November 29, 2007 - Hudson

Quitting your job is good for you. At least, that's what my optometrist tells me. Reversing a 25 year trend, my eyesight improved this past year. This week has been a whirlwind of appointments - from eyes to hair to teeth. From the chin up, I'm in pretty good shape now. However, the rest of my body is in expansion mode as the the feasting has continued. I'm not going to go into the details, other than to say "chateaubriand." Nuff said.

Two days ago, Sten cried uncle. Actually he said "I can't take any more of this heavy mid-western cuisine." And I haven't even taken him out for Barberton chicken yet this year! So he took over the kitchen. Since then my mother has had several firsts - her first peanut sauce, her first burrito and her first mochi. The only hit was the peanut sauce. Her response to the mochi was to take one bite, and pass the remainder back to me, saying say "Here, eat this mochi before it get's mushy." Witty lady that mother of mine.
Cleaning the holiday leftovers out the fridge today, Mom announced that I had to make cocktails with pineapple juice and oranges, which caused me to recall the wisdom first uttered by our friend Kate in response to our rehearsal dinner quandary, "When is tiki not the solution to any dilemma?" As Sten read parts of the excellent article in yesterday's NYTimes about the hunt for the original Zombie recipe aloud to us, I dove under the bar to see if we had all the ingredients. Since my father's favorite cocktail is the Zombie, we had such esoteric ingredients as falernum and Demerara on hand; however, we had to run to the grocery store to source the white grapefruit juice. The result was the first cocktail I've ever been afraid of, which might have had something to do with the 4 oz of booze in each drink.