Thursday, September 6, 2007

Baseball Standings Update

The Red Sox are rolling. Add another win against the Orioles tonight, and the Sox are now 29 games over .500 and 6 1/2 games up over the Yankees in first place. At 141 days, this is the longest the Red Sox have consecutively had the division lead, and they are on pace for 97 wins and the division title. Hopefully they can get healed up for the playoffs now.
Now The Hanshin Tigers have been in the midst of a very exciting pennant race. In the last week they have gained 3 games in the standings and now sit only 1.5 games behind the Central League leading Yomiuri Giants. Also with a record of 64-52-4 (yep they have ties in Japan, weird huh?) they have all but guaranteed themselves a playoff spot. They start a huge series with the Giants on Friday that may shake out the division's final standings!

GANBARE MOUKO!

TomC

Classic Mixed Drinks: The Old Fashioned


I realize that Americans are obsessed with mixed drinks, so in my never ending quest to rid the world of utter crap sticky pink drinks, here is the third part of my series on Classic Cocktails, THE OLD FASHIONED:

The Old Fashioned is a cocktail, possibly the first drink to be called a cocktail. It is traditionally served in a short, round, 8-12 ounce tumbler-like glass, called an Old-Fashioned glass, named after the drink.

The Old Fashioned is one of six basic drinks listed in David A. Embury's classic The Fine Art of Mixing Drinks.

The first known definition of the word "cocktail" was in response to a reader's letter asking to define the word in the May 6, 1806 issue of The Balance and Columbia Repository in Hudson, New York. In the May 13, 1806 issue, the paper's editor wrote that it was a potent concoction of spirits, bitters, water, and sugar.

The first use of the specific name "Old Fashioned" was for a Bourbon whiskey cocktail in the 1880s, at the Pendennis Club, a gentlemen’s club in Louisville, Kentucky. The recipe is said to have been invented by a bartender at that club, and popularized by a club member and bourbon distiller, Colonel James E. Pepper, who brought it to the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel bar in New York City. The Pepper family distillery is now known as Labrot & Graham.

A Recipe:

* 50 ml rye whiskey or Bourbon
* splash of simple syrup or 1 cube (3.6 g) sugar and just enough water to dissolve it
* 2 dashes bitters
* Old Fashioned glass

1. Place sugar (or syrup), bitters, and water in old-fashioned glass
2. Crush sugar if needed and coat glass
3. Add 2-3 cubes ice and whiskey
4. Garnish with twist

Most modern recipes top off an Old Fashioned cocktail with soda water. Purists decry this practice, and insist that soda water is never permitted in a true Old Fashioned cocktail. Many respected sources (e.g. Maker's Mark) list an Old Fashioned as containing soda water, forgoing the bitters altogether. In some areas, notably Wisconsin, brandy is substituted for whiskey.

Many bartenders add fruit, typically an orange slice, and muddle it with the sugar before adding the whiskey. This practice likely began during Prohibition as a means of covering the taste of poor alcohol.

An 1895 recipe specifies the following: Dissolve a small lump (about 3 grams) of sugar with a little water in a whiskey-glass; add two dashes Angostura bitters, a small piece ice, a piece lemon-peel, one jigger (44 ml) whiskey. Mix with small bar-spoon and serve, leaving spoon in glass.

Purists advocate using just enough plain water (called "branch" water) to fully dissolve the sugar without diluting the whiskey. A 50/50 blend of sugar and water works fine. Bartenders often use a dissolved sugar water pre-mix called simple syrup, which is faster to use and eliminates the risk of leaving undissolved sugar in the drink which can spoil your final sip. Using blended whiskies is not recommended, since the Old Fashioned was designed as a showcase for the fine qualities of your best Bourbon, rye, or Tennessee sipping whiskey. Many drinkers prefer to use rye whiskey because of its complexity. One popular garnish is a Maraschino cherry fastened to the back of an orange wedge using a toothpick. Others prefer to use orange zest with the Maraschino cherry, in order to better bring out the orange oil component of this superb drink.

TomC

Celtic FC Pub Song: The Fields of Athenry





"The Fields of Athenry" is a song about the Great Irish Famine (1845-1849), composed in the 1970s by Inchicore songwriter Pete St. John.

