This is my First year in LA. Well… actually it’s only been my First six months.

It was the First time ever I did not go to Ohio to see my mom for Christmas.

It was the First time I’ve spent Christmas with my younger brother and sister.

It was the First time I’ve celebrated Christmas in Las Vegas.

Technically they are my half brother and sister. We have the same dad. Their mom is my ex-step mom. I’ve always lived with my mom. My brother and sister have always lived with their mom. When they were 2 and 3 years old my dad moved to Vegas for a better job. I was 8. When my brother and sister were 17 and 18 our dad and their mom divorced. And that’s why she’s my ex-step mom and why I’ve never spent Christmas with my brother and sister.

We had Christmas day dinner at my ex-step aunt Nancy’s house. She and her husband have a full bar. Somehow this also became my First Christmas as the family bartender. Apparently the way I walked in and took a cursory glance around the bar inspired confidence in my ability to concoct something out of nothing. Because that’s what I had to work with.

The only drink the bar was equipped to make was margaritas. Tequila, triple sec, cointreau, lime juice, salt and beer. But margaritas aren’t exactly your typical Christmas drink. Especially for the men folk who are looking for something a little stronger. Except for the bottle of lime juice, the only liquids I had available for mixing were other liquors. Mostly whiskeys. I did have a bottle of Bailey’s at my disposal. There was no vodka and no gin so I really had my work cut out for me.

One ex-step cousin is also an ex-marine. He was trying to show off his ability to drink by making my brother a Loaded Landshark (a Landshark Lager with 1-2 shots of tequila poured in). He told me to surprise him with something and to make it strong. At first I thought I would make him a Car Bomb (1/2 pint of Guinness, 1oz shot Bailey’s, 1 oz Jameson Irish Whiskey) but there was no Guinness to be found in the house. So I tried making a low rent version – 2 shots of Irish Whiskey with 1 shot of Bailey’s.

It was disgusting.

But the ex-step cousin, ex-marine who agreed that it was vile came back for a second one.

I spent the next 20 minutes pulling bottle of whiskey after bottle of whiskey off of the shelf trying to unearth something that might be mixable and potentially become a passable drink when I found a tiny gem. Shoved all the way in the back corner of the bar I unearthed small box that contained a few airplane sized bottles of alcohol. Out of the 6 bottles, five were Sambuca. The last was a bottle of Amaretto. At last I found something mixable. Now I just needed to decide if it was mixable with whiskey, beer, tequila or Sambuca.

But then I caught a glimpse of something else. Something festive and green. A bottle of Sake. So I poured approximately 2 shots of Sake and one of Amaretto into a glass over 2 ice cubes. It was delicious.

I was so excited about this that I decided that I was going to make these back in LA for New Year’s Eve. I headed to BevMo! with the one person who is obligated to spend New Year’s Eve with me: Uncle Waldo, a dude I’m dating.  (He asked that I use that name for him–no, just for this post, I don’t call him that in real life.) We walked through the store looking for my necessary ingredients. Amaretto is easy enough to find and choose but I quickly realized how much knowledge I DON’T have about Sake. So we chose the Sake based on two things:

1. Price
2. Name

We landed on a $10 bottle with a name that translated into “Snow Maiden”. And we rewarded ourselves by spending 25 cents each and enjoying their champagne tasting. As we were walking to Uncle Waldo’s car he asked me “What are you going to do with this drink?”

“I don’t know. It’s not like I work at a bar,” I said.

“Yeah, but you do keep a cocktail blog. Don’t you think you should name this and put it on the blog?”

He did have a good point.

We got back to his house and I made one for him to taste. This is when I truly discovered my need for a better understanding of Sake. The one I used to originally make the drink was dry. Snow Maiden was very sweet. It was also quite cloudy. It made the drink less light and  festive and more like a dessert wine. The milky consistency of the Sake gave it the color of murky water.

Uncle Waldo asked if I’d thought of name yet.

I hadn’t.

He asked me what I would plan on serving the drink in.

I had no idea.

Then he was struck with inspiration.

“Sake is from Japan. Amaretto is from Italy. Why not serve this in a beer stein?”

“Mainly because, as tasty as this is, I can’t see anyone drinking an entire stein of it.”

“What about a cordial glass made in Germany?”

