Some Fava Beans and a Nice Chianti

From the desk of Clarence...

A study arrived today from the Division of Cancer Epidemiology and Genetics at the National Cancer Institute that indicates that aspirin helps prevent liver cancer.  So, when you're feeling hung over during the holiday season, pop some Bayer and double the benefit.  Do not, mind you, take a bunch of Tylenol when you are hung over.  Not kidding here, as acetaminophen and alcohol can shut down your liver and kill you.  So take aspirin, or just pour a Bloody Mary and quit your bitching.

Many people's livers take a bit of a beating during the holiday season.  For others, it's really all winter, what with the cold weather -- who doesn't love a winter warmer?  Nog and whiskey, hot toddies, or my favorite, the Irish coffee, all hit the spot during those months spent by the fire.  Here's a little more info for the home mixologists out there.

Irish Coffee

For the uninformed, there are many solid Irish coffee recipes, including The Dubliner's (coffee, lump of brown sugar, Jameson, fresh whipped cream), but you can find joy in a very basic recipe:

• Jamo (Bushmills for the Protestants out there... I was raised Whiskey-palian but John Jameson brings out the altar boy in me... I mean... uh...)
• coffee
• Reddi-whip
• Bailey's if you're a bit soft, which I often am

These are all things you should have on hand.  Especially the Reddi-whip, either in your kitchen fridge or your college-sizer under the bedside table.  True fact: after applying some Reddi-whip to my third slice of pumpkin pie on Thanksgiving night at the future in-laws', I decided some whippets with a couple of family members were in order.  Never too old.

On a snow day (or a Tuesday if you work for the Federal government), try the "Irish triplets": Irish Coffee, pint of Guinness, and an Irish whiskey on the rocks.  Taking sips from each in turn is a delight to the palate, a unique sensation of hot/cold to your body, and an invitation to snap (but accurate) judgments from onlookers.  Don't be shy.  You only live once.

Hot Toddy

Like the Irish Coffee and just about every other cocktail with more than two ingredients (Teedge, stay with me), there are many deviations from the basic recipe based on personal taste and what's in your cupboard.  Also like the Mickey Joseph, you can make a good one very simply:

• hot tea
• whiskey
• honey or lemon if you are a pinky-raiser, which I often am

Whiskey can mean bourbon, Irish, blended, whatever.  Scotch sounds odd, but I'm not a Scotch guy, so go for it if you are.  Rum or brandy will also suffice, but really, if you actually have brandy, you should use that to make Stingers (adding white creme de menthe) before courting your lady (it's like frickin' Scope) and then cap off the evening with the Toddy.    Ask Rob about the night of 17 rounds of Stingers at the Copper Top Lounge in Williamsburg the night before he left college for good to go work for the fraternity.  It's the only time I've seen him put a girl in a headlock.  (Yes, of course she was tiny.  She's now "the legs" for a magic show in Short Pump, VA.)

"What kind of tea?" you ask, just to make this unbelievably simple drink more complicated.  Who cares?  Chamomile, Earl Grey, China Black, even Green.  Okay, with green you might want to mix sake or something.  I don't know much about tea blends, I only know what I like during air travel.  Wait for it... I don't like the Pan Am coffee, but I sure do like the TWA tea.  A classic for the ages, only repeated because with both airlines out of business, that joke may go completely extinct by the time we turn 60.  It's my mission to keep it on life support.

Hot Buttered Rum
Nobody drinks this one, but it's pretty good.  You have to like rum, and, well, if you don't, your problems go well beyond this recipe.  Heat it up and add some butter -- you can cut the rum with some hot water if you have to drive or if you are namby to your life-partner's pamby.  Otherwise, it's fucking rum and butter.  Enjoy.  Add some spices for flavor -- the obvious ones like nutmeg, cinnamon, cloves and brown sugar, not cumin and cayenne, morons. 

The key is probably the rum you choose.  Bacardi Light is a poor option, you need more flavor.  Gosling's from Bermuda is my all-timer, but frankly it goes away so fast from Dark and Stormys in a pint glass (so damn good) that I can never keep it handy.  Appleton is nice if you've come straight from Dunn's River Falls, but if you're like me, you pounded two bottles with your 18-year-old girlfriend at the fraternity formal and then she barfed at the table and then you said condescendingly, "Oh, my god, that's the most disgusting thing I've ever [gurgle gurgle]--" and then you barfed directly on the back of her head.  Of course.  True story... that Catholic whiskey induces confessional today, I swear.  Anyway, those Appleton bottles of mine are long gone, but anything spiced in the rum aisle will get you a tasty drink.

