ASTROLIQUOR for June 15-21—What the stars say you should drink!

My Fellow Inebriates,

Here’s your booze horoscope:

Aries, be prepared for professional events this week; you may well have to give a talk or address a boardroom. In the past you’ve done this with a drunken swagger, but maybe it’s time to get serious. This is your career, and you need more than liquid confidence—you need your reflexes when responding to executives’ rapid-fire questions. This makes vodka a liability. If you really want to succeed, add some Red Bull to it.

Taurus, your computer may give you grief this week, and you’ll search fruitlessly for the problem. It’s not an aging hard drive or a bad sector—it’s all the porn you’ve downloaded. Either it’s clogging up the works or it’s introduced a virus. Poor Taurus, you don’t even remember watching that porn. You were too wrecked on peach vodka. Go outside and find some fresh air.

Friends may call you pedantic, Gemini, the way you’ve been overanalyzing and lecturing. The more information you receive, the more confused you get, leaving you mired in dilemmas that are ultimately trivial. Could it be you’re too sober? Break out some Kahlua and peppermint schnapps, plus a splash of soda and a dollop of whipped cream. You need a whimsical drink to tame that rational mind and let your intuition play.

Cancer, you’re paying unusual attention to a Capricorn colleague—weirding this person out, in fact. Don’t become obsessive. Try to empathize… How would you like it if some rum-soaked lush kept lurching at you? Okay, well, you might like it. But it’s not good at work. Coworkers are starting to find you erratic. Back off on the Captain Morgan (and the stalking) until September.

Leo, you’ll get an inflammatory message from an old friend this week. Ignore the urge to send an immediate retort; a negative response could kill the relationship. Exercising restraint is hard when you’re perpetually gooned, but do try; if you can wait just a few days, you might decide not to respond at all, thereby preserving your friendship. You need a soothing libation: two parts Irish cream to one part raspberry liqueur. Mix it up with milk to dilute the alcohol and keep yourself from drunken emailing.

The phone is ringing, Virgo, in a good way. You’ll get a job offer from an old colleague. It’ll be good to get off the couch, you think. But then you wonder, Can I do better? This is exactly the thought pattern produced by a steady drip of gin and creme de menthe and punctuated by daytime talk shows. Sadly, you can’t do better, Virgo. Take the job so you can afford to keep buying gin.

Libra, you need to harness your determination; you have a strange week ahead. It’ll start out either very busy or very slow, then it will switch mid-week to the opposite. This will wreak havoc with your plans, especially if your level of activity is tied to finance. You’ll blunder through it by maintaining a watermelon vodka buzz.

Scorpio, I was too drunk to make sense of your chart, but I think you’ll be traveling to a destination with water. Maybe you’ll go to the seaside, or maybe there’ll just be potable water available. Wherever you end up, you’ll be offered a lucrative position leading to even more travel. Have you ever combined vodka with Coca-Cola and raspberry cordial? The stars say do it.

Sagittarius, you have a birthday present to buy this week, and no idea what to choose. Possible gifts are everywhere, but you hesitate, worrying that your choice won’t be bang-on. Fretting obsessively is always a bad sign—of sobriety. Fix it with a Blue Curacao bender, then go shopping hammered. You’ll buy all sorts of things, and something will work out.

Your stress level skyrockets over the next month, Capricorn. By August you’ll either crash and burn or find yourself on a successful path. But you won’t feel certain of anything until 2013. And really, none of us will. With the Mayan End of Days coming, there might not even be a 2013, in which case the remainder of your life is f#cked. Poor Capricorn, this calls for vodka and Blue Curacao, with Red Bull to prod you back to consciousness for bathroom trips.

Aquarius, this is a terrific week for creative endeavors and redecorating. Your sense of aesthetics is highly tuned; your self-confidence is high. Get to the paint store and look at swatches. Bid on a Dan Lacey painting to make your decor unique. Speak your mind, even when people don’t want to hear it. Make sure you do this via email or phone so you don’t start a barfight. You are destined for one, but busying yourself with a recipe might help:

  • 4 oz vodka
  • 4 oz peach schnapps
  • 1 oz amaretto
  • 1 oz Midori melon liqueur
  • 1 tbsp sweet-and-sour mix
  • Juice to taste (I’m having “none”)

Pisces, the stars are favorable for romance; you could have a real relationship this week and not have to leave money on the dresser. This fills you with giddiness. Go with it—hollow out some coconuts and pour in brandy and banana liqueur. Your new partner will love the way you do whatever you want. But look out! A jealous third party will try to undermine this romantic picture. Share that booze so you can keep some of your wits about you.

Strawberry Shortcake Day? Is this, like, a thing?

My Fellow Inebriates,

I had no idea June 14 was Strawberry Shortcake Day until I looked at the stats today and saw that 53 people had found me via that search term. (Of course they would have been annoyed to find a not-so-PG-rated FRÜLI review, but oh well.)

Thankfully Strawberry Shortcake isn’t especially popular at LBHQ. (Wish we could say the same for Wonder Pets.) Judging by the number of people who somehow find this (this!) site by questing after that sugary, insipid, fruit-obsessed character with the disproportionately large head, there are plenty of parents out there enduring a pre-K Strawberry Shortcake plague and evidently obliging their tots by typing it in as a search term.

She might actually be less tolerable than a Care Bear. One thing’s for sure: there are better uses for strawberries than ordinary shortcake. How about a Boozy Strawberry Shortcake?