“What is your deal with German barware?”

“I was just thinking of a name.”

And that’s how I came to contribute my first drink to Morbid Cocktails.

The Axis of Evil* (Germany, Italy, Japan)

2 shots Sake (preferably dry and not cloudy)

1 shot Amaretto

Serve in a cordial glass neat or in a brandy snifter on the rocks. Only good Aryan glassware permitted, of course.

*There is a picture of this drink, but at time of post Word Press was being a jerk and causing publishing issues. Will post as soon as I figure out the problem.

Making your own garnishes is expensive and, well… tedious. Looking up how to make Gummy things. Hunting down pulled sugar classes (if can find them, they cost a fortune). Same thing with blown sugar. I am looking into classes for cake decorating. My assumption is that if I learn how to make Buttercream flowers to go on cakes (like the flowers you see on wedding cakes) the I can apply the same technique to make Buttercream decorations for the drinks.

Spun sugar is something I’ve been considering. Not just because of MrCatan’s suggestion on the Inferi-tini post but also because of the way it breaks down. It’s something that can be used to decorate a glass, but will break down and change the flavors of the drink. That’s the point of a lot of what I’m trying to do with the garnishes. Yes, they are for look and show. But in a lot of cases it would be ideal if they added to the complexity of the cocktail. I just thought it was going to be too expensive to do. When I think of spun sugar, I think of this:

Cotton Candy Machine

That thing is $50 a day to rent. To Rent!!!

Seriously? $50.

A day.

To make this?!?!

Cotton Candy. In the process of being made. Yum!

This dissolves completely in a second and a half, and they want $50 a day? No way. No spun sugar for Morbid Cockails unless I buy cotton candy from a store, go to a carnival or hold out until baseball season and go to a game to buy cotton candy. At least at that point, for roughly the same price I get a professional baseball game in addition to the cotton candy.

After a bit internet hunting, I did eventually find a cheap way to make spun sugar. I’m not sure if it counts as spun sugar, but it’s totally the low rent, get your kitchen really messy way of making it. So that makes it perfect for me : ) First you cover your kitchen with newspaper or some variant for easy clean up. You get a pot and three skillets. Spray the handles of the skillets with non-stick spray. Cook water and sugar until just before the sugar caramelizes in the pot. Quickly put the bottom of the pot in an ice bath for a minute or two. From there you grab a fork, scoop up some sugar and run it back and forth across the greased handles of the skillets making lots and lots of strands of sugar that you can turn into…

A nest?

Hmm… only if there are dead baby birds in it. Then it will work.

I can do better. Come on Brain. I know you’re a little hung over and over worked today, but there’s gotta be something wandering around in there that’s better than a stupid nest. (I write a blog about morbid themed “Adult Beverages”. Don’t act like you’re surprised that I’m hung over once in a while.)

Barbed Wire?

Yes! That’s more like it! (Thanks for stepping it up, Brain!) . A drink called “Keep Out” or something like that only better. And it can have a spun sugar barbed wire fence!

So, the name needs a little work. Apparently my brain is only good for one good idea today.

I’m also considering that not everything has to be sweet. Making savory items might be more cost effective. Imagine if you will, a Bloody Mary garnished with an olive that looks like an eye (not much of a stretch). And instead of having salami or pepperoni on the toothpick with it there is a brain made out of meatloaf.

Yep, that's a real brain. No, I did not exhume a fresh corpse and remove this on my own. But that is a good idea for some other time...

There is a lot floating around in my brain pan right now about different ways to incorporate spices, meat and other things not sweet into our creations. I have a lot of work to do. Molds to make. Sugar to spin, or at least throw about in my kitchen. Better drink names to come up with.

This blog is technically done, but I wanted to leave you with something fun I found while searching for images of cotton candy. It’s probably the best part of this post

Painting by Will Cotton. He's got a lot more images of naked girls lying in cotton candy. I'm sure his site visits are gonna go way up after this post goes live. Thanks all 10 readers!

For those of you living under an even bigger rock than I am, the new Harry Potter movie was just released. Which of course means that I needed to make a cocktail about it.

Ok, it’s not based on this movie. It’s based on the last one. I still haven’t seen the new movie.

