nothing to do but bake

It's snowing here. Small, constant flakes that are building up into light, fluffy mounds of snow. This is very unusual for Portland; our typical winter snowstorms consist of wet, sticky snowflakes that melt as soon as they touch the surface and inevitably turn into rain by afternoon. Another casualty of global warming, I suppose - but I can't complain.

Though we tend to ignore Portland's famously unreliable weather predictions, we nevertheless had planned for a full day of indoor activities; we're finishing up our Christmas gifts, and had hoped to attend two holiday cocktail parties this evening, to which we'd promised to bring cookies. One (large) batch of ginger pillows became two, with the leftover egg whites being turned into pink meringues, and with panettone on the menu as well, we had a packed day of baking ahead of us.

We took a brief walk in the morning to feel the snow on our faces and the soft muted thud under our shoes, and chuckled to ourselves as inexperienced winter drivers slowly skated away from the center of the road. At the market a few blocks away, we jostled past other brave souls to grab the much needed sugar for our afternoon pursuits, then trudged back to our home. At the time, the ground cover was going on an inch of snow, which is probably the most I've seen since moving here. Now, as the blizzard continues out our windows and the mounds outside become hefty drifts to our snow-virgin (or just largely abstinent?) eyes, it's becoming less and less likely that we will be able to make it out this evening.

Though I'm a little disappointed to be missing two of the only holiday parties we would have been able to attend this season, there is something undeniably romantic about watching the snow spin past our windows, as the oven warms the kitchen and the smell of baking panettone begins to waft throughout the rest of our apartment. I am looking forward to a lazy afternoon of baking and catching up on movies we've been meaning to see, spiked with a cookie or two and, perhaps, a steamy cup of hot-buttered rum. All of the ingredients necessary for a cozy winter day.

holiday tipples

After last weekend, I think I've realized why politicians repealed Prohibition in December; can you imagine the holidays without drinks?

FRIDAY 8:00 pm

Hot buttered rum and a movie.

Hot Buttered Rum Batter adapted from Lance Mayhew
1 stick butter, room temp
¾ c brown sugar
¼ cup agave nectar
½ tsp cinnamon
pinch salt
1/8 tsp nutmeg
1/8 tsp allspice
1/8 tsp clove

Cream the butter in a stand mixer and, with the mixer running, add all additional ingredients and beat at a medium speed until incorporated. Scoop the butter out onto parchment or wax paper and roll into a well-wrapped log. Put it back in the refrigerator to chill until needed.

To make a hot buttered rum, simply slice a good dollop off of the batter, add to a mug with 2 oz of good, aged rum (Mayhew likes Bacardi 8), fill with hot water, stir to incorporate, and enjoy.

SATURDAY 1:30 pm

House Spirits Annual Holiday Booze Bazaar, with tastings of Marteau Absinthe, Ransom Grappas and Old Tom Gin, Sub Rosa Tarragon and Saffron Vodkas, and House's own Aviation gin, Krogstad Aquavit, Medoyeff Vodka and Apothecary Ouzo. A yearly excuse to eat an ungodly amount of free cheese and chocolates while sipping some the best artisan booze in the city.

SATURDAY 4:00 pm

Anchor 2008 Christmas Ale at the Bye & Bye. The beer and the company was better than our friend's unwittingly vegan grilled-cheese.

SATURDAY 7:30 pm

Table-side Spanish coffees at Huber's - Portland's oldest restaurant, specializing in "turkey-based meals." We'd never been and friends of ours thought it'd be fun for the holidays. I wanted to ask the bartender so many silly questions. Do you ever spill? Do you ever burn yourself? Is this why you guys have a carpeted floor? How do you light that match with one hand? Did you have to shave your head for this job?

SUNDAY 10:00 am

House-made eggnog from Moxie Rx. Gathered from around-the-corner in a snow storm, doctored at home with Buffalo Trace.

WEDNESDAY 8:30 pm

Looking at the forecast, tonight feels like a hot toddy evening

why an English mansion would be better than Portland in a blizzard

As the snow whips past the windows outside, we're just thankful for the internet. As long as the power holds out, we'll still have entertainment:

Seriously, though - who dreamed this collaboration up?

Thanks to Monitor Mix.

double-edged sword

All Songs Considered just ran their staff picks for best-of-the-year music. Good banter, a few great picks, and a couple really mediocre selections. Such is the life of a "Best Of" list.

