Monthly Archives: May 2007

DOTW: The Sober Pirate

Over at [Married With Dinner](http://www.marriedwithdinner.com/), they have a feature called Drink of the Week. I enjoy reading it, because experimenting with mixed drinks is exactly the sort of thing I’m never going to get around to now that I have a kid.

Unless I can send that kid to bartending school. To that end, Iris and I invented a new bath game called Bartender. One of her rubber ducks is the bartender, and two others are customers at the bar.

Yesterday, Iris created a cocktail of half rum, half tea. I call it the Sober Pirate.

Today, I challenged Iris to come up with ingredients for a new cocktail, the Squawking Parrot. “Walnut salad and pork,” she replied.

“Cocktails usually consist of things people drink,” I said. This was restrictive and archaic, she indicated. Then the bartender went crazy after drinking too many Squawking Parrots and started pitching customers into the water.

Tomorrow we’re going to work on a drink called the Crow’s Nest.

Holy Bertolli

For those of you seeking the sauce formerly known as Five Brothers, they’ve changed it again.

The product is now called Bertolli Vineyard Premium Collections: Marinara with Burgundy Wine. The label is now purple. But I am assured: “New look! Same great taste.”

Next year it will be Bertolli Romanée-Conti Grand Cru Burgundy Wine Sugo di San Marzano Tomato Gravy.

Paging Abe Froman

**Iris:** Can I have some more sausage?

**Me:** Sure. It’ll take one minute to warm it up.

*(20 seconds later)*

**Iris:** Dada?

**Me:** Yes?

**Iris:** Could you please do me a favor and give me the sausage now?

Big and scaly

My [Culinate](http://www.culinate.com/) column this week is about kitchen scales:

[Weighing In](http://www.culinate.com/read/bacon/scales)

*But if you love to cook, kitchen scales are downright exciting, and I’ll try to demonstrate this without resorting again to cheap sexual innuendo.*

Junkin’

Sorry for the lull. I’m at a professional conference. One of the speakers today was a TV producer whose network, Turner South (now SportSouth), aired a show about flea markets. (I googled and can’t figure out whether it’s still on.) The show was called Junkin’.

This was pretty much the most awesome thing I’ve ever heard, and so far today I’ve said “Junkin'” approximately six hundred times. Like I said, I have no idea whether the show is still on, but I assume it must be. How could it fail? According to one of the hosts, writing on IMDB:

> Junkin’ is a show where I (Val Myers) travel to the south to meet up with my friend Dave Bird. We drive around in his El Camino (The General Flea) and go to flea markets and Yard Sales in the south. We buy “junk” hence the name, then we put the junk on ebay and see what happens. The people we meet are super interesting and the junk is endless in it’s variety. Funny things happen, we meet funny people and we laugh at junk.

“We laugh at junk” pretty much sums up my philosophy of life. In fact, _Junkin’_ is going to be so popular, soon all TV shows will end in _in’_.

In addition to professional _boxin’_, there will be a kickboxing show called _Kickin’_. A home repair show called _Fixin’_. The Nashville Network will carry _Pickin’_.

I will host a Food Network show about America’s favorite protein. It will be called _Chicken’_.

The future: it’ll be rockin’!