to this duck’s past than we had previously known.  Here is a picture of P. K. Duck circa January 2008.

Phillip K. Duck masquerading as a red-head.

The B & B cocktail

Ok so one of the ‘B’s is for “Benedictine” and the other is for “Brandy.”  According to Mr. Boston’s bartending guide a B & B should be 1/2 oz of the one ‘B’ and 1/2 oz of the other.  Mr. Boston says you should pour the Benedictine first, into a cordial glass, which is one of those glasses that looks like a tiny red-wine glass, and then float the brandy on top.

figure 1: this has gone terribly wrong

My first problem was that I could not find a cordial glass.  I am not sure we even have any.  It does not help that about 2/3 of our bar glassware is currently all packed up in the basement.  But so anyway first I fetched a sherry glass, which is like if you took a red wine glass and made it more narrow but left the vertical dimensions untouched.  I got as far as pouring the Benedictine in before I realized I was going to have a lot of trouble floating the brandy due to the fact that there was about three inches of glass between the top surface of the Benedictine and the rim of the glass.  So I went and fetched this sort of like child sized cocktail glass (what some of you barbarians refer to as a martini glass).  Well that got the top of the liquid closer to the rim of the glass but I was using this really narrow jigger to measure out the brandy and it started spilling all over the bar while I was trying

to pour it over the hello kitty spoon and then some dinosaurs blew up the earth etc. etc. and so I just poured the brandy in and it got all mixed up.  See [figure 1] to the right.

So anyway despite the lack of liquor separation in the glass, and the fact that the glass is all wrong, and the dinosaur guts all over the place, this cocktail proved to be quite delightful.  The brandy cuts the strong anise-y flavour of the Benedictine and draws out the more subtle flavours.  I detected a flavor that reminded me strongly of Turkish chai, which was this stuff we drank when I lived in Turkey that I think was actually just instant tea because I remember it being oddly shaped dry crumbly bits that you mixed in with hot water and then viola!  Chai!  Not at all like what they call “chai” at the hipster coffee houses.  Anyway.  The flavour was sort of grassy, in the end.

figure 2: look at the exciting brown on brown layers!

Ok and but so one ounce of cocktail is not all that much and pretty soon that was gone and I got it into my head that I should really make more of an effort to try floating the brandy.  So I did basically the same things except instead of pouring straight from the jigger I poured the measured amount of brandy from the jigger into a shot glass, which I reasoned held a larger volume of liquid and would therefore allow me to pour it from a more reasonable angle.  It didn’t really work out; the brandy clung to the outside of the shot glass and trailed all the way down and trickled off the bottom.  That was ok, though, because I could still pour it in a semi-controled fashion and I managed to successfully float the brandy.  See [figure 2]:

But the flavour?!  Brandy.  Of course.  It tasted just like brandy at first because thats all you get when you sip a drink like that.  Maybe it works different if you have a real cordial glass but anyway I got sick of it pretty quick and swished the glass around a few times to mix the two liquids together.

And so but that one went down pretty quick too and so when it came time to mix the third I decided to do some science on this drink.  I formed the following hypothesis:  I will enjoy this drink even more in a lowball glass over some ice, and also with larger volumes.  So I mixed a whole shot of each ‘B’ in a lowball glass over three frozen cubes of distilled water (science!).  Then I realized my methods were highly questionable as I had no way of providing a control for this experiment.  So all I can give you is qualitative, anecdotal observations that this is a good drink over ice, but you do loose some of the subtle flavours.  Also somehow the brandy comes through more strongly although this could be because I had given up on trying to float anything so I did not spill a bunch of the brandy on the bar.

Where is Paladin? Arctic Snow Paladin Edition

Paladin is naturally camouflaged in snowy environments.

Special thanks to Elmo for letting us use the photo.