easter

YALUMBA “THE CIGAR” CABERNET SAUVIGNON (2009)—Probably good with bunny

My Fellow Inebriates,

The greenspace near our townhouse is teeming with baby bunnies. On the way to school the kids look out for these distant relatives of the Easter Bunny, hoping to catch a glimpse through the blackberry bushes.

If you pay attention, you can see the occasional cottontail bouncing along, but almost as often you can see them eviscerated by the path. With apologies to my friend Violet, bunnies are some of the dumbest animals that ever lived—they just don’t know how to avoid cats and coyotes. Nor do they look both ways when they cross the road, which means my parents sometimes have to stage a diversion on the way to school so the kids don’t get an eyeful of leporine gore. “Check out those dandelions!” my mum said, for example, while passing a fur-and-blood pancake on 66 Avenue being sampled by a dog whose oblivious owner apparently didn’t mind her animal venturing into traffic.

Sorry, Violet

If bunnies were a little smarter, the Easter Bunny wouldn’t have to do everything each year. He could delegate, the way Santa does, sitting on his ass all year exploiting the elves until his big night. But bunnies are not so bright.

Which is why I haven’t bothered to bug the Easter Bunny for anything. I mean, does the Easter Bunny even have a postal code? I can hit Santa up at H0H 0H0, but where the hell do I send my Easter list? And does the Easter Bunny even care whether I’ve been good or bad? Does the Easter Bunny keep track? Because I get the sense that bunnies are about as smart as a sack of doorknobs.

For instance, when my mum suggested to the kids that they write the Easter Bunny a letter, Miss P said, “Nah, he doesn’t know how to read; he’s a bunny.” It made perfect sense to her that, despite the daunting logistics of delivering eggs to the world’s children, despite the cleverness and stealth required to get them inside houses protected by Alarm Force, and despite his enormous commitment to inducing a global diabetic coma, the Easter Bunny cannot read.

This is precisely the sort of epistemological compartmentalization at which our Fraser Valley demographic excels, which is to say that if we ever let Miss P get into the wrong hands we may find her embracing Noah’s Ark while remarking that the biomass of all known insects on the planet—two of each—would exceed the capacity of the Titanic, and happily allowing the two ideas to coexist.

But who wants to mess with magic? The Easter Bunny is undoubtedly a magical creature—a creature whose activities cannot be specifically disproven. So I thought I’d make a list for him, just in case he’s literate enough to Google his name and read it:

You have to hedge your bets, right?

Or not.

But were we right to shield the kids from the sight of roadkill? They’ve seen lots of dead birds and insects before. Miss V once used a magnifying glass to bash the shit out of a snail at pre-K while the teacher wasn’t looking. They eat animals from time to time… just not car-flattened ones. But there’s something so cute about bunnies…my mum didn’t want them to see a dead one.

For those who don’t mind the sight of a dead bunny—especially one that’s been dealt a glancing blow off the car hood and isn’t flat—why not scoop that dead little critter up? Take it home and make a stew. Wild animals have a favorable nutritional profile: high protein and low fat. And roadkill is free, which means you don’t have to yank out your debit card at Walmart; you just need a good recipe book and an open mind.

Ahhh, you solid food eaters, you have it made if you live in a neighborhood full of stupid bunnies who can’t get to the other side of the road.

Not being a solids fan myself, I’ll leave that to you all. But I have a wine pairing suggestion: YALUMBA MENZIES “THE CIGAR” CABERNET SAUVIGNON (2009). Coonawarra residents refer to the uniquely shaped  strip of terra rossa soil that is home to some of Australia’s most famous vineyards as “the Cigar.” The Menzies Vineyard, founded in 1987, is part of this region and enjoys rich, red soil, limestone, pure artesian water, and a long, cool ripening season.

You may think I’m going to trash THE CIGAR as an offensive accompaniment to possum stew, but I only mention it in connection with roadkill because of the wild kangaroos that pose a driving hazard in Australia, accounting for 71% of animal-related insurance claims (eight times as many as dogs and 14 times as many as wombats). Kangaroos, who are obviously as cognizant of traffic safety as rabbits, pose a serious nuisance—enough to warrant “roo bars” on vehicles driving in the bush. They are well known for wandering onto the road and into a high-protein, low-fat stew.

