CANADIAN CREAM—Empty somehow without Glen

My Fellow Inebriates,

Glen Bear has still not materialized anywhere at LBHQ.

Last night Blackie and I had a good cry about it while Fluffy observed us emotionlessly and Scarybear attacked a plate of ginger cookies, which he would have done anyway.

This should not be a sorrowful time of year. This is Glen’s favorite time of year, when his big, thick coat of white fur is his best asset and he doesn’t mind cuddling.

Glen as a baby, 2006

But he’s gone. He seems to be…really gone.

It didn’t seem respectful to drown our sorrows last night, but what the hell else was there to do?

Blackie Bear isn’t an alcoholic, and he has some common decency, so he hesitated—but not after we’d got the CANADIAN CREAM open. The lid wasn’t even tightly on, my fellow inebriates, it was a cinch. This means my mum was into it last. With her habit of returning jars and bottles to the fridge and cupboards with the lids barely on, my dad won’t even pick up a jar or bottle by the neck any more; it’s too dangerous. He retaliates by closing jars and bottles so tightly that she in turn can’t get them open without asking him nicely. This is the state of their marriage. It’s also how I know who’s been into what most recently. And my mum has apparently had some of my liqueur, otherwise Blackie and I wouldn’t be able to pour a toast to Glen.

Ahhhh, I know you’ve been wondering how our CANADIAN CREAM turned out. Or maybe not, in which case, here’s a picture of some people shopping at Walmart.

4409

When we first made the CANADIAN CREAM it seemed a little thin. Then again, we couldn’t remember the exact consistency of Bailey’s. (And no one would buy any, even to be scientific.) Over the last 17 days our concoction has thickened noticeably, achieving what seems to be the right viscosity. How does it smell?

The aroma is comfortingly familiar—definitely in the neighborhood of Bailey’s if not right next door. The top note is milk chocolate, a full cup of which went into our recipe. Next time we should probably reduce this a little.

20121117_100557 Under the chocolate is the scent of delicious whisky, mellowed somewhat by a fortnight in a plastic milk jug. Of course it hasn’t really aged; whisky ages in casks, after which it ceases to mature. If it were to take on the characteristics of a two-litre plastic jug…well, we wouldn’t really want that. But somehow our three cups of Wisers have married nicely with the milk ingredients; the mixture doesn’t have the same searing booziness it had when we first poured it into the jug. Which is to say, it’s become less appealing.

The container needs a vigorous shake. Some of the chocolate has settled down to the bottom—not in chunks or particles, mind you, just a layer of darker chocolatiness that reluctantly goes back into solution if you jump up and down with the jug for a while.

CANADIAN CREAM coats the ice cubes in a crystal rock glass, looking eerily like Bailey’s but naggingly not. It is thick and creamy, but not as smooth as it should be. It foams a little over the ice instead of settling into a smooth, placid surface.

Not only is Glen missing; so is the camera charger. Not only THAT; my parents have refused to buy Bailey's Irish Cream for to compare with our custom hooch. Luckily, someone else on the Internet has taken such a picture already. Photo: cocktailhacker.com

Not only is Glen missing; so is the camera charger. Not only THAT; my parents have refused to buy Bailey’s Irish Cream to compare with our custom hooch. Luckily, someone else on the Internet has taken such a picture already. The one on the left is Bailey’s. The one on the right is homemade. cocktailhacker.com

The consistency feels right. But there is something missing in the taste. And something added.

Missing?

???? We can’t figure it out. Almond? Vanilla? Coffee?
Booze. It needs a smidge more.

Added?

Definitely chocolate. It’s not oppressive, but the additional chocolate makes our version seem a little sophomoric—like a milkshake but less thick.
Something higher-frequency…not sourness, this stuff had better not be souring this soon. But something about the homemade stuff is not quite as…deep.

Blackie’s verdict:

“Good, but dude…this isn’t right. Is there any more?”

LB’s verdict:

“It’s not right, but Glen would want us to have it.”

The upshot? A sense of dissatisfaction. A longing for the exact right thing and a sense of discomposure at not quite having it. Kind of like if someone suddenly produced a polar bear who looked just like Glen but was really just one of his Animal Alley™ twins. Not our Glen with the stained paw. Not our Glen whose fur Miss P decided to trim one day. Not our Glen who warms me up with a winter cuddle.

😦

Balls!

My Fellow Inebriates,

Our Canadian Cream is almost ready for consumption. Not that we haven’t had a small sip already, but at the end of this week it should be as good as it’s going to get—i.e., ready to chug. I have a few nagging worries, though.

When we made the liqueur, we bought a one-litre carton of whipping cream. Two and a half cups went into the mix, my mum put half a cup or so in some solid-food risotto-like thing, and the rest sat in the fridge with nothing to do. Recycling day came along and, since the unused cream was two days away from expiry, we gave it a sniff. OMG! Holy shit, people! That cream smelled rank. Holy crap, two days early the stuff was horrid. Mum poured it down the drain and rinsed the carton…but it was hard not to look at our giant Canadian Cream jug and think…the same cream’s in there! OMG!

That’s really the reason we got into it early—to make sure it wasn’t off. You wouldn’t want to take a big slug of sour milk products and end up barfing. But it smelled fine. It tasted fine.

Alcohol keeps food from going off.

So what is this amazing preservative power of alcohol all about? How does it work?

Simply put, alcohol is poisonous. At concentrations above 15 percent, bacteria and fungi can’t survive. That having been said, cream-liqueur experts advise against keeping homemade concoctions more than a few weeks, and only then in the fridge. Roger that—we’d better finish this shit now. Review…on the way 😉

To this sage advice, my mum said, “Oh. I guess we’d better not make another batch then. It’ll be enough to get through this lot.”

