Tag: notes

The Ice Ball Cometh

For a couple of years now, I have been passionate about making clear ice for my drinks, especially in the form of large “whiskey balls,” which are superior to crushed or cubed ice because they melt slowly.

There are a lot of videos online on how to make clear whiskey balls, and I tried a few methods, but most of them were messy and took a lot of room in the freezer. Finally, for simplicity’s sake, I bought a whiskey ball mold from Corkcicle. Their mold comes in an insulated mug, which causes the ice to freeze from the top down and squeeze out air and impurities. It consistently makes clear, crack-free balls, though they do occasionally have minor imperfections, and I’ve been very happy with it.

Anyway, an orange peel is the normal garnish for an old fashioned, and I recently had the idea of combining the ice and garnish by spiral-cutting a mandarin orange and then placing the orange peel in the ice mold in such a way that it comes out frozen into but attractively enwrapping the ice. These balls have come out looking quite good overall, though they for some reason develop a large imperfection at the top. I’ve made a few of these, and now that I’m over my cold, I decided today to test one.

To get an impression of how well this works, I mixed an old fashioned as simply as possible: I took a cube of sugar, soaked it in Angostura bitters, added a teaspoon of filtered water, and stirred until it dissolved. Then I added two ounces of Woodford Reserve bourbon and poured the whole over the ice ball in a chilled rocks glass.

Appearance-wise, it looks very sharp, and I don’t think the photo does it justice. The drink tastes fine but, as described has no bells and whistles: It is bourbon-forward with just a touch of sweetness and bitters to make it more drinkable. I personally prefer a bit more citrus in my old fashioned, so on my next attempt, I might add one splash of orange bitters for extra flavor. I suspect a lot of the oils in the peel disappeared during the freezing process: The water in the bottom of the insulated mug has a yellowish appearance, suggesting that a lot of flavor got squeezed out.

Still, these peel-wrapped ice balls look cool. They’d make a good complement to drinks at a party.

Initial Sketch for the ‘Rags and Muffin’ Cover!

Alas, I can’t display it this time, but I have received the initial sketch for the cover of Rags and Muffin. For this one, I’ve contracted a professional company, and I don’t want to give any details yet until I’ve been through the whole experience, as I don’t think it would be professional to do otherwise. But I received the initial sketch today and sent my feedback. I’m quite excited to see what the final version will look like.

I’m planning to spend this evening adding the new internal illustrations I’ve received to the chapter headers, and then the manuscript will be in its true, final form. If the company I’m working with continues at its present pace, I should be able to meet the October 1st release date.

Anyway, I’ve been out of commission for the last several days. The baby caught a cold, her second—which is pretty good, I think, since I have read that babies in their first year can get as many as ten. Only two in eight months isn’t bad. I didn’t get her first cold, so I figured that my grown-up immune system was too strong for whatever baby diseases she was coming down with. That’s why I didn’t stop her when, during her second cold, she decided to chew on my nose.

To make a long story short, that is the sickest I have been in years. It lasted almost two weeks for both me and the baby. For the baby, it turned into an ear infection and a mild case of pneumonia, so she went on antibiotics. It was threatening to turn into pneumonia with me, too.

Both of us are now recovering. I had a long weekend thanks to Labor Day, but I got nothing done. I spent it on the couch, coughing and complaining and reading until my wife, tired of my whining, finally cured me with a magical noodle soup.

While sick, I got through a number of books I should have read already but hadn’t for one reason or another, including 20,000 Leagues under the Sea, The Island of Doctor Moreau, and King Solomon’s Mines. I also read a disappointing and deservedly forgotten sequel to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Lost World called The Poison Belt.

I might discuss The Island of Doctor Moreau later, mostly because the 1996 movie adaptation is a scarce-to-be-believed legend in the history of film disasters.