Anyway. In Harry Potter 6, there was a lovely scene in a cave, where a full-fledged mob of Inferi (ie zombies) rose up out of their watery resting place to swarm Harry and drag him back into the (appropriately black) lake with them.

Sounds cocktail-worthy to me!

After a quick search on Amazon to find appropriately choking-hazard sized zombies to submerge in the beverage, we were in business. (And by “we” I mean the royal “we.” Jamye didn’t do much except talk to me on the phone while I obsessively googled “zombies” and “ghosts.”)

I went with a classic Martini this time. Simple. Elegant. Black.

Ok, the black part isn’t “classic.” But a touch of black food coloring makes it the perfect color for zombie (sorry, “Inferi”) infested waters.

Ladies and gentlemen, I present:

The Inferi-tini

The Inferi-tini

2 oz gin

1 oz vermouth

½ drop black food coloring  (no really. Go light on this stuff or you won’t be able to see the zombies. And what’s the point of that?)

garnish with mini-zombies

Enjoy!

☺

Warning: I wasn’t kidding about the choking hazard. Drink with care. And this particular cocktail is NOT recommended to be consumed on the later end of a night of libation.

One of the great things about being your own boss is that you can take a sabbatical whenever you want. That’s exactly what Amber and I did, albeit not intentional. And well… this blog really isn’t a job. Yet. Other life just sort of happened.

My last post was written sitting on the floor in the office of my new apartment. Now my furniture is moved in. My roommate has moved in too. I launched my first website at my new job. All in all, I just sort of got wrapped up in getting my life settled.

I’ve been doing some adventuring like riding my bike, going on some hikes, making new friends and finding new inspirations for some creepy garnishments. I think I also needed a little bit of time for my credit card spending to normalize. The bank is no longer rejecting payments or claiming suspicious activity for purchases like towels, DVDs and toilet paper.

I take that as a sign that during my transition time I have become boring. It’s time for me to mix this shit up!

Oh wait, that’s Amber’s contribution to the blog. She’s the mixologist. I’m just kooky idea person on the left coast : )

Halloween and LA in general have been good for inspiring me. Spending a lot of time biking along the ocean I see accidents all the time. Especially since rollerbladers like to be cool and wear their ipods with the volume turned all the way up. They don’t hear when we cyclists yell “On your left!’ and ring our bike bells before we pass them. Inevitably one of them gets really into their music, swings way into the other lane (the side you’re on to pass them) and both of you take a tumble. For a drink, I’m thinking of one called “Nose Bleed”. I want to get some of those glasses with the noses. Remove the glasses. Drill a hole in a nostril and put a blood pack inside. Only the blood pack will be filled with grenadine. Amber can make some sort of drink that will taste super yummy (no pressure Amber) with a slow stream of grenadine flowing in. I imagine a martini glass with a nose on the side, nostril pointed in of course, and upon serving you start the bloody flow.

Oh! We could even get some Chartreuse (the green kind, not the yellow) and have another version that tastes more bitter and call it something like “Sinus Infection”.

I am getting some really great ideas right now. And I’m remembering my groupons for pulled sugar. I think an order is going to be placed soon.

This weekend I finally get to move into a permanent residence in LA. Actually, I’ve already kind of moved in. This marks my 6th move Since June 7. It’s no wonder I’ve been slightly neurotic and obsessive about making garnishes. It’s a consistent, known, stable thing.

And it’s all in theory.

That’s right. I haven’t actually made a damned thing. I’ve come up with some great ideas. A few witty drink names. Consulted with Amber a little on some of her Experiments. But she’s actually done ALL of the work. I’m writing this post from my furniture-less apartment. I’m sitting on the floor of the soon to be office space. There is no overhead light in here and I don’t have and lamps yet, so I’m working with the just glow of the laptop screen on my face. I can’t work in the living room where there are overhead lights in abundance because my Airport is in storage until Saturday. I’m sleeping on a borrowed air mattress that has a slow leak in it. So every night, right before I go to sleep I inflate it really well. By the time I wake up in the morning I am sleeping on the floor hugged by two giant air pockets.

I really can’t wait to get my bed this Saturday.

I have cable hooked up, but no TV. I went to Target last night to remedy that situation. I just want a small TV for my room. The purchase got declined due to unusual activity. Apparently, now blow torches and sterilization units are “normal” purchases on my account. But something like a TV is suspicious.

