thirsty thursday: champagne cocktail

the champagne cocktail.

it all started with the film moonstruck for me.  i remember the scene with loretta (played by cher) and her father toasting her upcoming wedding with champagne into which they dropped sugar cubes.  i remember thinking, who would put sugar cubes into ones drink, especially a glass of champagne.  but years later i looked further into this and found that putting sugar cubes into spirited drinks was a popular thing in the victorian era, and some people still do it today.  hence the champagne cocktail.

i've had this bottle of cheap champagne sitting in my fridge for some time and thought to try out the champagne cocktail.  one logical choice would be to use the champagne for mimosas or for a bellinis but i thought hell let's try something different.

mimosa recipe:
one part chilled champagne (or sparkling wine)
one part chilled orange juice
served in a tall champagne flute

bellini recipe:
one part peach puree
two parts sparkling wine (or prosecco)
served in a tall champagne flute

champagne cocktail recipe:
1 cube of sugar soaked with angostura bitters
dry champagne (or sparkling wine)
served in a tall champagne flute

*some recipes also add an ounce of brandy
  with a slice of orange and a cherry for garnish (optional)

the champagne cocktail wasn't anything special.  i could see how someone who doesn't drink a whole lot would like this drink because it's a lot sweeter and the sugar cuts some of the alcohol.  i didn't have it with the brandy or any of the garnishes, so it was just a dry champagne with a sugar cube soaked in angostura bitters at the bottom of a flute.  it was fun and whimsical and an excuse to try a new drink.  so i'm not complaining because i got trashy.

so enjoy your drinking, i sure did. xoxo.

ode to wine

i love wine.
wine loves me.

one of my favorite things to do is visit local vineyards (well actually vineyards anywhere) and get all trashy.
i love the free wine glass you get when you do tastings.  i have so many vineyard wine glasses i don't know what to do with them all.  i need one from each place i visit and i love them.  so if your vineyard doesn't have the free wine glass i think  you should think twice about not offering it.
and by the third or fourth vineyard, i am totally tipsy and go crazy buying bottles of wine.  it's pretty awesome.

have any of you visited a vineyard?  do you have a favorite?  a favorite wine?

my favorite wine is cabernet sauvignon.  i can't get enough of it.

i have to say that i love napa valley the most, but how can you go wrong with a big glass of a full bodied red wine from anywhere.

xoxo.

it's been way to long.

it's been awhile.

a long, long while.

i've been very busy being totally lazy and boring.  ugh.

i have no excuse as to why i haven't posted anything.  i have no followers, so it doesn't matter.  but i really have to practice my writing and that is one of the main reasons as to why i started this in the first place, and i've done nothing about it (story of my life).

one major issue with this blog is that i really don't know what i want this to be.  i don't want to get to personal here but it seems that is how a lot of blogs are.  so i'm at a stand still.

my initial thoughts were to have his blog full of short stories and random thoughts about things, but i now realize that i don't have short stories or random thoughts about things (well i do, but you really don't want to hear them.  trust me).

so i'm just going to give it a go.  we'll see how this thing turns out.  i know i've said this before, i would like to post at least once a week and i haven't done that yet, but i really am going to try and get something up once a week.

thanks. xoxo.

nap time?

tired.  so tired.

xoxo.

laundry. ugh.

i hate doing it.  i could speculate that most people also hate doing laundry.  you would have to be crazy if you like to do it.  if i had to guess, i would say my sister likes to do laundry, but she also likes to clean and is somewhat ocd.  so putting two and two together, ocd people like doing laundry.  i am not a person who has ocd.

my laundry situation sucks.  in all my time living in apartments and renting houses, i've always had a laundry facility on site.  but the house we are renting now does not.  when we i need to do laundry, we i have to lug two hampers to my car and drive to the nearest laundromat.  i hate it.
when we first looked at the house we are renting, my biggest concern was the fact there is no laundry.  but jd didn't think it would be a big deal.  he has this romantic idea about doing laundry at a laundromat.

imagine living in the big city and needing to do your laundry, you call up a friend or drag your neighbor along with you to the laundromat.  you have your little hamper and quarters and detergent.  you do your two or so loads and go across the street to the quaint little coffee shop and sip your latte, read your book and converse with your friend about whatever.  ugh.  this does sound like an awesome laundry experience.  i wouldn't mind having it, but in the real world that doesn't happen.  only in movies that take place in nyc can one have a laundry experience like this.

my laundry experience is no fun.  we usually have pushed laundry back by a week so the hamper is overloaded and someone is out of work clothes or underwear.  the clothes have spilled out and cannot be contained by the closet.  then i have to sort everything.  this takes forever.  i hate sorting the clothes at the laundromat and do this in the bedroom.  after, i have to lug the two hampers to the car in the back of the house.  i'm tired already.  at the laundromat usually you have to fight someone for the machine because they only have a few of the machines that i like.  i'm not a big fan of the front loading laundry machines (and they are more expensive but hold less clothes).  the next part is quick.  my time at the laundromat is not that long, but the experience sucks.  after all the laundry is done i have to fold all the clothes and i hate folding clothes.  i hate it.  i hate folding t shirts and jd has a ton of t shirts.  ugh.

so all of this is done, usually, by myself.  i hate doing laundry.  i have on occasion been so desperate that i've gone to target and purchased underwear or socks or bras, anything, to make it though the day or week.    

xoxo.

drinking...

enjoying a mint julep.  the perfect drink on a hot southern summer night.

i have an obsession with the mint julep.  well with anything to do with alcohol.

it all started a few years back when a friend and i took a road trip through the deep south (mississippi, alabama, georgia and south carolina).  during the the trip we hit up a bunch of small southern towns, watched a few movies about small southern towns, and tried to talk as we imagine one does coming from a small southern town, think to kill a mockingbird or midnight in the garden of good and evil or, of course, sweet home alabama.  we used words like, hankerin' and reckon and i declare and genteel and apparition and libation.  needless to say, the trip was alot of fun.

we looked for men in white linen or seersucker suits and decided that everyone we saw was an old time family lawyer.  where everyday was a slow sweet tea kind of day and cocktails began flowing at 3pm.  no one was ever in a hurry and thus my obsession with the mint julep began.  imagine fancy ladies with thick southern accents wearing big outrageous hats and drinking a cold mint julep, the official drink of the kentucky derby.

i do declare, i love the deep south.

mint julep recipe:
bourbon whiskey
mint leaves
simple syrup

xoxo.

hola. aloha. guten tag. bonjour. hello.

i've been thinking long and hard on what this venture should be like.

it's funny, because when you start a blog on wordpress, the site goes through this set up process on where it suggests to you that you go through all these tutorials on how your blog should look like and be like.  but not on blogger, and thank goodness it doesn't.  maybe that's why cats have blogs and dogs have blogs, and now i too a middle-aged hag (my boyfriend informed me that i am more of a nag) have a blog.

so here it goes, my (probably unsuccessful) foray into the world of blogging.

i will try and have a post weekly, until i know exactly what i'm doing.  that's my goal anyways.  but i'm an uber procrastinator (isn't everyone these days?) so we'll see how things fare.

xoxo.

and so it begins...

xoxo