Tequila!!

Tequila! God, I hate that stuff. The Dining Section of today's Times had a piece about "embracing cheap tequila," which oddly sent me through a series of emotions and memories involving the one solitary time in my life I tried tequila. It was only once, in hopes of hallucinating and absolve myself of a girlfriend -- a better plan had never been hatched, obviously.

My professor for Culinary Management was also the director of the wine program at the school, a serious oenophile. I took an 8 part wine unit involving tasting styles of wines from all over the world. As for liquor (or in industry lingo, "go-go juice" "spirits"), we spoke of it, but never sampled. Why the short thrift?

Because wine is wonderful with food and liquor is wonderful with water, ice and whatever it takes to make it taste less like liquor. I'm not a big fan of wine in general, but when it is combined in the mouth with good food, the food becomes something else, something you can string big airy words together to make yourself sound profound and arty. It's like a party with music versus a party with out music -- it's still a good party, but misses a certain something.

Liquor, however, does not play that well with food. There's just too much "heat" -- too much alcohol. That's all ya taste, and it overwhelms the palate. It only takes a few ounces and the mouth becomes numb and taste goes to the wayside all together, unless the liquor is mixes with other strong flavors. Hence, the #1 way to consume tequila is in super sweet, fruity margaritas.

Taste the Rainbow, if the Rainbow were to get you TOTES TRASHED, YEE HAAAW!

Unlike the complexity of fermented wine or brewed beers, distilled liquors all go through a stage where they are broken down and cleansed and all that is left is alcohol, water and maybe some substances guaranteed to give you a hang over but can be filtered. At that point, whether you started with corn or wheat or cactus or potato or rice, it all pretty much tastes the same. It's how it's treated (or in vodka's case, not treated) after this point, whether aged in wooden barrels (whiskey) or smoothed out with botanicals (gin) or sweetened and flavored (liqueur) that makes it the products we come to know. And none of it is food friendly.

We never did a liquor tasting, there was no point, and I was fine with it, because I don't need to taste tequila to bring memory, only a smell of some one's tequila shooter of some one sitting next to me at a bar.....When I was in my 20s, I drank a quart of tequila to see if I would hallucinate. I might have hallucinated, I don't remember anything but waking up in tequila sweat, hung over and broken up with my girlfriend at the time. Just the smell of the stuff takes me back to that morning.

Liquor is great to get relaxed fast, a social cocktail is a wonderful thing, I suppose. I just don't like to get drunk, even when I was younger. Modern cocktail culture is twee and pretentious, trying to add quality ingredients to drinks where the amount of heat kinda renders the effort moot.

No.

I do use liquor in one aspect of my culinary life. When I use vanilla beans, I cut them in half and scrape out the wonderful black paste that adds truly wonderful pure vanilla flavor to dishes. I take the spent beans and let a large bunch of them sit in 190 proof vodka (that's 80% alcohol) for a few months in a dark closet. I then blend it into a mash, strain it, then cut it with 50% water -- quadruple strength vanilla extract for pennies on the dollar. For the same reason alcohol is an excellent window cleaner and paint stripper, it also extracts all the essential flavors out of a bean. It also doesn't add any of it's own flavor. I have to cut it with water because adding too much alcohol to a dish may affect outcome.

Does it really matter what is in the bottle, as long as it meets the high standards of the ad?

Most liquor with in each class is pretty much the same (hello, vodka!). Companies spend stupid amounts of cash to distinguish themselves, as their products can't do it for themselves. Like wine, certain kinds of liquor are more refined in flavors (hello, sippin' whiskey), but let's get real -- you get a few shots in, and unless you have a very strong, especially trained palate, the tasting portion of the evening is done.

THE COUNT:2350
Lifted weights this morning. I confirmed that yes - I can do a negative pull up, but after one, I felt the soreness come back to the level it was yesterday, so I left it at that, and cut back on the back-targeted weights.

Assembled ice cream sandwiches today with my sheet of brownies and homemade vanilla ice cream. Despite cutting them into 2" squares and being conservative on the ice cream filling, each smallish sandwich rang up at 265 cal per  sammie! Doesn't sound like much, but I could easily down three or four without blinking.

Lunch was tricky. After yesterday's amorphous calorie day, wanted to stay on track. I originally started preparing boiled corn in addition to the shrimp and brussel sprouts, but as I was doing the math, the count was going over 1,100 with butter. So I cut the corn out, though it may not be good to eat tomorrow. Funny, I regard corn on the cob with a little bit of butter healthy, but in the realm of the Weight Watchers system , corn is not considered a vegetable so much as a carb like bread. I now see why.
AM SNACK: 7:45am, iced green tea, 25 cal

BREAKFAST: 8am, steel-cut oatmeal, banana,  500 cal

LUNCH: 1:15pm, breaded shrimp, roasted brussel sprouts, baby carrots, 7oz diet coke, 785 cal

DINNER: 6:30pm, whole wheat pasta with red sauce, tomato & moz salad, a little broccoli, homemade ice cream sandwich, +/- 1040