The reason for "roo bars" on vehicles

While you may have qualms about scraping a rabbit off 66 Avenue and cooking it up, a kangaroo is a much more worthy feast, although, in the hot Australian climate and with all sorts of competing predators, you probably want to harvest the roo from the road while it’s going toward the light and not too long after.

You need wine with depth and earthiness to stand up to wild game, the euphemism you’d probably use if serving roadkill to dinner guests. THE CIGAR, with its distinctive forest-floor earthiness, bursting blackcurrant and tobacco notes, would pair very well with game. It is delightfully balanced with plenty of complexity, good tannins, and a long finish.

Truthfully, I’d advise drinking THE CIGAR by itself, undistracted by other flavors. But—if the Easter Bunny has a mishap this year and ends up on your neighbor’s barbecue, this would be a good wine to show up with.

Liqueur-filled Easter eggs—beyond my talents and then some

My Fellow Inebriates,

The success of any project depends on three factors:

At first, making our own liqueur-filled Easter eggs seemed like an ingenious idea. We have:

Time—What the hell else does my mum have to do? (Ouch! Has someone ever taken their fingernail and flicked you on the ass? Ouch!) To rephrase: she’s home all day with a four-year-old who needs to be constantly engaged and who would find DIY Easter eggs delightful (if you ignore the booze component). Check.

Resources—My mum is a fiend for and hoarder of chocolate. If she hasn’t already reallocated valuable grocery/booze funds for chocolate, she can be persuaded to invest in some. Besides, her ass requests it. (Owie!) As for the necessary booze, I can get my dad to buy it; he loves going to the liquor store. Check.

Talent—Supposedly, when it comes to making desserts, my mother knows her shit. And she’s had a lot of practice managing four-year-olds in the kitchen. Check.

So I was optimistic, my fellow inebriates. By Easter we could have liqueur-filled eggs!

But my parents were hesitant. They questioned how liquor really fit into our Sunday morning Easter egg hunt with the kids. They said they didn’t really care for liqueur chocolates. They said I was being a nuisance.

And suddenly my project triangle looked like this:

I felt my own optimism dwindling. But oh well. Nothing for it but to dive in. How the hell do you make liqueur-filled chocolates anyway?

According to the most comprehensive instructions I could find, you need a lot of equipment, including:

  • a scale that can measure to the gram
  • an instant-read digital thermometer
  • two 9”x13” baking dishes
  • a metal mesh strainer/sifter
  • a silicone pastry brush
  • four to eight boxes of cornstarch (!!)

OMG! Now our triangle looks like this:

Yes, that’s my mum’s finger.

I’ve always wondered how they get fillings into chocolates. Cadbury has been milking the Caramilk Secret campaign for years. Do they:

  • freeze the filling and then coat it with chocolate?
  • create the chocolate molds in two halves, pour the filling in, and seal the halves together?
  • somehow create hollow chocolate shapes and then inject the filling in?

None of the above, although Cadbury engineers considered the first option, only to dismiss it because it was too expensive and time-consuming. Instead (are you ready for this?) they pour the chocolate into a mold, then add squares of solid caramel, to which they then add a natural enzyme that converts it to a liquid, by which time they’ve already sealed it in with a final layer of chocolate.

Wow! I’d find that really interesting if the filling were booze instead of caramel. But it’s irrelevant to the manufacture of liqueur-filled chocolates.

Back to the ingredient list. You may be wondering what the hell all that cornstarch is for. According to  the instructions, you have to dry it out thoroughly, then make a big bed of it, then use objects to make indentations in it—in our case, Easter-egg shaped cavities. Which means we also need to buy an Easter egg shape.

This is fast becoming a drain on our alcohol fund.

Okay, so you make your shapes in the cornstarch. (Note: no open flame near the cornstarch. It can make fireballs.)

That cornstarch is going to go everywhere. If I get near it I’ll look like Cocaine Bear. Just a little less fierce.

But the next part is even scarier for a small, flammable bear. Next we need to use a saucepan to cook sugar to a specific temperature (holy shit, the tolerance is, like, 3 degrees; we are totally gonna mess this up). Then, once the mercury’s hit that ultra-specific line on the candy thermometer my mum says she bloody well isn’t going to buy, THEN, hallelujah, we can add the liquor. Then we have to stir it at the perfect pace or risk inducing crystallization. OMG! Did I mention we’re going to mess this up?

