Well…. Wikileaks has proven to be a non-event thus far. Nothing that’s been revealed has been a revelation, but the media has managed to seize on the more gossipy bits and jam them in our faces.

What’s worse?
People’s reactions to the non-event.

“He should be assassinated!” has become an alarmingly common refrain among angry media blowhards. Predictably, the calls for Julian Assange’s murder have been met with sympathy by the enraged [mostly ill-educated right-wing American] masses (although in fairness, the anger seems to be transcending the political divide, and even found its way up North). The White House has even gotten into the act, spouting some fairly vitriolic sentiment itself, although I’m wagering that this is a manoeuvre to try to distract attention away from the content of the leak itself.

Everybody needs to take a damn chill-pill.

Again, nothing terribly secret has actually been revealed (yet). Certainly some interesting tidbits, like US officials claiming that the Red Crescent has ties to Hezbollah and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard, but nothing that your average undergraduate politics student couldn’t have figured out.

That said, I don’t exactly support the release of so many documents. Diplomatic cables are secret for a reason: they grease the political wheels that make the world go ’round. If people know their contents, things can go tremendously awry. But they haven’t. Instead, what we’re seeing is an apparent effort by countries around the world to pretend to ignore that this is happening. Iran, Saudi Arabia, Canada, and many, many others have already [publicly] written the cables off. No doubt they were noticed and taken into account, but nobody is saying that this bothers them a great deal. I personally wonder if they’re sympathizing with the US…. EVERY state has this kind of dirt in their diplomatic mail bags, so it’s very possible that nobody wants to overreact lest they themselves become the next hypocritical, if embarrassed, victim.

Anyways, I’m going to “leak” to you (ha! get it?) one of my new favorite creations. Admittedly, it uses the same base spirit variation as the last cocktail, but I’m a young man in love. Who can blame me?

Lavender White Lady

1.5 oz Lavender infused gin (2ish weeks of infusion by dried lavender)*
.75 oz Cointreau
.75 oz Freshly squeezed lemon juice

*I used Bombay, but I think Hendrick’s or Tanqueray 10 may have been a better choice. There’s already so much going on in the flavour profile of Bombay that it distracts from the lavender somewhat. Both Tanq 10 and Hendrick’s are quite a bit cleaner.

Yes, this is a cocktail of the oldest order: a sour (which consists of any base spirit + lemon or lime). The White Lady is an ancient drink! Well, not really. There’s a few dates that kick around, the most common being 1919 and 1930 (claimed by Harry Craddock, head barman at The Savoy for most of the ’20s and ’30s). For a brilliant exposé of this darling, see here. That whole blog is phenomenal… I’ve spent many an hour soaking up alcoholic information instead of studying.

With this drink however, I also realized that lavender infused gin has a shelf life. It’s not like it’ll kill you if it sits too long, but the flavour becomes… wilted. I really couldn’t think of a better term than that. I’m guessing the shelf life is about 2 months, but I truly have no idea.

Anyways, happy leaking! If you’re a bored history or politics student, and need a wretchedly distracting procrastination tool, the leaked cables can be found here: http://cablegate.wikileaks.org/index.html.

This is also my first post in a very, very long time! Hopefully I will be a bit more regular in the coming months, but it’s been a crazy year! Many drinks were had, of which many are worth writing about! I re-discovered the Old Fashioned, sampled a perfectly crafted Sidecar, and invented a few things along the way. More on this to come!

First however, we should quickly address an event that sent shockwaves through the tech community yesterday, but failed to garner significant coverage in the mainstream media. This struck me as odd considering that it represents a serious threat to wifi users everywhere. This was of course the release of Firesheep, an add-on for Firefox. Firesheep, in combination with a few relatively easy tweeks to your wireless card configuration (which I will not describe- I’d rather not facilitate the use of Firesheep), gives Firefox users the ability to hijack online profiles like Facebook and Twitter with the click of a button. It works like this (mild technical jargon to follow, be warned):

Every time you log onto an account by way of a username and password, the initial broadcast is encrypted (thus, somebody “watching” [packet-sniffing] the data flow cannot read this information). When this information is received and confirmed by entities like Facebook, a cookie is sent back to the computer, to be used for authentication in subsequent requests. This cookie is NOT always encrypted. With Firesheep, you can hijack the cookie (and therefore the authentication) of other users on the same [unsecured] wifi network. When attackers have this cookie, they can log into Facebook/Flickr/whatever as you.
Firesheep was originally designed in order to highlight the fact that many websites only encrypt the username/password, but NOT the cookie. One would think that this sort of program would get yanked fairly quickly, but Mozilla is refusing to do so, because it doesn’t exploit a weakness in the software itself. Nevertheless, using it in the US likely constitutes an offense under wiretapping laws. It should also be noted that this security vulnerability exists in the structure of client/server set-ups, so ALL browsers are vulnerable. Setting your browser to automatically delete cookies will not help you.