"The Fields of Athenry" is a folk song about the Great Irish Famine, 1845-1849. It tells the story of the famine through first-person narrative.

The song, which was first recorded by Irish ballad singer Danny Doyle, recounts the tale of a prisoner who has been sentenced to transportation to Botany Bay, Australia, for stealing food to feed his starving family.

The song has been recorded by many Irish artists such as Paddy Reilly, Frank Patterson, Ronan Tynan, Brush Shiels, James Galway, and by Boston-based American group The Dropkick Murphys. Serbian bands who recorded the song include Orthodox Celts and Tir na n'Og.

The song is associated with Galway and Gaelic games supporters there. It has recently been associated with the Munster, London Irish and Irish rugby union teams and the football club Celtic F.C. (of Glasgow, Scotland) which has a strong association with Ireland. Loyalists have adapted the song, with the main line changed to "Low lie, the fields of Ballynafeigh". "The Fields of Anfield Road" is sung by Liverpool F.C. supporters to the same tune, but with suitably adapted lyrics referencing their history and stadium.

The Fields of Athenry
— from the website of the composer. Supporters of Irish Republicanism sometimes sing the song with the lyrics "Where once we watched the small free birds fly - oh baby, let the free birds fly / Our love was on the wing - Sinn Féin / We had dreams and songs to sing - IRA / It's so lonely round the Fields of Athenry."

Trevelyan in the lyrics refers to Charles Edward Trevelyan, a senior British civil servant in the administration of the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland in Dublin Castle, who saw the Famine in classic Malthusian theory as a natural means of 'controlling excessive population'. Trevelyan is widely blamed for the inadequacy of the British Government's response. His reports to London underestimated the severity of the Famine and overestimated the problems that could arise in providing assistance to the starving.

Trevelyan's corn: According to Paddy Reilly being interviewed on RTE radio, this was a reference to maize imported from America into Ireland for famine relief. A quantity was stolen from storage in Cork. The Irish were unfamiliar with the grain. As it was meant for seed, it proved too hard to mill for flour and was used mostly in gruel.

Botany Bay refers to the Botany Bay penal colony in Australia.

By a lonely prison wall, I heard a young girl calling
"Michael, they have taken you away
For you stole Trevelyan's corn
So the young might see the morn'
Now a prison ship lies waiting in the bay"

Low lie the fields of Athenry
Where once we watched the small free birds fly
Our love was on the wing
We had dreams and songs to sing
It's so lonely 'round the fields of Athenry

By a lonely prison wall, I heard a young man calling
"Nothing matters, Mary, when you're free
Against the famine and the crown
I rebelled, they ran me down
Now you must raise our child with dignity"

Low lie the fields of Athenry
Where once we watched the small free birds fly
Our love was on the wing
We had dreams and songs to sing
It's so lonely 'round the fields of Athenry

By a lonely harbour wall, she watched the last star falling
As the prison ship sailed out against the sky
For she'll live in hope and pray for her love in Botany Bay
It's so lonely 'round the fields of Athenry

Low lie the fields of Athenry
Where once we watched the small free birds fly
Our love was on the wing
We had dreams and songs to sing
It's so lonely 'round the fields of Athenry


TomC

Holly Marie Combs


Holly Marie Combs (born December 3, 1973 in San Diego, California, U.S.) is an American actress who has worked in movies and television series. She is best known for her roles as Tom Skerritt's and Kathy Baker's TV daughter and oldest child, Kimberly Brock in Picket Fences and as Piper Halliwell in Charmed. From 2002 until 2006, when the series ended, Combs was a producer for the show.

Combs was with her friend Shannen Doherty when she saw the pilot script for Charmed on the back seat, and said she wanted to take part in the audition. When they did, Combs auditioned for the role of "Prue Halliwell" and Doherty for "Piper Halliwell," but they ended up switching roles because they didn't "fit". Alyssa Milano and Combs both became producers for Charmed in the fifth season. For the last five seasons of Charmed (debuted in 1998 and was a hit TV series, which ended in May 2006), Combs played the oldest of the three sisters (originally, she played the middle child, but became the elder sister after the death of "Prue"), while ironically she was the youngest of the three actresses.


TomC