At this point we should be beside ourselves with anxiety. We’ll need to fend off an eager four-year-old from the stovetop part of it and, at that critical period of temperature measurement, find some other source of entertainment for her, all the while covered with white powder (at which point a cop will probably knock on the door to bestow parking tickets on us, misjudge the situation and bust us for possession). BUT, assuming we make it to this point, now we have to fill the molds with our mixture.

THEN we have to sift cornstarch over the candies (or just shake it off our bodies onto them). And THEN we have to wait 3-5 hours. OMFG!! Did I mention there’s a four-year-old in the kitchen? What do you think she’ll say when we tell her we have to wait 3-5 hours? How many freaking times can she watch Tangled?

Okay, so assuming we survive all that, THEN we have to flip this mess over and leave it overnight.

The next morning we can pull the candies out of the cornstarch and coat them with chocolate.

Photo: Steven Joyce

Up against this recipe, our small resources, limited time, and minuscule talent come up short. My mum says I’m on my own—there’s no goddamn way she’s going to make liqueur-filled Easter eggs. Ever. She says I can damn well get one of those big Nestle eggs, jettison the Smarties from inside and fill the whole thing up with Laguvulin, and good luck.

Sounds like a plan.

 

Interview with a purple bunny—a dangerous product of evolution

My Fellow Inebriates,

One of my secondary addictions is a Facebook game called Wrestler Unstoppable. My Wrestler avatar, LB the Alcoholic Bear, is part of stable of fighters called BEARS!!!! (including not just bears but other marginalized characters such as serial killers, hitchhikers, headhunters, people ostensibly involved with bears, and a savage purple rabbit. My avatar does okay, but he’s nothing compared to Violent, Vicious Purplebunny, AKA my friend Violet Purplebunny. I’ve known and feared Violet for a number of years now. I even introduced her to Wrestler, only to be dominated ever after. With bunny season around the corner, she kindly agreed to an interview.

LB: Tell me a bit about your everyday life, Violet.

VP: Typical bunny stuff, LB. Similar to your life really—two kids, lots of action. Some would say abuse, some would say love…even adoration.

LB: Especially at this time of year, I’d think. Bunnies get a lot of attention around Easter. Why do you think that is, Violet?

VP: Hell if I know.

LB: Do you think it’s because rabbits breed prolifically in spring?

VP: Well, I guess we do. You see a lot of them around. I saw a dead one under the bush outside a little while back. Cat must’ve got it.

LB: OMG. How did that make you feel?

VP: Oh, I dunno. I thought about showing it to the kids. Then I figured maybe not. It had been gored and all.

LB: Have you ever needed to be sewn?

VP: Couple of times.

LB: What about the washing machine?

VP: Ohh yeah.

LB: I think, for animals like us, the washing machine is our Room 101.

VP: If that means it’s really freaking cold and nauseating, then you’re right.

LB: I mean by Room 101 that it represents that deepest, darkest corner where our worst fears reside.

VP: Well, not really, when I could be gored by a cat.

LB: Have you ever lost a friend to predation? A rabbit friend?

VP: Nope. Well, we all kind of stay inside like you, LB. And the only other rabbit in the house is Pink Bunny who, to tell you the real honest truth, is kind of a bitch.

LB: Really?

VP: Even the kids think so. Pink Bunny talks smack. She’s a Jellycat bunny from Chapters. Cost thirty bucks or so. I think I was $4. I’m still the queen though.

LB: Have you ever lost a friend to rabies?

VP: Sometimes I think you have rabies. No, I haven’t. Not yet.

LB: So what are your worst fears?

VP: I don’t have any fears.

LB: Seriously.

VP: Seriously. Anyone messes with me, I will mess them up.

LB: Kids too?

VP: Kids especially.

LB: Your Wrestler Unstoppable avatar is pretty tough.

VP: Yes, she is. She’s having a tough week though. That game is hard. I give it up every once in a while. But it always sucks me back.

LB: Yeah, me too. It’s like alcohol. Do you have any addictions, Violet?

VP: Just Wrestler. And crack.

LB: Not Walmart-style crack?

VP: Ha! No, but I subscribe to the People of Walmart. And there’s a lot of ass crack in my life. The other day one of the kids was getting off the toilet and into the bath—without wiping—and she had this big slug-like ooze of crap sliding down her leg. She was gonna take that right with her into the bathwater.