So, how do you protect yourself?
To be honest, you really can’t protect yourself 100%. However, you can certainly improve some of your security…
Two very easy things you can do to protect yourself somewhat:

1. Download HTTPS Everywhere (https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere). This add-on automatically requests webpages via secure protocols not subject to package-sniffing (which is what Firesheep does) or man-in-the-middle attacks. Not all webpages supports HTTPS, so this tool isn’t effective 100% of the time. It does, however, create a secure network to Facebook, wikipedia, Google and a number of other websites. For some reason, fb chat doesn’t get along with HTTPS, so you can kiss this feature goodbye, but who really liked it anyways? (if you did for some reason love fb chat, you can create an exception for fb in the Options section of the add-on).

2. This isn’t so much security as it is convenience. Two very powerful add-ons that Firefox has already approved are AdBlock Plus (in which you can import pre-made filters to simply eliminate most advertisements on webpages), and Ad blocker. Ad blocker is nice because while it doesn’t block advertisements with the rigor of AdBlock Plus, it does block Google Analytics from analyzing your online behaviour.

3(?). Apparently another add-on has been released by the name of FireShepherd that crashes Firesheep when the latter attacks computers operating the former. I haven’t heard much about this one yet, but I’ll be checking it out.

Finally, don’t be stupid about what you actually post on Facebook, and review your security settings often (they occasionally get re-set by Facebook as they roll out upgrades). The best thing you can do is simply block all viewing by people who you haven’t approved. Even still, don’t post identifying information, as fb applications and viruses have been known to simply steal it (see: Koobface).

So, now that I’ve saved the day, and your unsavoury Facebook conversations are semi-protected once more, a drink is surely in order!

And so, I give you the Lavender Lilly (if you can think of a better name, PLEASE let me know):

1.5 oz Bombay Sapphire gin, steeped with dried lavender buds for two weeks.
.5 oz Cointreau
1.25 oz fresh grapefruit juice

The lavender is a really, *really* unique taste in a cocktail…. completely pleasing. I’m only sorry that I’m posting this in the autumn, when this is obviously more of a summer drink. Hopefully I’ll be able to put up more autumnal drinks in the near future (or see last year’s post on the Ward Eight Cocktail if you can’t wait!)

Some of you know that I have an inordinate love for tequila. She is my sweet temptress; my siren. For this reason, I’m paranoid about the possibility of ruining the taste for myself by overdoing it…. Which I almost did about two weeks ago (gasp!). The details are unnecessary (and very hazy), but the point was that two days later, I had to convince myself that I was still quite in love with tequila.

This led to some experimentation, which produced this gem:

Truckled Pear

1 oz Tequila (I used Cazadores Reposado)
1/2 oz Chambord
3/4 oz (or less, to taste) Giffard Pear Liqueur
1/2 oz lime juice
Top with passion fruit juice
Build in a nice big rocks glass

Now, not to brag, but I humbly submit that this is better than anything Michelangelo, Renoir, or Rothko ever managed (pfft… abstract expressionism…). I also contemplated including a touch of ground pepper to add a burnt element to the pear, but then exam time hit and I couldn’t quite justify knocking back more ‘experiments’ when I should be studying Comparative Democracy…. So if you try this recipe out, add some pepper, give it a stir, and let me know how it goes!

Next up, the classic drink of Christmas, Festivus, Kwanza, and Chanukah- Egg Nog.
I personally loathe pre-packaged Egg Nog, so this holiday season I figured I’d give a few different recipes a try and see what happens…. I encourage all of my readers (all five of you!) to submit your favourite recipes. To start with though, I’ll be attempting the recipe handed down to us by the god Harry Craddock in his Savoy Cocktail Book (or ‘the Bible’ as I often refer to it). I’ll also make a post a little later about the history of Egg Nog (or in olden Scotland, “Auld Man’s Milk,” as I assume sloshing together an egg and some milk is the only way to keep Sean Connery alive).