And in the middle of all this, I’m trying to get rid of my coffee habit. I love coffee. I only drink one cup a day, except on days like today when I woke all night long due to my deflating bed. Today might be a 2-3 cup day. In which case I’m going to be awake all night. And when I’m awake all night working from the glow off my laptop I buy random things. Like a box of dismembered Barbies from e-bay for $5.

That is going to do nothing to help me buy a TV without bank suspicion.

One of the things I love about Jamye is her unbridled enthusiasm. It’s contagious (and fun). And I’m VERY excited that it got channeled in the direction of making the awesomest cocktail garnishs in the world!

But I must admit, I’ve had my misgivings about her intended forays into pulled sugar and the like. I’ve known Jamye for a very long time. And I can tell you right now—she’s clumsy. A bit odd, given how very athletic she is. But it’s true. Back in college, I witnessed her walk into a parking meter, fall off a wall (fortunately it was only waist-height)…and I lost count of how many times she ran into a doorway or a piece of furniture.

Not only that, but she can be a bit absent-minded sometimes. Also odd, given that she’s so on top of details when it comes to work. But again, it’s true. She locked herself out of her dorm room a minimum of once a week. And she managed to lock her keys in her mailbox several times—to the point where she developed a relationship with the mailroom staff.

When these two anti-superpowers of Jamye’s combine…well, it’s dumbfounding, really. I once watched her spontaneously upturn her cup of soda onto the ground while engrossed in a conversation with me. Completely unaware of what she was doing. It’s like her body moves on its own, without her brain’s knowledge of it.

Obviously, these traits—combined with extremely high heat, blowtorches, and warning labels—indicate a single, inevitable outcome: DISASTER.

Mind you, she’s developed a very high pain tolerance from running into things and injuring herself throughout her life. But still. Seems like a questionable idea, at best. I could envision the burns, scars, and 911 calls that would ensue.

That’s where Providence stepped in, to avert the impending crisis. And it came in the form of a Groupon.

Apparently, there’s a store here in NYC that does pulled-sugar candies. And they even take custom orders! I guess I shouldn’t be surprised (I mean, this IS New York), but the timing of the Groupon was too perfect to be coincidence. A mere couple of weeks ago, I would’ve passed by the offer without even looking twice. But as soon as I saw it, I thought “custom pulled sugar candies! Omg! That’s EXACTLY what we’ve been needing!” And they even allowed each person to purchase up to 3 groupons, which could be combined in one order. Triple perfect!

Needless to say, within 10 minutes we became the proud owners of 6 groupons for discounted pulled-sugar custom candies. I think this is a sign. God him/her/itself wants us to make the best morbid cocktail garnishes on the planet!!

And all without a stitch of bodily harm to Jamye.

I’ve been doing more research into pulled and spun sugar. I figure I’ll need some classes to be able to anything really good. I’d love to even do blown sugar. The most recent site I looked at came with the following notice, red font and all. (Why does their favicon look like the Volkswagen logo? Oh. That’s the Word Press logo. Ooops.)

CAUTION:  Clearly understand that this post outlines dangerous techniques due to the exceptionally high heat of the syrup that is required.  Don’t try this if you aren’t very familiar with making hard candies and NEVER, under ANY CIRCUMSTANCE, allow children anywhere near where this process is being conducted.  You will get burned, no matter how careful or experienced you are.

Maybe we’ll have a candy blister themed drink. Or at least a Burning Flesh drink. Not sure what Amber would mix together for that. I think that it’s going to be a matter of me making a delicious lining in the glass that looks like a seared, scarred Freddy Krueger face that breaks down in the drink so it looks like bits of floating skin. Mmm…. delicious.

“Creativity is making mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep.”       -Scott Adams

Floating bitters on the top has been unsuccessful so far, so I decided to adjust my concept accordingly: I’ll put the bitters on the bottom. They seem to want to go there, anyway. Instead of attempting to make a seascape with floating blood, I’ll make a Mississippi Swamp–mud at the bottom, yellow/green water on top.

Suggested Garnish: alligators, humans, trees

This time I ensured that I had my camera at the ready to capture my results.