LB: OMG!

VP: Yeah, and her mother caught her just in time. And then the next day the kid saw her mother bending over to pick something up and she said: “Mummy, your bum is showing and there’s no poo on it.”

LB: Awesome. They’re amazing, kids.

VP: Yeah, I spend a lot of time hiding from them.

LB: So they’d be a fear for you?

VP: Well, no. Not exactly. More like an aversion.

LB: Aw, Violet, you like them. I know you do.

VP: NO, I DON’T!

LB: Everybody thinks of bunnies as soft, cuddly, gentle creatures.

VP: Ever read Watership Down?

LB: What about the Easter Bunny, though? The Easter Bunny is the most benevolent rabbit ever, wouldn’t you say?

VP: Well, maybe at Easter. We’ve no idea what he does the rest of the year.

LB: What do you think he does?

VP: You know, bunny stuff. Mates. Eats his poo. Eats his young once in a while.

LB: Harsh!

VP: Bunnies often eat their young. You know, for the minerals.

LB: HOW DO YOU KNOW YOU NEED THE MINERALS?

VP: Take a pill, LB. We just…know.

LB: Oh. Have you ever eaten your young?

VP: Like I’d tell you in this political climate. GOP politicians are lobbying for sperm to have personhood. How do you think they’d react to me devouring a brood of baby bunnies?

LB: You could always invoke moral relativism or some such principle.

VP: Moral what?

LB: Relativism. You’d be a natural… Don’t worry about it, forget I said it.

VP: Not that I’m admitting anything.

LB: Oh. Then what’s the strangest thing you ever ate?

VP: Vegemite.

LB: Why do rabbits eat their poo?

VP: Aw, come on, you can’t ask me that.

LB: Wikipedia says rabbits pass “two distinct types of feces: hard droppings and soft black viscous pellets, the latter of which are immediately eaten. Rabbits reingest their own droppings…to digest their food further and extract sufficient nutrients.”

VP: So?

LB: So what kind of adaptation is that?

VP: What do you mean?

LB: I mean why did rabbits evolve that way?

VP: Evolution is random, LB, you know that.

LB: I know. But what do you say to all those people who think you were designed that way? You know, the Intelligent Design argument?

VP: Well, it’s not very freaking intelligent, is it?

LB: You said it, Violet, not me.

VP: It’s not! I mean, what the fuck? You know why it’s like this? It’s because rabbits can’t vomit; they’re incapable of it. So they can’t chuck their food up the way cows do and then chew it up again. If they could they would, believe you me. But they can’t puke, so they have to do that secondary digestive bit the hard way. And it’s embarrassing, so rabbits do it really quickly. As soon as those soft pellets come out, they gobble them right up again. Usually in the morning.

LB: Wow.

VP: I mean, who would design it like that? What kind of creator would make it that way? Unless he wanted to laugh at the rabbits.

LB: Ha! Silly rabbits! So you subscribe not to Intelligent Design then but to Darwinian evolution?

VP: Yes.

LB: In which case, why did you evolve to eat your poo?

VP: Oh, for crying out loud, LB, evolution is random. Some mutant strain of rabbit emerged that liked eating its crap. That strain extracted more nutrition. It got stronger, bigger, was more favorable to mate with.

LB: Only with some Listerine involved!

VP: Shut up, LB. You’re familiar with evolution, I don’t have to tell you this. The stronger, healthier rabbits became the dominant genetic strain, and eventually they took over.

LB: So the poo-eating rabbits came to dominate.

While not a creationist, Violet obviously espouses moral relativism and probably a bunch of other dangerous ideas. She doesn’t have a clue who Orwell was.

VP: Whatever, LB. What else do you want to talk about?

LB: Fine, um, okay. Do you know the Easter Bunny? Are you acquainted with him?

VP: No. I mean, not really; he felt me up once. Everybody asks me that because I’m purple. Next.

LB: So you can’t hook me up with him?

VP: No.

LB: But I want to learn how to make liqueur-filled easter eggs.

VP: Tough shit.

LB: Do you have a soft, sensitive side that you don’t show very often?

VP: No.

LB: Okay, then. Last question—What do you think of rabbit fur in fashion?

VP: I like it.