Egg Nog

1 egg
1 tbsp powdered sugar
1 oz liquor (apparently any will do)
Milk
Shake (without ice, if you prefer it warm) and strain into a cup (or cocktail glass, if you’re a total bitch) and grate a bit of nutmeg on top. Now, as much as I admire Mr. Craddock, I’ve never been a big fan of his liberal use of powdered sugar. It’s surprisingly hard to get it to mix in cold drinks, although I may just be doing something wrong. So, feel free to use 1tbsp simple syrup instead (or to taste, obviously). While this will make things a bit sweeter, it’s Christmas, and we might as well indulge

BBC Story

Certainly very interesting!
Shackleton made an abortive attempt to reach the pole in 1909 as the leader of the Nimrod Expedition. Apparently well stocked, they abandoned (or forgot), two cases of liquid courage buried below an outpost that they had used during the attempt.
SO, I can understand the excitement! But… is one hundred year old Scotch buried in the permafrost going to be any good? Well, most of those involved in the discovery and plans to dig the bottles out have acknowledged their desire to *not* sample it. They would rather let it retain the mystique of being Shackleton’s whisky: “It would be terrible to sample it and find that it was off”. Indeed… I’m sure there are loads of Scotch drinkers that would strangle their first born for a shot at this. But here’s the problem: alcohol *does* freeze. At 80 proof, the freezing point is about -30C. And if my hamlet of Kingston manages to hit that low mark annually, I’m betting the Antarctic does as well. Now, when booze freezes, it first separates the water from the alcohol, which wreaks havoc on the sugars in the bottle. Essentially, these bottles will still be alcoholic, but will taste much like penguin piss. Except perhaps to Whyte and Mackay, which now owns the Mackinlay brand, and is itself owned by a large Indian conglomerate. They’re hoping to get enough of a sample that they can reproduce the blend. Problem 2: Just because it’s old, doesn’t mean it’s good. Mackinlay Scotch back in 1909 was just as bad as Whyte and Mackay is today. Why would you want to reproduce it, aside from a shameless marketing ploy? The answer here “ugly capitalism”- that style of exploiting capital that adds absolutely no value to humanity.

But whatever.
In honour of Sir Ernest Shackleton, I dub thee the Shackleton Cocktail:

2 oz Whyte and Mackay whisky infused with Earl Grey tea
.5 oz Baileys
.25 oz Pernod
[1 oz sweet cream?- I'm unsure of this. Try at your own risk]
Shake and Strain
Garnish with an orange slice

While Kentucky and Sri Lanka have nearly nothing in common, one thing that IS undeniably shared is intense palettes: the former is the producer of the finest bourbons on Earth (legally, the *only* producer), and the latter is the home of spices so beautiful it almost makes one long for the old days of preferred trade within the British empire. Almost.
Disregarding a bloody civil war which has seen the militarization of Buddhist monks (seriously), the beautiful little island state is the home of the cinnamon tree.
However, this recipe calls for no cinnamon, because seriously, the Sri Lankan government should be protested. The mass murder of Tamil separatists (who, to be fair, don’t have a shining human rights record), is inexcusable. Any supposedly ‘free’ state requires civilian control of the military, and at least a modicum of respect for human rights.
Anyways, this is a protest drink. A *delicious, strong, and free* protest drink.

The Oak Ceylon Cocktail

1 1/2 oz Woodford Reserve bourbon
1/4 of an apple, muddled in hand into the glass
2 crushed strawberries
Angostura Bitters
Optional- Splash of Poire Williams eau-de-vie
(Build in a rock glass, garnish with a sprig of mint)

Aaaand it tastes like cinnamon. And hickory. With a slight finish of peppercorn. Delicious. Not like silly massacres.

Picture not mine. Actually, the drink is a bit cloudy from apple pulp. I pretty much just stole this b/c it had strawberries.