This is exactly the opposite of what I meant. Of course we should make another batch. Right now.

But instead she said we were going to make whisky balls.

I was immediately suspicious. Another recipe requiring us to cook with booze? OMG! The angels’ share is supposed to be miniscule—the tiny portion that evaporates naturally, not liberal gases spewing into the air from a hot saucepan. Damn it, why do the angels get any of our booze? Aren’t they supposed to be perfect creatures? Not addicts jonesing in distillery cask rooms.

“Relax,” said my mother. “Behave yourself.”

Apparently you don’t cook whisky balls.

They’re just like rum balls, which you don’t cook either—only they’re made by people who are too ungenerous to buy rum for loveable bears who have repeatedly requested it. Whisky balls are a not-horrible-sounding variation on rum balls. Let’s do this shit.

Here’s what we need:

3 ¼ cups vanilla wafer crumbs
¾ cup icing sugar
¼ cup cocoa
1 ½ cup walnuts
3 tbsp light corn syrup
½ cup whisky

Life is a compromise at LBHQ, so we’re using graham crumbs. We have to do this without Miss V seeing, or she will demand a bowlful of them (not that she would deign to eat a graham cracker).

Next two ingredients: check.

Walnuts…the kids will bitch a very great deal if walnuts go into this recipe. But perhaps they shouldn’t be the arbiters of our whisky-ball ingredients.

Corn syrup is one of those things that doesn’t age, and ours is probably older than I am. We’re going to use it anyway.

As for throwing half a cup of Canadian whisky into this recipe…what the hell. The plastic Wiser’s jug is enormous and its somewhat atonal siren song has been relentless lately—better do something with it other than just pound it. Sigh.

Okay, so you really just mix all this stuff up and shape it into balls. (OMG, I’m not even allowed to help with that—what’s the big deal, a little fur?) Then you sequester your balls away for a few days in an airtight container so the flavor can mellow. Five days is about ideal. But it’s hard to be away from your balls for five days. You might find yourself opening the container and sniffing your balls every so often, wondering if they’re ripe.

Whisky or whiskey balls?

If your balls are Scottish, Canadian, or Japanese, they’re whisky balls.

If your balls are American or Irish, they’re whiskey balls. As a rule of thumb, if your country has an “e” in the spelling, so does your whisk(e)y and any balls made therefrom.

OLD BOY ALE—A calming brew for when there’s a killer in the house

My Fellow Inebriates,

As a generality, animals that are predators have forward-facing eyes—all the better for chasing other animals. Animals that are prey have side-mounted eyes—all the better for scoping out the periphery.

Eyes in front, likes to hunt.

Eyes on the side, likes to hide.

Thus—and this argument is often advanced by those who believe vegetarianism is unnatural for humans—animals with eyes in front (lions, tigers, wolves) are usually carnivores. Wall-eyed animals (bunnies, sheep, squirrels) tend to be herbivores.

Take this duck, for example.

Okay, so ducks are kind of in the middle. They’re omnivores—they eat insects, weeds, small fish, and whatever you chuck at them in the park.

Now take this duck. No really, please take this duck. Minolta DSC

Carnivorous Duck is the most amoral animal at LBHQ. In fact, he’s the only animal who’s ever attempted to eat the kids.

He’s been off my radar recently, confined like Hannibal Lecter to the spare toybox. And let’s face it, if one of my brain cells forgets to remind the other of hazards such as Carnivorous Duck, the threat of predation gets falsely diminished.

I only thought of him because of this pic from 2006.

Scary, me, Glen Bear, and Carnivorous Duck, late 2006. Only Glen was happy about the snow.

As placid as it is, as comfortingly wintry, I felt unsettled after yesterday’s post. That’s when I realized, CD has been loose in the house for a while. Then when Emily asked about him, it all flashed at me malevolently—Carnivorous Duck is at large, and Glen Bear is missing.

Would CD be ambitious enough to eat a polar bear? I mean…a bear?

He always said he wouldn’t eat me or Scary because we were rancid. But then he’d kind of laugh, and his eyes would narrow. Carnivorously.

The key is not to think about it. Fortunately my dad bought more Parallel 49 beer—OLD BOY ALE, a classic pub-style ale ringing in at 5% ABV and 25 IBU.

When you’re terrified of predation and worried you might find a polar bear carcass somewhere in the basement with little beak marks on it, a rich, mellow brown ale with slight off-white foam and minimal lacing is a good reminder that the world is generally a good place. Yes, there are monsters, and some of them live at LBHQ, but how can you dwell on them while inhaling caramel-coffee-toffee-malt with well-behaved fruitiness hanging politely in the background? On the palate OLD BOY ALE bursts with mild nuttiness, bakery notes, earthy hops, riding along with moderate carbonation, a semi-creamy mouthfeel, and the quintessential pub-ale aftertaste. It tastes like another. And another. If I saw this on tap at a bar, I’d get under the tap.

Although it’s characterized as a bitter, OLD BOY ALE is more of a gentle brown ale. Definitely a good winter beer—a soothing, reassuring beer without too much bite but still supplying lots of interesting flavors. Paws up for sure.

You know what it’s like when you’re all alone and you feel like you’re being watched? Well…it feels like something is watching us right now. With forward-pointing eyes. But it can’t have any OLD BOY ALE, because we finished it. Let’s hope Glen isn’t finished as well.

Glennnn!

Liquorstore Bear

Pouring on the recommendations