Photo: Stephanie Diaz

Okay, so I’m not a big solids fan, but a dessert laced with cointreau is cause for exception. Let’s get started. Do you also have a four-year-old helping you? All right, then. You might want to take a belt of cointreau now rather than later.

Start with five to six strawberries. The ones they ship up to us from California are mutants the size of apples, so I’ll use five. You have to hull them and slice them, then soak them in 1 tbsp sugar and 2 tbsp cointreau.

This last bit must be a misprint—we’ll use 2 cups.

While these things are sitting, whip up some cream, adding some of the strawberry liquid. (Holy shit, that’s a lot of liquid if you follow my directions.)

Then you need to make the shortcake part, which involves a lot of measuring and kneading and baking, etc. Maybe we’ll leave this part out.

Depending on how drunk you are, assembly may or may not challenge you. There are three things to layer, two of which are supposed to be solid. If you’ve been liberal with the cointreau and jettisoned the shortcake step, you won’t be able to layer this while sober, never mind sky-high drunk like yours truly.

So just throw all those cointreau-soaked strawberries into the whipped cream and enjoy. Happy Strawberry Shortcake Day 🙂

And if you don’t have a four-year-old to impress, just cut to the chase with a Strawberry Shortcake Martini.

CRIOS TORRONTES (2011)—Good enough to attract the undead

My Fellow Inebriates,

It appears Granny doesn’t need Fluffy any more; she’s loose in the house and no longer requires a furry vessel.

Go ahead. Roll your eyes. But last night at 3:00am both kids woke up screaming.

Usually, if this happens, my dad wakes up first. In contrast to all the other mothers in the world who are famously sensitive to their little ones’ cries, my mother goes into a coma when she sleeps, and by the time she’s aware of their distress (if she even becomes aware) my dad’s already parked himself on the floor between their two beds and resigned himself to an uncomfortable hour while they settle down.

Tough luck for my mum—Dad’s in Vegas this week. Who knows how long the kids had to scream to rouse her; I didn’t hear it myself. (I don’t sleep in my parents’ room [for fear of witnessing Unspeakable Acts].) I was downstairs, passed out after an irresistible glass of CRIOS TORRONTES (2011). But she finally dragged herself into the girls’ room and sprawled between their beds.

On the floor she was oppressed by dreams of Granny, who demanded—in the only dream my mother could remember particularly—whether she had watered the plant. (She hadn’t.)

But why do I suspect Granny’s ghost has decoupled itself from Fluffy? It seems to need to be somewhere; it wasn’t here until Fluffy arrived from Ireland, which makes me think it hitchhiked, which makes me think she needed a place to reside for the voyage. It’s just that lately…lately Fluffy’s started seeming kind of normal, maybe even cool. He hasn’t given off that freaky golem aura in a while. He hangs out with the bears; he watches Breaking Bad with us…he’s okay.

So why did Granny ditch him? And where is she now?

The first question is easy. Summer will drive our thermostat beyond 38°C (that’s over 100°F). Fluffy’s the fluffiest, most insulated animal who ever entered the house. His body will be purgatory for any occupant spirits. In fact, a paranormal squatter would be only slightly less desperate than Fluffy himself. Granny must have vamoosed.

What confirms this is the thermostat itself. We bears have been razzing Fluffy about his thick pelt and warning him that Langley ain’t Northern Ireland—he’s gonna suffer when the mercury rises. So he’s been getting stressed out. And the day Dad left for Vegas, the thermostat quit. I think Fluffy accidentally destroyed it with his mind just by fretting about his impending suffering. And Granny herself—well, she’s visited Langley in summer before, so she knows what it’s like; she probably deked out at that moment, leaving Fluffy in sole charge of his paranormally amplified faculties and nuking our thermostat.

So Granny is bumping around the house sans Fluffy and messing with everybody’s REM sleep. OMG! Why? How long do the dead hang around? Isn’t there some notion about them going somewhere? Or is there unfinished business here?

Personally, and you may find this cynical, I think she may well have been on her way into the ether when we bought BEEFEATER 24. Granny was pretty easygoing about her booze, so she wouldn’t quibble about whether it was the family gin of my mother’s childhood or a tea-infused 2008 bid for more market share. It was BEEFEATER, damn it, and when 750mL of it arrived in the house, she decided to stay. And my mum sealed the deal by also buying a delectable white wine. Why would Granny go anywhere with CRIOS TORRONTES in the house?

A Staff Pick at our neighborhood booze shop, CRIOS TORRONTES had been giving us come hither looks for months. The only thing delaying the purchase was my dad, who’s not keen on white wine. My mum bought it within an hour of dropping him off at the airport—that’s how keen we both were to try it. And with good reason.

Intensely aromatic, CRIOS TORRONTES exudes peach—not the gently rotting peach of a Unibroue beer but rapturously fresh peach backed up by subtler orchard fruits. These generous fragrances hint of fruit hedonism—out-of-control sweetness and mayhem in the mouth. But CRIOS TORRONTES is faking you out with those orgiastic aromas. Sip it, and instead of being overwhelmed, you are drawn into a beguiling off-dry symphony of flavors, delicately structured with all the fruity exuberance of a good Sauvignon Blanc—but in a bigger-bodied, sultry, and lingering Torrontes. As it rises from fridge temperature, CRIOS TORRONTES becomes even more appealing, continuing to waft gorgeous peach and melon while spreading across the palate with elegant pacing and controlled generosity.

I’m thinking we need to pound this wine tonight and chase it with the BEEFEATER 24 so these libations are not hanging around when everybody goes to sleep. As much as I liked Granny, her visits are freaking me out.