This is the cafe au lait at Hugo's in Portland. Yes, the duck was delicious and the fish was awesome and the lobster flan was quite nice. But that's not why you read this blog. You read it because of your insatiable curiosity regarding my liquid obsessions. (If you were a fan of the tie pictures, I'm sorry -- those days are over.) This cafe au lait was made with genuinely and appropriatley scalded milk, and is probably the best specimen to have been documented on this blog to date.

The signage at this bank just keeps getting better. Now they've added a nice unambiguous sign below the old, confusing one. But why is the old one still there? And why can't we just use both doors?

Portland at night. In a rare moment of beauty that caused me to pause just long enough in the bitter cold to to take my fone out of my pocket and snap this photo.

With Cognac. I like whiskey better. But this is a little smoother... As you like...

This is a post about drinking Sazeracs in Verchaix, France. Verchaix is a quiet mountain village inhabited by peaceful folk in the French Alps near Geneva. But something mysterious is afoot...

First, a few disclaimers:

1. While the pictures for this post were taken using my mobile fone, I have to admit that I did not type this using the QWERTY thumb pad on my Treo. This violates one of the tenants of this blog, which is that all content should come directly from the fone, but oh well.
2. It has been pointed out by several readers of this blog (one rather insistent one in particular), that the correct spelling of the cocktail I've been referring to as the "Sazarac" is in fact "Sazerac." This is substantiated by numerous sources, so from here on out it will be referred to as the "Sazerac" on these pages. If you're interested in the history of this drink (including the claim that it was in fact the first proper cocktail) you can Google it or just read this.
   

So that's that. This whole idea of drinking Sazeracs in Verchaix is ultimately my fault, for reasons that are obvious if you've been reading this lately (which you haven't). However, it was my friend, Nicolas, who was the real instigator. He argued that it was essentially my duty to produce a Sazerac for anyone in Verchaix who had managed to suffer through the incessant blathering on this blog.

I suggested that it might be nice to make Sazeracs with real Absinthe, as called for by the original recipes (but difficult to do in the States on account of Absinthe's being illegal). Nicolas made a special trip to this nice shop in Paris where they sell nothing but Absinthe (thanks, Nicolas!), and brought three very excellent varieties with him to Verchaix.

This was such an extraordinary gesture of good will on Nicolas's part that we felt a moral obligation to test the Absinthe varieties before using one for Sazeracs. Many Absinthes wouldn't be suitable in my opinion for a Sazerac (I think the anis taste found in Pernod or Ricard is necessary), but after several rounds of tasting we settled on the Francois Guy.

In the absence of a proper Absinthe fountain, I was forced to use this drip-coffee carafe for dissolving the sugar. It seemed to work reasonably well.

Valerie was kind enough to donate her liver to these experiments.



As were (left to right) Mariya, Vincent, Macky and Nicolas (of Absinthe-procurement fame).

Next an improvised bar was established at the dinner table, and the manufacturing of Sazeracs began.

Several minutes later, a new wave of Sazerac addicts was born. From left to right that's Valerie, Valerie, Tomas, Martin and Nicolas.

Today I went to the post office. I was hoping that while walking there a Hollywood agent would call and offer me one million dollars for my comic book. Instead, I just bought this roll of stamps for thirty nine bucks.

Just returned from a week of skiing in France, courtesy of our friend Valerie, whose family has a chalet in a small village called Verchaix near the Grand Massif. As you can see above, I got in five days of skiing, which was quite nice. However, as the four regular readers of this blog are well aware, the subject matter dealt with herein has little to do with exciting things like skiing. Subsequent posts regarding this amazing vacation will deal with the usual subject matters of this blog, e.g. the arcane and generally vapid details of cocktails and the making and consumption thereof. Regular readers will be no more or less dissapointed than usual.