Liver Punisher's WTF Dare Shots

Lots of bars, especially in college towns; spring break locales; and resorts, offer up specialty house shots. These are generally outlandish or extreme in some nature, often using “extreme” ingredients or including incongruous liquors. To whit the Mexican Revolution, a shot consisting of equal parts tequila and 151 proof rum topped with a generous spray of hot sauce. Or maybe you prefer the 3 Wise Men, a shots whose contents are hotly contested, but generally follow the guidelines of alcohols named after dudes with “J” names. Jim Beam, Jack Daniels, Jose Cuervo, and Johnny Walker are the most common components.

“Dare Shots” is how I generally refer to these concoctions and had I not tried a few of them over the years, usually on my birthday, I would chalk them up to the same urban mythology of zany sex acts like the Abraham Lincoln, Jelly Donut, Hot Carl, and the notorious Orange Ronald. That said, I’ve dabbled in the invention and execution of a few of these myself and thought that the day after my birthday would be just as good a time as any to share them with the world.

First up is the Tijuana Prostitute:

Ingredients:

- 1 shot tequila blanco

- Squeeze of lime

- Teaspoon of cottage cheese

- Several healthy shakes of hot sauce, habenero would be best

Make It So:

Squeeze the lime into the shot glass them pour in tequila. Top with cottage cheese and hot sauce. Shoot it and enjoy!

Second to the party is the Mexican Gentleman:

Ingredients:

- Cold gin

- Salsa

Make It So:

For each person partaking pour one shot of gin and a heaping spoonful of salsa into a shaker. Shake vigorously then strain into shot glasses. Shoot and enjoy! You may also add lime juice or hot sauce to the shaker to taste.

Good luck with these, I hope they make your night a little better sometime soon!

Do's & Don't's For A Healthy Lifestyle (As Learned From Last Night's Decision-Making)

DO: Take advantage of good weather in Columbus, Ohio by walking, biking or some other outdoor activity. These mild July days don't come around that often.
DON'T: Sit at your desk with the AC cranked taking random quizzes on sporcle.com. (Did you know that the adjective to describe "bear-like qualities" is "ursine?")

DO: Enjoy a social drink now and again with friends.
DON'T: Start slamming White Russians at 5:01pm at home, alone, in your underwear.

DO: Prepare a sensible meal of teriyaki grilled salmon, white rice, and steamed broccoli.
DON'T: Stumble down the street to the dirty Chinese place and order a bowl of hot & sour soup, crab rangoons, and a large portion of General Tso's chicken.

DO: Store your leftovers and eat them for lunch the next day.
DON'T: Ignore the fact that you're breathing heavily while you shove the last crab rangoon into your mouth.

DO: Make plans with friends to watch a baseball game, take in a movie, or play cards.
DON'T: Rent the first season of Lost to watch alone on your couch and struggle to follow the plot while you're nodding out.

DO: Make up for your behavioral excess by working out, eating healthy foods, and giving your liver a break from alcohol.
DON'T: "Irish up" your coffee first thing in the morning and drunk-text your girlfriend while she's away all weekend.

Things I Do When the Boyfriend Is Gone

I love to cut corners, especially when it comes to meals. I hate the longevity of prep, cooking, and then cleaning up. I usually try to cram all the steps together in some explosive way that I usually regret later. I make a hobby of this mostly when the live in boyfriend is out. He doesn't consider throwing salad dressing into the bag of mixed greens a viable option, and he's not impressed when I eat peanut butter straight from the jar for lunch. He's really into cooking whole, healthy, and delicious meals and then putting them on a plate. The plate part is important, it took me a year to get him to eat Chinese food out of the take out box with me.

I really love that he makes all the meals because a) it's very thoughtful and b) I don't have to do shit, except eat his wonderful cooking...giving me more time to write about, uh, food. See it's not that I don't want yummy meals, it's just difficult to make them when you live in Lazytown USA. So when he goes places and leaves me to my own devices I blithely do lots of lazy things around the kitchen that I know would make him cringe. I leave the fridge door open while I use stuff, I stick the same knife into multiple condiment jars, I eat things cold with out cooking them, I eat ice cream for dinner if we don't have food, and I stack dishes up on the floor in front of the couch after I eat off of them, that is if I even use a dish. I try to avoid that as much as possible. Recently I've indulged in just eating whatever right off the cutting board, why dirty more stuff?

Then if a dish is dirty, I try my hardest to get someone else to deal with it before I just pull it together and toss it in the sink.

I know, I'm a total maverick. And now, I'm off to eat hashbrowns and cereal for breakfast. Yes, I will be eating those shredded potatoes right out of the pan...