Anyone out there ever have the Bacardi Torched Cherry rum with Coke?  Someone brought it to our beach house last summer, and as soon as I was done mocking it, I had one and then drank half the bottle.  Like punched-up Cherry Coke, dangerously delicious on a par with the sweet tea vodka.  ER visits must abound from that stuff.  It's in the Girl Drink Drunk category, but good shit is good shit, whether you deserve a little umbrella in it or not.

Tom and Jerry

No, not the cartoon.  No, not the Wheelhouse/GTB heads of state.  This is like hot egg nog with booze, but instead of buying the nog, you have to make it.  Too much work for your casual alcoholic.  I'm thinking you could warm up some egg nog, but it might curdle.  I don't know.  Skip this one unless you're in some hoity-toity gin mill and some hotshot barkeep wants to hit on your best girl by displaying his skills in mixology.  Then drink the Tom and Jerry and go home and make sweet, sweet love to her as she thinks about him.  You both win.

Wassail

Come on.  Way too much work.  Maybe you go to a colleague's holiday party and they have a crystal tub of it.  Otherwise, skip it.  Unless you're married to Martha Stewart.  In which case, both of you drink a shitload of it and have some kinky crepe-and ricotta-slathered sex-capade in the four-poster and use her house arrest ankle bracelet as some sort of cockring.  Enjoy.

Hot Apple Pie

Get your Tennessee cousin to make apple pie moonshine.  That's the hard part.  Microwave it.  Add whipped cream.  Get 911 drunk and pull bits of broken glass out of the sleeve of your Christmas sweater the next day while nursing your hangover.  I actually just made this "recipe" up right now, but damn, it sounds good.  That apple pie moonshine is fucking good shit ("pardon my Francais, but fucking shit!"), and those who've had it can corroborate.  Actually, I have a jar of straight moonshine in my laundry room from 18 months ago.  It can't actually "go bad," right?  I mean, it already did, right?  I need the recipe to make it apple pie flavored.  Only in the era of the World Wide Web could I go get it that fast.  Just got it.  Look out, mama, there's a whit boat coming up the river.

Well, there's a bunch of other hot drinks involving peppermint and cocoa and many other favorites.  There are also holiday drinks served cold, like something I had called a Christmas cookie which was delicious but made me start ogling and then pawing the hostess's sweater steaks, so beware.  I know, like (the other) Cooley sang, it don't make you do a thing, it just lets you.  But stick to the shit where you can taste the booze in it and let your gag reflex be your guide.  Look, two weekends ago a friend's wife sat on my lap as I was telling a story and began doing the satin pants cheek search for life on my planet as the husband said out loud that I owed him one.  A lesser man would have sprung to life and embarrassed everyone involved, and by lesser I mean younger and more virile.  As it was, I stood up with the story's punchline and my junk (often one and the same) intact.  Had I been throwing back something with more ingredients, you just never know.  And that, my friends, is one to grow on.  Grow one.

Okay, so back to the point of this brief chat: your liver.  Concerned Clarence the Clown Who Cares will now provide you a list of 14 foods that cleanse the liver, as lifted from the Global Healing Center. 

1. Garlic
2. Grapefruit
3. Beets and Carrots

4. Green Tea
5. Leafy Green Vegetables
6. Avocados
7. Apples
8. Olive Oil
9. Whole Grains
10. Cruciferous Vegetables
11. Lemons and Limes
12. Walnuts
13. Cabbage
14. Turmeric

I kept looking for "rare porterhouse" and "hollandaise," but alas, no dice.  So, based on this, you can feel good eating guacamole, slaw on your 'cue, and garlic in your scampi.  Also, drink green tea toddies, apple pie moonshine, and greyhounds.  (More of them.)  Oh, people, "cruciferous vegetables" are broccoli and cauliflower and the like.  'Cause that's what Jesus ate.  (An oft-overlooked parable was how Jesus cleared the cathedral of noxious fumes that humid day.)

You're welcome, and happy drinking!