New Year!

[melannen]

1. Here is your silly-but-good improvised cocktail recipe for 2011. I am calling it a "Sonic Shark", mostly because I can:

Make a basic Sonic Screwdriver with lemon-lime soda, blue curaçao and plain vodka, without shaking or stirring. (If you want to do a non-alcoholic version, you could use the lemon-lime with blue raspberry soda and skip the vodka.)

Then add freshly-made whole pineapple juice, nice and pulpy, about as much as the curaçao and vodka combined. (The host of our NY party got a juicer for Christmas, you see. There has been much juicing in that house of late.) The pineapple pulp should nucleate the soda-pop, causing a sudden uprush of foam like a toy volcano, and it will also make the foam persistent, so that your drink keeps a head. Also the pineapple juice makes it yummy. :D

(Why yes, we have watched the DW Christmas special.)

2. Also finally went to see the latest Harry Potter movie yesterday. I was not unimpressed - I know you all have been saying it's good, and it was: it somehow managed to follow the book pretty much exactly and yet still make a good movie, which considering my mixed impressions of the book is saying something.

Mostly, though, it made me want to go on a long backpacking trip around Britain. (I was possibly the only person who read that book and said "I wish she'd gone into more detail on the camping!) :D Especially combined with the fact that I got A Walk in the Woods for Christmas and have read it already. (In which our author attempts to walk the Appalachian trail and spends a fair amount of time whining about how hiking in the US is so much harder than hiking in Europe. And he skipped my state entirely and *didn't even mention it*. BAH.)

Also, I spent most of my Christmas gift card money at Target on a 20°F 2.5 lb backpacker's mummy bag, marked down to half-price, which has only been on my wish list for years, and I have slept a night in it already, and we loves it, precious. (Now what is replacing it on my backpacking wishlist is a Kelly Kettle-type stove, but apparently Americans, being addicted as we are to fancy distilled-and-refined fuels, have no need of such things, because nobody seems to make them for us, which means my chances of finding a cheap used one are about zip, and the import ones are out of my budget >:| I have heard rumors that dirt-cheap samovars can be bought in some ethnic neighborhoods in big cities here but I bet they're all electric.)

Anyway I think my official goal for this year is to do a solo backpacking trip at least once. You know, once it is not winter any more.

Comments

[whatistigerbalm]

That drink sounds lovely!

[melannen]

It was! And the pineapple juice improved it immensely.

[pseudo_tsuga]

That sleeping bag sounds amazing. I am so jealous. *__*

spends a fair amount of time whining about how hiking in the US is so much harder than hiking in Europe. that surprises me! What's so bad about the US?

[melannen]

According to him, lack of creature comforts, more or less. Apparently, in most of Europe (or at least the parts where he had been hiking), you can't really do more than a day's hike without ending up at a village with a warm pub and a shower and a bed to sleep in. He signed up for the Appalachian Trail having done a lot of long-distance hiking in Europe but without ever having had to a) carry food and water for more than one day, or b) camp in a wilderness site. Much less do ten-day treks through national forest where the only sign of other human life is clear-cuts in the distance.

Of course, according to my wide-ranging knowledge cleaned from reading lots of hiking books, and never hiking anywhere else, the East Coast of the US is the worst place ever to hike. Everybody who's done a lot of East Coast backpacking and a lot of *someplace else* seems to think it's miserable in comparison. Apparently on the West Coast, the weather is at least vaguely predictable part of the year? And there are at least some times when you are not getting eaten by ALL the insects? Last time I did a stint on the AT I talked to people who had done both the AT and the Pacific Crest and they all agreed that the Pacific Crest was a cakewalk in comparison.

[pseudo_tsuga]

Yeah, backpacking would be a huge difference from hiking from town to town. Poor guy!

I've only hiked in the West Coast and that's all true. You don't have to deal with too many bugs and the weather is easy to prepare for.

[melannen]

SO JEALOUS.

...but I still love my East Coast anyway. We're just tougher than y'all, that's all. :P

[sophia_sol]

1. That actually sounds really delicious -- I shall have to try it. What are the proportions for the Sonic Screwdriver base recipe?

2. Backpacking! Awesome! I've never done any, but I do backcountry canoeing, which is similar only you don't have to carry all your possessions on your back (except for portages), and you have a guarantee of fresh water nearby. I need a new sleeping bag myself, and yours sounds AMAZING!

[melannen]

Ahahah, you seem to be operating under the delusion that I *measure* when I do cocktails. Standard screwdriver is 2 parts orange juice to 1 part vodka; standard sonic screwdriver is usually 4 parts soda to 1 part vodka to 1 part blue curacao, to keep the same proportion of alcohol to non-alcohol (although since curacao is weaker than vodka, it comes out weaker anyway.) I added a finger or so of pineapple juice on top of that, but if I was doing it again, I would probably add more blue curacao to make up for the extra pineappe juice.

I tend to make my cocktails very weak, though, because I only drink, like, twice a year and am totally lightweight, but then I had already had some tea-and-schnapps when I was making these, so I am not actually entirely sure how much vodka I was adding at that point. ^_^

[sophia_sol]

Mmm, thank you! I shall definitely try this. (and I'm pretty much a lightweight too, so weak is a FINE thing.)