Cocktail Photomicrography

A lab at Florida State University has been taking photos of cocktails at the microscopic level. In addition to the colorful, crystalline formations, they've included useful recipes and fun facts. The Long Island Iced Tea, for instance, "usually gets us commode-hugging drunk." Sounds like a good party school. See images here:

http://micro.magnet.fsu.edu/cocktails/index.html

You can even buy them as posters!

Cocktail Recipe: The BP

After several failed attempts, I have concocted a drink in honor of the Gulf oil well disaster. This is not a celebratory cocktail, although the flow has currently been stopped. But with massive amounts of oil and dispersants still swirling around out there, this is the kind of drink that you drink because things are really, really bad.

It’s strong and sweet. The egg whites give it a frothy texture, and a faintly off odor. And it leaves a scum behind.

The BP

1 shot gold rum

½ shot Kahlua

White of an egg, or 2 tablespoons pasteurized egg whites

Combine with ice in a shaker. Shake thoroughly, strain, top with unsweetened cocoa powder.

Palomar Pipeline Delayed Indefinitely

When the Bradwood Landing LNG project was cancelled, the folks behind the Palomar Pipeline, which would have linked Bradwood to the existing natural gas pipeline system, claimed to be moving forward. All along, they had insisted that the pipeline and the LNG terminal were two separate projects. But now they are citing Bradwood's bankruptcy as a major reason for putting Palomar on what I am guessing will be a permanent hiatus.

The Palomar Pipeline was an environmental nightmare. Here's hoping competitor Oregon LNG's pipeline follows it into Oregon's fascinating mausoleum of terrible ideas that never saw the light of day.

Photo: Mount Hood, where a new natural gas pipeline will NOT be cutting a swath of destruction.

Reindeer's Tears

The other day I was sitting in a bar with some friends, drinking a vodka and cranberry. One of my friends said, "Oh, you got a reindeer's tears."

No one else had ever heard the drink called that before. She used to live in Alaska- I think that's where she got it.

Looking it up online, I found several variations on the recipe, but none was just a vodka-cran. In fact, a reliable-looking account said the whole thing was a Finnish joke: you pour a shot of vodka, put in a single cranberry, then drink the vodka. The cranberry adds nothing.

At any rate, it always seemed to me that vodka and cranberry should have a name. And I'm sure there are plenty of sad reindeer out there, what with the global warming and all.

Photo: Ironically, it makes a good summer drink.

Sea Lion Season Ends

When I first went out to Oregon City to look for sea lions, I didn’t know much about the issue. Now I’ve seen the lions at both Willamette Falls and the Bonneville Dam. I’ve done a lot more research and I’ve thought it over carefully.

I now totally oppose the killing of sea lions at Bonneville Dam, and I’m pissed that the authorities are now seeking permission to kill sea lions at Willamette Falls as well.

The spring Chinook salmon season is over, now, and the sea lions have gone off to their coastal mating grounds (except for the 12 that were killed.) The issue won’t come up again until next spring, when more sea lions will be killed. That’s despite the fact that, according to the Oregonian, the killing of sea lions at Bonneville failed to reduce the number of salmon being killed by the sea lions.

In other words, culling doesn’t work. Or in other words, it would only work if they killed ALL the sea lions at the dam.

Forty years ago, that’s what they would have done. Until the late 1960s, there was a bounty on sea lion heads in Oregon. And that’s an important backdrop to this story.

Back then, they thought that removing predators would increase the number of salmon, just as fishermen in Japan slaughter dolphins, thinking that it will increase the number of fish they catch.

We now know that removing top predators from a food chain in bad for the entire ecosystem. But this plan to kill sea lions isn’t intended to protect the ecosystem. It’s intended to protect fishermen — and that in only a short-sighted, short-term way.

The influence of the sport fishing lobby has often been good for the environment, but here I feel they’ve totally lost their heads. There needs to be a long term goal of increasing the numbers of wild salmon, not preserving individual fishery salmon so that they can be caught on lines instead of eaten by sea lions.

Vengeance should have no place in this equation. Neither should a certain bizarre and outdated way of describing these animals as if they were people — bad people.

The Oregon City News, for instance, quotes Oregon House Speaker Dave Hunt (D-Clackamas):

“The sea lions grab the fish right out of the water and take a bite out of them in plain view before they throw them away,” he said. “Fundamentally, they’re bullies.”

Over and over again, the sea lions are portrayed as interlopers, gluttonous, belligerent, obese creatures who don’t play by the rules. Actually they’re just doing what they’ve always done, or at least, what they always did, before we nearly wiped them out, just a few decades ago.

Photo: A flyer posted on the bulletin board at Bonneville Dam

Road Trip: Bend

Busch is the official beer of litterbugs everywhere. Along country roads and scenic viewpoints and the high water marks of beaches, cans of Busch certainly aren't the only garbage, but look around and you'll see what I mean. That glinting silver in the sagebrush or seaweed or ferns? It's almost always Busch. This photo was taken in the lava rocks at the base of Mount Bachelor near Bend, Oregon.

Drink Review: The Atomic Cocktail

So I finally got around to making an Atomic Cocktail, and it was disgusting.

The Atomic Cocktail was invented in the 1950s in Las Vegas, when nuclear explosions at the nearby Nevada Proving Ground were being promoted as a tourist attraction. This was a drink specifically designed to toast the mushroom cloud, so it should be the favorite drink of this blog.

Unfortunately, if appropriately, it tastes like rocket fuel. The drink starts out traitorously with vodka, which is mixed with an equal part brandy and a splash of sherry. Shake, strain, top with Champagne. It’s sharp, aggressive, and mean, and you start to feel a buzz almost immediately.

I don’t recommend it, although I do recommend its predecessor, this 1945 song by Slim Gaillard:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6492gMX0tAY

(presented here with a weird and excellent montage of atomic memorabilia.)

As Slim says, “Take one sip, you won’t need any more.”