Already planned which
function you’ll be attending for the New Year? Perhaps you want to bring in the 0-6 like a high roller, downing bottles
of Dom Perignon, toasting away 2005 with your party of six seated at your V.I.P. table at Miami’s Funkshion Lounge located in beautiful South Beach. If the dinero is not an
issue, go for it. New Year’s V.I.P. packages are priced at
$1,000 for the table of six as mentioned before. Other dinner presentation packages start at $250 a person and the
price includes champagne for two.The lounge claims there’s no pressure to impress, yet the scene is packed with
model-slammin’ gorgeous patrons. Hmm. On the flip side the restaurant sees a number of families throughout the week.
High-class, fashion, art, music and entertainment make Funkshion the pleaser that is and if placing this function on
your calendar for end of the year isn’t what you had in mind pencil them in afterwards.
On Vodka and Staying Sober
Came across this interesting post and thought it was worth a look. The Russian Blog examines how
one might consume vast quantities of vodka and, I kid you not, stay sober. How might one pull of this impressive feat?
Well, only a Russian would profess to know the answer. Russians, as you probably know, are ample consumers of the grain
beverage, and it is widely experienced by travelers to Russia that when a bottle of vodka is opened, it must be finished
by attending parties before they can leave the table. That is not, it would seem, a recipe for sobriety. So how world
one accomplish this? Well, here are a few of the tips offered by the Russia blog:
One hour before
the party.
1. Eat a couple of boiled potatoes.
2. Drinks one or two raw eggs.
3. Drink
one or two table-spoons of olive oil. Sunflower oil will also do.
Thus it’s guaranteed that at the Russian
party you will stay sober for at least one bottle of vodka. I’m not kidding. Raw eggs are the most important part
of Russian pre-party preparations.
At the party.
1. If you start drinking vodka
– drink only vodka. No beer or wine. No water or juice. Carbonated drinks are taboo.
2. Drink vodka only in
shots. Never sip.
3. Eat immediately after taking a shot. Russian zakuskis are often translated as appetizers.
That’s not quite correct. Zakuskis are something you ‘zakusyvayesh’ with after taking a shot of
vodka. They are very important to neutralize alcohol. That’s why they all contain two most important alcohol
neutralizers – acid and salt.
This is just a, um, taste, or a shot, you might say, of the advice
proferred here. It is worth a read if just to steel yourself for your own alcohol consumptin this holiday season.
Anyone who tries these methods, well, we’d love to hear how well they work. Prosit!
(via Gothamist)
History of Egg Nog
Egg nog is my all
time favorite drink and I go hunting for it when it hits shelves right after Halloween. No need for me to booze it up
with rum or anything, I’m a fan of the thick, rich and super fattening egg grog in it’s original form. Many who know me
well have often wondered why I haven’t picked up on learning to make the drink on my own, but there’s something special
in the chase every holiday season to see which local supermarket will get it first. Besides I’d be huge and it would
probably lose its appeal if I had it every month of the year. Don’t you agree? Well today I decided to look up some
useless knowledge on the drink and recipes that I may one day attempt to make.
Kitchen Project has an excellent historical
account of the many names the drink is known under, for example egg-flip, egg-hot, egg and grog, and egg nog. Tracing
history back to the "Old World" and later to Colonial America it is interesting to see how the drink has
involved and continues to evolve even in other cultures. Listed below the article are several recipes, including a Mexican Egg Nog (known as Rompope) recipe which
requires the use of ground almonds. I’d love to get a swig of that. In any case, whether you like or hate the drink,
you can’t deny it is the beverage of the season.
Barbados Blog
Every little Caribbean island should have a blog like this one on Barbados. I’d take up the task of exploring and blogging about each myself, if I had the time and money, but for now we can rely on the good old tourism bureaus to point us to over packed tourists spots and people like Linda, who point us in the opposite. Well okay, Linda isn’t exactly pointing us to dark, unwelcoming, roads off the beaten track, but she sure does have a good bird’s eye view of everything happening on in Barbados. Most recent posts include celebrity gossip bits on Charlie Sheen and Denise Richards, new cell phone regulations, the upcoming jazz festival in addition to several guest house and hotel recommendations. This blog appears to be updated on a regular basis, so it’s worth book marking if you plan on spending your next holiday in Barbados.
Feasting on Asphalt with Alton Brown
I caught this in the newspaper over the weekend and see that our Slashfoodies are all over it as well. More travel TV is about to be
dished up from the Food Network crew as Alton Brown gears up for a new trip
and tell-all tasting show. The host of the Food Network’s Good
Eats will star in a new program about a coast-to-coast motorcycle trip that has him tasting his way across the
country sampling the colorful cuisine of America’s Heartland. His website’s Recipe for Adventure
design is looking very road-trippy, but no mention of the new show to be found. The “working title”
according to the Food Network is Feasting on Asphalt. Works for me, but no word yet on when he’ll hit
the pavement or his exact route. Food Network says Route 66, but USA Today reported Highway 50. One thing we
do know is that Alton will be shooting more Iron Chef episodes in January 2006, but no news yet on when this
new show will surface. We’ll be sure to check in with Slashfood to find
out!