Mineral VA Press
WINERY OF THE YEAR… SAVAGE GRACE WINES (WOODINVILLE, WASHINGTON)
Dec 30, 2018The intensity of flavors maintain front to back with underlying mineral notes that linger on the mouth-watering finish. There is an interesting dried herb component that sneaks in. I am very picky about Sauvignon blanc and this one delivers a ton of quality for the price. (A-)
2014 Savage Grace Chardonnay Celilo Vineyard (Columbia Gorge, WA)… $25. http://blog.seattlepi.com/bluecollarwineguy/2015/12/29/winery-of-the-year-savage-grace-wines-woodinville-washington/
'To Have and Have Another': Ring in your new year as Hemingway might
Dec 30, 2018Lady — gin, Cointreau and lemon juice — coupled with another episode from “Islands in the Stream” in which this libation is confused with White Rock mineral water (the mixer of choice among the Sherlockians who founded the Baker Street Irregulars). In between, Greene discusses such classic relaxants as the Cuba Libre (aka rum and Coke), the gin and tonic, the mojito, the Tom Collins and the whiskey sour. An entry on a champagne and absinthe cocktail named Death in the Afternoon — the title of Hemingway’s book on bullfighting — quotes “The Savoy Cocktail Book” as alleging that “four of these taken in swift succession will unrevive the corpse again.” I should think so, whatever that means. Greene also includes, as an appendix, other semi-official concoctions, such as Hadley’s Tears, named after Hemingway’s first wife, and Nick Adams’s Medicine, which honors the protagonist of his early short stories.
Along with drink recipes and passages from Papa, “To Have and Have Another” is packed with photographs, classic advertisements for various tipples and biographical vignettes. For example, Greene tells us about the celebrated Jimmie Charters, who was presiding at the Dingo American Bar in Paris on the night Hemingway met Scott Fitzgerald. The Jimmie Special, recalls Charters in his memoirs, could lead women “to undress in public, and it often kept me busy wrapping overcoats around nude ladies.”
Paul Dickson’s “Contraband Cocktails” opens with a paradox: “stylish, urbane ‘cocktail culture’ began to flower on the very date — January 16, 1920 — when mixed drinks and all other forms of alcohol became illegal.” In his brief history of that culture, Dickson offers “a discourse on Prohibition cocktails followed by an annotated formulary of drinks from the Dry Years.” He immediately stresses an easily overlooked fact: the raw alcohol of this era really did need doctoring and flavorings to become palatable.
Did you know that the District of Columbia went dry almost three years before the rest of the nation? Our fair city provided a test case, a trial run. After a few months, Dickson wryly notes, “there were twice as many illegal establishments operating inside the District as there had been legal ones before the act was passed.” Nonetheless, with Washington “serving as vivid testimony to the fact that Prohibition could not be enforced, Congress passed the Volstead Act or National Prohibition Act on October 28, 1919, over the veto of President Woodrow Wilson.” Why? Largely because the Anti-Saloon League was probably “the strongest political organization in the world.”
Before long, a bootlegging operation — located in the Cannon House Office Building — was serving “scores of congressmen and their constituents.” Later, its proprietor, George Cassiday, shifted his base to the Russell Senate Office Building. In his memoirs, Cassiday alleged that he was supplying liquor to 80 percent of a distinctly hypocritical House and Senate.
Dickson loads every page with facts, anecdotes and telling details about life under Prohibition. Bartender Harry Craddock “went from Manhattan (where he served his last legal drink at the Hoffman House on Broadway) to London, where he presided at the Hotel Savoy and where he authored the ‘Savoy Cocktail Book.’ ” A 1926 article about him in the Atlanta Constitution ended with “a list of the 280 cocktails he was mixing at the Savoy. The list does not include the coolers, daisies, fizzes, flips, highballs, punches, sours, and rickeys he mixed in London.”
Serious aficionados of the happy hour will be particularly fascinated by Dicks...
Home Grown: Roots and shoots or flowers and fruit
Dec 23, 2018Many are grown in a peat-like greenhouse mix and not soil. This material takes in water and cold differently than the surrounding mineral soil. Even with watering the plant and mulching it, cold can be a huge enemy.
The next problem is that chrysanthemums cannot handle wet or heavy soils. Drainage must be very good. You may have some type of soil that is not sandy enough. If you were able to buy chrysanthemums in the spring without flowers, they would have a very good chance of growing and lasting more than a season. It’s always better to consider the inexpensive chrysanthemums available in the fall as temporary landscaping.
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You may not want to go to all the trouble of taking it out of the container and planting them if you have had pervious bad luck. If the price is right and you need some fall color, just dig a hole and drop the entire pot in. Next spring, all you have to do is grab the rim of the pot and pull it out. The contents will look good in the compost pile.
Q: I have a big yard and I am noticing some bald places where grass was growing before. They look like roundish spots that have no grass and there are a fringe of dead grass around the edges and are not raised or sunken. If I look at these, they almost make a very winding, loopy line. I have no idea how long these have been there. Is this a grass disease and what do I do about the bare areas?
A: It sounds like an Eastern mole has dropped by in late summer or fall and fed happily on earthworms, soil insects and maybe a grub or two. This is not recent damage. This mole makes a tunnel just below the surface of the grass, just about at root level. That’s where all those tasty worms are hiding out. Eastern moles make two different kinds of tunnels, depending on what they are up to. If the tunnel is relatively... http://www.macombdaily.com/article/MD/20151218/FEATURES/151219668