Summer Sinker

2 oz Bourbon (I used Jim Beam)
3 dashes lemon juice
3/4 tsp grenadine
San Pellegrino Limonata

Shake and strain the bourbon, lemon, and grenadine into a cocktail glass. Top with SP Limonata.
Matches strawberries and raspberry ice cream magnificently.
When I’m back home where my bar lives, I’ll replace the grenadine with Chambord and let you all know how it goes!
(photos to come)

The Ward Eight Cocktail is itself a product of a different time: 1898 was its birth year, and the zenith of its popularity was probably shortly before Prohibition. This was the time of the Gin Martini, Manhattan, and Sidecar: drinks that one respected lest one have a run-in with the pavement. In short, a very different era in the evolution of the cocktail.

With this in mind, and knowing that I’m a product of the contemporary culture, I proposed changing the original recipe of the Ward Eight to something slightly less intense. The original recipe was:

2 oz Bourbon
1/2 oz lemon juice (fresh)
1/2 oz Orange Juice
1 tsp Grenadine

Granted, the 1 tsp of Grenadine sweetens things up considerably, but the bourbon would still make this a very hard cocktail. Not that many don’t still enjoy it! But to make this more pleasing to the less refined masses, I suggested increasing the mix from 1/2 oz to 3/4 oz each. But oh! The onslaught of protests from certain gentlemen!
So, I did the only logical thing I could in such a situation: propose a taste test. Come this September or October, a small number of us will gather in my kitchen and proceed to play with proportions, whiskies and bourbons to discover whether or not we can master the perfect Ward Eight Cocktail……..

n

This will be a poor connection to the theme at best, but give it a chance! Tequila comes from Mexico, which was (is?) a thriving little bastion of Marxist critiques and luminaries. Trotsky died a martyr’s death there. So, in summary: Tequila –> Mexico –> Marxists!

Next, we should understand that university students, particularly in Political Sciences and Development-themed faculties are taught a variety of brands of Marxist thought, ranging from Gramsci’s (the theme of a future cocktail) to Wallerstein. So really, good, 100% agave tequila is the natural ally of any left slanted student.

Mexico –> Marxists –> Students — > Tequila

Here’s a few drinks for my college comrades everywhere… keep it classy (and class based)!

1 oz Reposado Tequila (I use Cazadores)
1/2 oz Creme de Cassis
5-6 Raspberries
Ginger Ale
Lime juice
Crush the raspberries at the bottom of the glass with the Creme de Cassis. Fill with ice, and build the rest, using about 1/4 oz fresh lime juice. It’s definitely a tangy cocktails, but absolutely perfect on a hot day. Plus, it has the same hue as the revolution!

1 1/2 oz Tequila Reposado
2/3 oz  Fresh lime juice
2 tsp Sugar
8-10 Mint leaves
Club Soda

Gently muddle the mint leaves at the bottom of the glass with the sugar and a splash of club soda to help it dissolve. Add crushed ice to the glass and build the rest of the cocktail. Add raspberries for some extra tang.

el Diablo- Photo 'borrowed' from New Angel (bar / lounge in Dartmouth)

Before off-ing himself with a shotgun purchased from Abercrombie & Fitch (I kid you not), he had lived in Cuba for several years, enjoying a friendship with Fidel Castro. He was known along the beaches for wandering between the cheap driftwood-decorated bars in search of something. Inspiration for a novel? Inspiration, yes, but not for material for his next Pultizer… he was on a quest for the perfect Daiquiri.

He was so prolific in his travels of the thin crescent  beaches that when he finally discovered his perfect cocktail, it was named for him. It is certainly not a standard rum daiquiri (the cheap whore of rum drinks), and for those of us in Canada, it’s ridiculously difficult to get your hands on a bottle of Maraschino Liqueur (cheers to the Queen’s government… guh), so try this out the next time you’re at a good classy American (or Cuban!!) bar.

Hemingway Daiquiri

(from Kat Kinsman)
1 oz Havana Club silver rum (Bacardi Light is also good)
1/8 oz maraschino liqueur
1/8 oz cane syrup or cooked-down cane juice
3/4 oz freshly squeezed lime juice
1/4 oz freshly squeezed grapefruit juice

Garnish with maraschino cherry

Try it out, and adjust to your preference. You may want to up the syrup if it’s too tart for you, or adjust other aspects.

When you’re sipping this, hold the memory of the Cuban Revolution close… Hemingway supposedly drank this cocktail on the beautiful winter morning that found itself host to one of the momentous events in history.