Variations on these lists pop up every month (Best Cheap Eats, Best New Bands, Best Scarves You've Never Heard Of), but they only really come into their own at the year-end. The New York Times Book Review has put forth their top ten books of the year. Too many magazines to count have already compiled their '08 music picks and Pitchfork will post theirs this week.

For editors, I think lists can become addictive - a crutch to rely on for a space-filling fall-back article. Just look at the glossies on grocery store checkout lines. "42 Resolutions for a New You." "9 Wonder Foods to Eat Now." "73 Worst Confessions." You'd think the staff for these places had forgotten how to write headlines that don't include numbers.

I'll provide an exception for year-end lists. "Best-ofs" and "top-tens" are a definite guilty pleasure. I have to admit that I completely understand the love of categorizing things and making lists - I think it fills a human impulse to collect and organize. There is something in declaring "bests" and "favorites" that gives you a sense of ownership over your preferences. With this act, what were simply a group of books or albums become your books or your albums, because you gave them status.

But this also opens you up to deflation. Usually, these sorts of lists are written up by critics and taste-makers, or else by people with too much time on their hands; in short, a group of people with pompous confidence in their own opinions. Consider them a sort of annual, territorial pissing-match, when geeks can assert their dominance by criticizing what others think is cool. Epicurious.com recently declared their ten choices for food trends in '09, which the Portland Mercury readily mocked. And seriously, it's demanding all of my self-control to hold myself back from weighing in on those stupid predictions. Portland, Maine will be the new Portland, Oregon?! Who came up with that gem?

So with the perils in mind, we're going to run the whole gamut of '08 awesomeness and declare our best of everything from the year.

BEST OF AUGHT-EIGHT!
Dove Vivi pizza
Bon Iver
Homemade pickles and jams!
Hot Chip
Cabinet magazine
Doughnut Plant in NYC
The Magnetic Fields in Seattle
Infinite Regress Collective Mix Tape
Discovering Ayer's Creek Farm at the Hillsdale Market
Slow Food Nation
Lykke Li at the Doug Fir
The Chef Studio
O
Mike Daisey
North Portland
Chest freezer (A's choice)
Bike commuting
Murakami at the Brooklyn Museum

repeal day

Last night, I realized that it's been a few months since A and I have made a good drink. For my birthday last year, she took me to a cocktail workshop at Mint/820, which set us off on a heavy-drinking phase that meant lots of sugar syrups and sticky counters and cracked ice. I'm not saying that our heavy-drinking phase ended, just that we got lazier about it. While there's a lot to recommend a chilled cocktail on a hot summer day, a cold beer or a glass of rose wine can be just as refreshing, without all of the fruit-squeezing, measuring and shaking. Not to mention that our liquor cabinet was getting really out of hand.

Frankly, cocktails can be a boozy rabbit hole to fall down; once you get started, the ingredients and demands grow more and more esoteric. You start out learning how to make a simple, slightly embarrassing drink-or-two, like a cosmopolitan or a lemon drop, and soon you're mixing gin flips and scouring your liquor store for batavia arrack to make a 19th-century punch. It didn't take long before I was trying to mist an orange peel through a lit match to burn the citrus esters that would land atop my drink.

With most drinks, I've gotten over this baroque tendency, realizing that Portland has enough good ol' booze experts that it's worth leaving the mixing to more capable hands, with their libraries of tinctures and tonics and obscure liqueurs. But whether A and I go out for a drink or we try to pour one at home, none of this geekery would be possible had time stood still in 1933 and Prohibition remained.


Which is why it is our duty to celebrate Repeal Day on December 5. Maybe it just seems like something that was dreamed up by the Dewar's marketing department, but a lot of good holidays were originally just corporate sales ploys; at least this one provides a better-than-average excuse for a drink. The true beauty of Repeal Day is that while we may recognize it on the 5th of December, it can't be bound by a specific "day" or a "historic moment" - it is a holiday that resides deep inside each of us. In fact, I'll be celebrating Repeal tonight with a manhattan and tomorrow night at the Holiday Ale Fest. I may even celebrate Repeal Day after Friday with a few drinks over the weekend. You see? Repeal Day is only as much of a holiday as we make it.

So nowadays, if I reach for something besides beer or wine, it's normally just a good spirit, neat or on the rocks. But Repeal Day seems to call for something fittingly classy and old-school. Maybe it's time to dust off the cocktail shaker and bust out those brandied cherries we put up this summer. Tis the season.