It's hot enough for a pastis

So I am drinking a pastis.

Only a douchebag would drink a light beer instead of a Hefe-Weizen

I've been reading up about the calorie content of my favorite beers and alcoholic beverages as I move forward in my always-ongoing quest to maintain my girlish figure (hence all the running, the yoga, the bicycling, the walks on the beach, the hoola hooping) and still eat and drink the foods I love. Fortunately, I don't drink any soda, so I can devote all of my empty drinking calories to beer, wine, and spirits!

Let's just take it for granted that about four nights a week I have a glass of wine with dinner--but now we'll leave talk of wine aside (it needs a separate post) and move on to beer and spirits.

Tetleys and Boddingtons have become my favorite beers for weeknights, when I typically have no wine with dinner and only one drink in the evening after yoga (about 150 calories per pub can, if you're wondering). However, a Paulaner Salvator doppelbock is one of my favorite beers in the entire world. Drinking it makes me feel holy (but let me be clear, I have never been baptized). The Paulaner brewery is named after monks who revered St. Francis of Paula, and the monks were known as, yes, Paulaners. When fasting, the monks used to drink an earlier version of doppelbock to sustain them--doppelbocks have a lot of calories and high alcohol content. If I really want a beer but can't spare the calories, a Hefe-Weizen is my go-to beer, and of course Paulaner brews a good one.

Those of you who know me know that I love scotch. Old Pultney and Talisker are my current favorites, but I don't turn my nose up at Jonny Walker Red when I'm in a bar or need something to put in my flask for traveling. Scotch tastes fabulous, and when I go out I can have one or two over the course of the evening, enjoy myself, and watch everyone else get bombed. At 100 calories, a pour of scotch is quite healthful. However, I don't always want to endlessly savor my drink in the way that scotch encourages. So, what to drink then?

A gin and tonic used to be my favorite mixed drink. It's quaintly imperial very nostalgic. The quinine in the tonic prevents malaria, and as someone who once had to take the malaria pills of the 1980s (which made me hallucinate and vomit), I find quinine to be quite gentle (it's also good for nocturnal leg cramps, which I occasionally suffer from--especially in my calves). As healthful as it is, tonic has calories, and, sadly, I'm loosing my taste for it. It's too sweet, and it's pretty much impossible to get a good gin and tonic at a bar, where the tonic that comes out of the hose is nasty and syrupy. Soda water has no sugar, and no calories. And since I no longer live in tropical climes, I frequently enjoy a Hendricks (or perhaps Beefeater) and club soda with a slice of cucumber or lime.

And if I don't want a gin and club soda? I might have a brandy. Or I might have a whiskey and soda. On it's own, I often find whiskey too sweet (I'd rather have scotch), but mixed with soda, it's kind of perfect.

Zahar is sugar. Bilberries are like blueberries.

According to Miekal And and Anon, "zahar" is sugar.

Miekal And also pointed out that I've been confusing afinata & tzuica. Afiniata is what I had, and is made with bilberries (and sugar) and tzuica (double distilled is called horinca or palinka) is plum brandy.

So I had a home brew version of afinata, and it was good.

Someone send me to Romania again, and soon! Better yet, send Mark and I there together.

Afinata and Zahar, again

I received an anonymous comment on a post from way back when about my trip to Romania. At the end of this post, I included a recipe for afinata, a very strong fruit liquor that has a taste of blueberries and plumbs. The recipe is in Romanian, and calls for a fruit called zahar. I've never managed to find out what a zahar is. It's been over a year since I searched around, so I did.

According to Romer!can, there is a plum-like fruit that grows in the trees in Bucharest and other cities like Braşov (where I've never been). According to the comment box on that post, the fruit is known by several names--zarzane, zarzăre, corcoduşe, zarzărele (which are maybe more like apricots), and zahar--depending on the region, and can be several colors--green, deep red, peach, apricot.

These fruits are used in a variety of home brews that sound similar to the afinata I drank, although they're variously referred to as tuica (good warm with a bit of nutmeg) or palinca. The fruits are also used in various soups, or ciorba.

I'm a bit amazed that there was a time in my life when I used words and phrases like "nuclear socialism" and "ops mounting dialogue."

I proofread, again, the first serial poem ("If this isn't an interview I don't know what to say") in my manuscript and am happy with it. The diction/vocabulary in this series is laced with wonky DC think tank language and references to the research into missile defense systems and US-China relations: "At least headhunters understand pain. If it doesn't blow up, I'm not going to write about it." I remember writing poems from staff meeting and briefing notes. I'm also noticing that these poems have lots of line breaks. Crazy line breaks. I haven't been able to really write anything with line breaks in months. This manuscript reminds me that I can do it.

We bought Rum today to make dark and stormys. It's supposedly going to be hot here next week (that means maybe in the 80) and that's a perfect time to have rum and ginger beer over ice on the balcony. They're too sweet for me to have more than one, and it's worth it to get super good ginger beer with a nice bite.

But we're going to Vancouver next week!

Tonic from the tap is terrible. I think the only gin & tonic with both proper gin and proper tonic I've ever had outside the comfort of my own home was at Fox & Hounds in Dupont Circle.

My ESL class finished the unit on corporal punishment and spanking. Now we've moved on to a unit about marriage. I don't make these units up myself. In general, the books I'm using (Northstar) are much better than most other intermediate ESL textbooks I've used, but in-class discussion doesn't work if everyone is too tired or bored to talk. I'm used to having several students who have enough energy to help stir the class so I don't have to carry it all on my own.

This particular class fears any questions where they have to talk about their own opinions. After a particularly painful discussion where I more or less had to extract thoughts out of everyone with yes/no questions, I looked at them and said, "Well, we can listen to the ticking of the clock together, or you can pretend that you're awake like I'm pretending that I'm awake." I miss having mostly adult students who are spending their own money to pay for classes.

It's been a particularly long week.