Thursday 30 June 2011

Thirsty/Tasty Thursday


Well, for a blog called “drinks like fish” I guess I better get around to talking about liquids other than coffee eventually.

An online friend runs a great blog called the how to mommy. She organizes a tasty Thursday recipe swap blog hop. It sounds like a great idea but I don’t have a recipe ready to share with pics and the whole shebang so I think I’ll alternate Thursdays – today will be a Thirsty Thursday for me and next week I’ll have a recipe post to contribute to the blog hop. So if you’re here today from the recipe hop I’ll understand if you want to just skip on by. Unless you like whisky of course. Or whiskEy if you’re American (or Irish).



 
This first post is mostly just an inventory really. I am, fortunate or otherwise, possessed of a family of enablers. My dear darling husband often goes shopping on December 24th, or if he thinks of it, on the 23rd. Consequently I am guaranteed of two things – something silver in a lovely blue box and something liquid from the LCBO. When we were in England in 03-04 there was this awesome whisky shop within spitting distance of the flat. I never ever went in. It would have been too risky. But there the tradition was solidified. Toby would get a Le Creuset pot and I would get a bottle of whisky. Stereotypes? What Stereotypes?

And so it continues. I was 8 months pregnant at Christmas 2010. I still got a bottle from Toby and one from my folks! Enablers, the lot of them.



The Glenlivet was my christmas present in 2008 I believe. We opened it during a pilsner tasting we hosted in October 2010. Damn, gotta finish it up soon. Damn, we've got to host another tasting night soon too! Anyway, it's 21 years old, the most amazing amber colour. The taste is sort of sweet and peaty. I am in love.





That Snow Grouse is one you'll have a hard time finding. Apparently PEI is quite the test market for whiskies and during one of Mom and Dad's visits (my brother and his family live out there now) Dad stumbled across this in the liquor store. He bought the last three bottles. There was only one of another kind. He kept it for himself!


My in-laws draw names for Christmas and that Isle of Jura Superstition was my present from my sister-in-law C. It's not been opened but with a name like Superstition I'm torn between trying it now and holding on to it as long as possible.

The Dallas Dhu we picked up on 2004. Toby's nephew was just born so he flew from London England (where we were living for a year) to Victoria British Columbia to go meet the little guy. My Dad flew to the UK and we took a train up to Scotland and hired a car. Next time we hire a driver too. Or take a coach tour! Oh and that distillery closed in the 80s so not sure how much more they've got to sell.


Monkey Shoulder. Sort of like Superstition; torn between keeping it around and cracking it open!


I'm going to have to go through the cupboard again. Do I really have TWO Snow Grouse? Damn! I do. I guess I know what's just jumped to the next on the list to be opened.


These are half bottles. They should do more of these. That way I can try more!


Ah this bottle is all gone now. Lovely golden honey colour. It was sweet with a hint of lemoniness. It will be missed. 


This is an AWESOME tasters pack I got from a dear friend for Christmas in 2009. 


And yeap, Canada is represented too.

There are a couple of bottles missing from this inventory though...Hmmm. I need pictures of the Japanese whisky and my birthday bottles! I'll add those as soon as I can.




July 4, 2011 EDITS - here are the bottles I was missing earlier:

Japanese - one of those "last minute" purchases from Toby


I had to go look this one up. I'd never heard of an Indian whisky before.



Yep, from Mom and Dad - $160 at the LCBO. Enablers I tell you. 

Monday 27 June 2011

EASTER 2011

Yes, I know it’s the end of June.

I was talking to some friends about Easter at my mom and dad’s place and I figured that as there might not be another one (at least not at that house) I really ought to do a post about it even though it’s a couple of months late.

Yes, my mother has an Easter Tree
I think my mom divides the year into Christmas, Christmas prep, Easter, Easter prep and Hallowe’en (Dad's in charge of the Hallowe'en prep). To say she loves the holidays would be a bit of an understatement I think. But Easter at their house is something else. I really don’t remember how it started, or when. I have some vague memories of my brother and I hunting around the house we grew up in but it was nothing like what goes on today.

It must have been sometime while I was in high school and my cousins, who are all years younger than my brother and I, were all wee ones. Start adding some friends of mom and dad’s who didn’t have other places to go on Easter, and then some friends who’d come by before or after their own family obligations. Add some of my brother’s friends, then some of ours. Then throw in everyone’s kids now and it’s a bit crazy. I think at its apex there were easily 150 plus people through the house on Easter Sunday. It’s gone down a bit to a more manageable 60-70 or so with about an even split between adults and kids I think. 





When I send out our email invite to our friends I always include something along the lines of “Easter Egg Hunt – so long as you define “egg” as chocolate.” Anyway, back to being in high school. I remember waking up at 6 a.m. to help Dad sort out the chocolate. We would have spent Friday and Saturday labelling all of it and then a couple of hours on Sunday planting it all around the yard, cars, window ledges, bird feeder, tree etc. Yep, you read that right. LABELLED. Kids have to find 12-14 pieces of chocolate. Adults get 6-8. There’s no way to actually HIDE 800+ pieces of chocolate so it isn’t that you have to find any 14 pieces of chocolate. You have to find YOUR 14 pieces.
 
We’ve had Easter in the snow (actually my third favourite kind of Easter) and Easter in the rain (not as bad as it sounds but not ideal). We’ve had cold and crisp Easters (my second favourite kind) and we’ve had blazingly hot Easter (the absolute WORST kind of Easter – everything melts. It’s the only time we actually didn’t place anything and just handed out bags of chocolate. No fun at all). And, more often than not, we’ve had Easters like this year – a little cool, a little overcast, but nice enough to eat outside. My favourite kind – perfect.

Hunting for chocolate



Getting lunch ready


Hanging with Dad
Q and Uncle George
This year was obviously also Q’s first Easter. He was a champ. He got passed around from family member to friend and on again. He maintained his standing as the world’s easiest baby by hardly fussing at all and sleeping in his stroller in the backyard.