The Experiment:

1. Coated the bottom of the glass in Agnostura bitters.
2. Covered bitters with crushed ice to create a barrier to prevent unwanted blending. Also used a macha/green tea blend, with hopes of increased green coloring.
3. Poured vodka/green tea/GT liqueur blend on top. (Stirred this time, instead of shaken.)

Results: Positive

Appearance: Layering was a success! It’s been at least 10minutes since inception, and the colors are still mostly segregated. Not sure if this is a result of 100% crushed ice, or the relative density of the fluids. Will do another rendition with regular ice cubes to isolate the cause. This could have a dramatic impact on garnish.

Aesthetically, though, I think it’s ready to move on to the Garnish phase.

Mississippi Swamp. In need of garnish.

At only six posts in, we decided to move from Blogspot to Word Press. In the long run, Word Press provides more options for controlling the look and feel of our site. There are more little bells and whistles that we can add as we go. We have great delusions of grandeur. We’re pretty sure this site is going to catch on and we’re going to quit our day jobs to write cocktail recipe books, plan Morbid Cocktail parties, create specialty decorations, maybe even open our own bar!

Yeah… we’ve got it all planned out…

The migration didn’t happen as smoothly as we would have liked. Amber had moved all of her blogs over. I only had 2 entries posted so it shouldn’t have been too hard.

At 9:30am on a Sunday, sitting in The Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf on Lincoln Blvd in Marina Del Rey with my headphones on jamming to a play list on Groove Shark, I should have been having a perfect morning.

Instead I nearly picked up my laptop and threw it out the window. I was having a total Katie Ka-Boom moment.

My very first blog entry has a few pictures in it. Shouldn’t really be a problem to copy and paste my entry from Blogspot to Word Press and re-upload 5 to 6 pictures. Except that it was a problem. It kept making every photo the one with the headless Barbie holding 2 heads.

(This one…)

Every. Freaking. Photo. No matter what I selected came up as that. I fought with the program for 45 minutes before I could get a new photo inserted.

Poor Amber was at work receiving texts to the tune of “I am going to MURDER Word Press in its sleep!” or “Ahhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!! Why does this hate me?!?!?!?!?”

I finally got it worked out somehow. Not sure what I did, because for 45 minutes I just kept hitting the same set of keystrokes. I guess Word Press realized that I am stubborn and would eventually make these photos work or tell Amber that we’re not leaving Blogspot. I thought at that point the hard work was over when I got a text from Amber saying “New problem. Look at the order of the layouts.”

Word Press, instead of posting in chronological order was posting by Author and then by date. So all of Amber’s blogs were listed in chronological order, then all of my posts in chronological order. We both messed around looking at all of the settings options, making sure we had date stamped them in the correct order, seeing if we had a weird option selected.

Nope.

Nada.

Zilch.

We were a-okay with our settings.

Luckily I work on the web and one of my good friends is a great web developer. He was chatting with me on IM through this process and finally I got frustrated enough to ask Brandon to have a look and let me know if he thought Amber and I were completely web ignorant. I felt bad. It was a Sunday. I’m sure the last thing Brandon would have been excited about was fixing my blog. But he said it shouldn’t take him long to find the problem.

Another hour and a half later, we were up an running properly. No, it didn’t take him that long to fix the problem. The issue might have taken him 5 minutes. The other 85 minutes can be attributed to the fact that we didn’t give him the correct log in to our FTP for him to adjust some code. I swear we’re our own worst enemies.

The negative sides of feeding our newest hair brained scheme are already surfacing. My credit card got shut down. I got 5 emails and 3 phones calls from my bank all alerting me to unusual purchases being made on my account.

Apparently spending $88 on silicon, $100 on THE premiere book on pulling sugar (I canceled the cheaper one), purchasing a propane torch, blood pressure cuff and rubber gloves is deemed “out of the ordinary” and need verification that I did indeed buy these things. I wonder how many items like that I need to purchase over the course of a week to get an FBI watch on my activity. Do I get elevated to a high security threat the faster I purchase them? Like… if I purchase all those items plus some fertilizer and gasoline all within 6 hours am I considered a higher level of threat than if I take 4 days to buy it all? And how many items do I need to buy for them to start watching my activity?

And the best part is that I have not yet moved into my apartment here is Los Angeles. All of my mail goes to the office. I’d love to know what the people in the mail room think of me.