But I'm Hungry Noooooow

So when I got the mail today and saw there was a menu for a new Chinese Delivery place I hadn't tried yet, I took it as a sign that I was meant to order in tonight. Other signs included my lazy lazy hands, and a fridge so hollow with nothingness it echoes. Yet, when I flipped through the mail a little more and saw IKEA was having some "holy shit" sale this weekend (memorialize our troops with savings!), I figured I'd save the 15 bucks and put it towards a Swedish something or other, since my new apartment is lacking in sit ware. In my desperation to own furniture that wasn't originally made for camping, I decided to ditch the Chinese food idea and opt for one of the few things kicking around in the freezer.

Trader Joe's Soy Corn Dogs - you can tell they're mine because my name's on them! These are not great, I don't recommend them unless as a vegetarian you miss corn dogs so much you can't stop yourself. I understand. As a fair food fanatic, I would still sneak the meat ones once every summer for a few years after becoming vegetarian. Some people can't give up steak, my hurdle was corn dogs. Having officially weened myself years ago, I've long been searching for a mock kind that can bring the taste and texture of the originals. After going through the 6 or 7 different veggie options I've seen, I'm gonna say it's not possible to match, but to be fair, I think it's just impossible to find any kind of freezer corn dog edible, this isn't just a soy issue. I think it's actually a physics* issue. The outside of a corn dog takes not long to heat because it's breading, the inside is frozen meat or tofu and there's more of it, so it takes much much longer. So while the inside is taking a million years to even thaw, the outside is getting either burnt or soggy (for the record I've had both, and I recommend burnt over soggy). So, yeah, this is the meal I went with in hopes of being able to curl up on a couch this time next week.

So the box is like, "microwave or heat in the oven, it'll suck in the microwave, but it will take 20 friggin minutes in the oven and you're hungry now." So I was like, "fuck you box, I'm going with the stove!" With no one to tell me to just calm down and make them like the box says, I threw caution to the wind and heated them on the stove in a pan! Like a boss!

So because the stove is a useless electric stove (and not for any reason involving my reckless decision making), my already meh meal got burnt to shit by way of smoking up my entire apartment. Oh well, burnt isn't inedible, right? Now they're Cajun!

See? There's still some good lookin' golden brown to gnaw off. Oh shit, what's that you say corn dog? Your middle is still cold and not at all cooked? Too bad, I already started eating you.

I figured a cold soy dog couldn't really harm me, so I nibbled away at it futilely in an effort to not make waste (and also to avoid more time cooking). That's about as much as I could get through in my hunger and desperation. As you can see, I tried to mask the chilled taste with ketchup and mustard, but it did little more than make me wish I was just eating straight condiments for dinner. Stupid stove.

*disclaimer: I've never once taken a physics class and I understand little to no science. Sometimes I can name different types of clouds or dinosaurs, but that's it.

For Shame...

I am a terrible person.

Well, I feel terrible at least. Here's the deal: I've been working on a big project at work for the last 2-3 weeks and it's required me to be in the office almost every day. My office is 100 miles from my house, so I usually get to work from home 2-3 days a week. Just not these weeks. 200 miles of commute means I have to pack life in around the edges, so I don't have time to cook, and I don't have time for meals at fancy restaurants. Most of my meals have been handed to me through my car window for most of the month, and it's finally beginning to take its toll.

I have explored pretty much every I-70 exit's food possibilities between Columbus and Dayton. Tim Horton's on Hilliard-Rome Road (just past the west outerbelt in Franklin County) is great for the Bagel B.E.L.T. sandwich and a cup of coffee in the morning. The McDonald's on US42 in London consistently forgets my hash browns. There's a Hardee's in Springfield that has almost made my heart stop. The Burger King in Huber Heights has the worst fries I've ever tasted. The Wendy's on Hoke Rd. in Englewood has actually handed me an entire bag of food that was *almost* what I ordered. But I keep going back to these places (and all the other fast-food joints that litter the landscape) because my work life is encroaching heavily on my social life.

Hopefully things will return to normal soon. I feel awful. My liver is begging me for forgiveness. I respond by drowning it with alcohol once I get back to Columbus. I have probably consumed enough sodium in the last year from eating fast food to last me for the next decade. Not to mention that I am not as svelte as I once was as a young man.

I should probably go on a diet of shredded newspapers and wasabi to counteract this egregious sin I've committed against my body, but I think I'll settle for another Beef & Cheddar with curly fries and admit that the situation is hopeless as long as I live like a nomad.