Saturday, December 20, 2008

Touching Base And Providing Refreshments

Hello friends, hope everyone is having a happy and fulfilling holiday season thus far! It's been an energetic one here with births, family, trips, birthdays, lots of work and Hanukah preparations (remember to buy your books from local/independent bookstores)! So it follows that my blogging frequency has dipped a bit from my usual 5-7 posts per week.
I've finished Piston's book on Gen Longstreet, entitled "Lee's Tarnished Lieutenant", and am working through the themes of my review. As a little teaser trailer, this is one of the best studies of the Lost Cause and it's effects that I've yet read. We have some powerful and challenging issues to explore together.
This book has reinvigorated my desire to explore the Lost Cause, so my study of the Western Theater will wait until I finish Steven Budiansky's "The Bloody Shirt". I'm not a multiple-book-reader-at-the-same-time like some, so I have to stay focused. We've covered some important ground on this subject matter this year, so I'd like to do a year-end wrap of this blog's content.
Just so you don't go away thirsty, here's a little concoction I put together the other night. It received high praise from The Jess, so you know you're in business. It's a playful little interpretation of the gin and tonic, helps make sure that you get all of your medicine in one dose, quinine, vitamin C, everything. I'm assuming that as historians, we're all aware of how gin and tonic came together in the first place. Something to do with malaria...

Your Daily Dose
1.5 oz Tanqueray Ten
3 oz Schweppes tonic water
0.5 oz fresh squeezed orange juice
one strip mandarin orange peel
thick slice of kiwi fruit

Add gin and tonic to a Collins glass filled with ice, pour orange juice in next. Give gentle stir with stirring rod, then twist mandarin peel over top to release oils. Don't add peel itself to drink. Float kiwi slice on top of ice and enjoy. At the end of the drink, be sure to fish out the kiwi , it'll taste incredible!

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