sweet!

[bronze_ribbons]

I posted this comment (in a friend's locked journal) on cocktails just a day or two ago....

Sazeracs [are] definitely a NOLA thing, and not particularly girlie, although yummy; it's not a given bartenders outside of the Big Easy will have heard of it, and it will rarely appear on menus. Nor do I know of anyone who regularly indulges in mint juleps outside of the High Holy Day of Horseracing. A cool trivialet about Sazeracs: if you order one from the Court of Two Sisters in the French Quarter, there's a bartender there named Floria who's been there for 30 years or so, and she coats the inside of the glass with herbsaint or pernod (the absinthe substitute--I forget which they use) by dripping a few drops into the tumbler and then tossing it up and down several times.

...so when nigita pointed to the Southern Foodways Alliance's collection of interviews with NOLA bartenders, I had to look, and lo! Floria!

(Our friend Erac became friends with Floria during his first stretch of living in Louisiana. A couple decades later, when we lived in the same Detroit neighborhood, he introduced the BYM and me to Sazeracs and told us to say hi to Floria when we drove down to NOLA for a New Year's (she said "hi" back and handed us some coasters and stirrers to take back to him). We were all at the Court of Two Sisters for New Year's Day brunch this year -- we didn't try to approach Floria (the place was busy) but it was part of the joy of the day, that she was there, and that we were there with Erac and Saz, and the house sparkling wine was not bad at all. I think we went through two bottles? Three? Oh, me. Vraiment les bon temps.)


ETA: Oh! and while we're on the topic of alcohol -- has anyone here tried using gin as a weed-killer? My mother read somewhere that a combination of gin and vinegar and baby shampoo makes for a efficient yet pet-friendly herbicide, and I'm not sure which prospect flummoxes me more -- that of my teetotaling mother going out gin-shopping (the only beer I've ever seen in her house has been a can of something like Old Style that had been intended for Peking Duck), or the spraying of Tanqueray all over those pesky treelets and creepers...

[Typo du jour: originally typed "has anyone here tried using gin as a week-killer?" Knowing you hedonistic lot...]

Comments

[aunty_marion]

I can't say I've ever heard of gin as a weedkiller, but beer in slug traps is very common, of course, and a couple of years ago there was quite a bit in the papers (at least over here) about using coffee as a slug killer. I tried it, and it works! Apparently you can also put used coffee grounds round slug-attractive plants. I just bought some cheap instant powder, and made it up into a strong-ish solution to spray on them.