The “My Car Tried To Kill Me” Cocktail

March 1, 2013March 23, 2014 ~ Angela ~ 4 Comments

You’re going to get a doubly informative post this evening! Not only will you get a new, delicious cocktail recipe – you will also get a little bit of car safety information! Sounds fun, no?

After work I went to the grocery store to get some baking supplies for this weekend. On my way home, my car suddenly began accelerating on its own. I was zipping along at 50 mph without even having my foot on the gas. When I pushed down on the brake, it felt like it was pushing right back up against my foot and it took way too long for the car to actually stop. Even then, the engine was revving. I felt like Danica Patrick!

Or not. I was actually afraid I was going to crash into someone or something and die. Luckily, I wasn’t far from home and made it to my house without incident (other than a minor heart attack).

Then I made myself a drink.

Meet the “My Car Tried To Kill Me” cocktail, aka The Chocolate Kahlua Cookie!

Directions

Using a standard sized shot glass (I was too freaked out to actually measure anything), combine in a cocktail shaker:

1 shot of Kahlua
1 shot of Godiva Chocolate Liqueur
Half a shot of Pinnacle Cookie Dough Vodka
Splash of cream or half & half, to tase
ice

Sorry that I don’t have a bunch of cute pictures. I took just this one and then had to go sit down and drink the damn thing. It’s definitely something I would make again, though preferably NOT after near death by Ford Taurus.

And this is where the auto safety bit comes in.

1. A quick Google search has revealed to me that last year the government was investigating sudden acceleration problems in the Ford Taurus and Mercury Sable model years 2001-2006. Apparently since no one has actually died (yet!) because of this issue they closed the investigation without issuing a recall. So heads up if you own one of these vehicles.

2. Should this happen to you while driving, it might help to put your car in neutral. I wish I had known this BEFORE I became Speed Racer this afternoon. Shouldn’t that be info you have to learn to pass your driver’s test or something? Might be important someday, yeah?

So, I know cars and booze are not something that you should normally mix but I think this combination is completely justifiable.

Stay safe everyone! I need another drink…

Thanks…For Nothing

November 20, 2012 ~ Angela ~ 2 Comments

A bunch of friends on Facebook have been posting one thing every day this month that they are thankful for. I have decided to go the opposite route, and take a moment to send a little “thanks for nothing” to those who have pissed me off over the past few days.

1. T-Mobile: Thank you SO much for porting my phone number BEFORE my phone arrived so that, for the past two days, I had no cell service of any kind. And a double thanks for informing me, when I called and spoke with your snotty support twit, that yes, you would be charging me for those two days even though I was NOT receiving service from you. Way to impress a brand new customer, douchebags.

2. Asshat at the grocery store: It was so kind of you to prevent me from backing out of my parking spot (after I had to fight through the throngs of ignorant morons INSIDE the store just so I could get some lettuce and cans of beans) by sticking your cart directly behind my vehicle while you loaded your bags into the trunk of your ridiculously stupid, giant SUV. You rock.

3. Handful of NHL players: It was so cool that you decided to put together a game in Atlantic City to benefit Sandy relief organizations, and even cooler that you scheduled it for one of the ONLY DAYS ALL YEAR that I actually have plans. Every other weekend I sit around on my ass doing nothing, but not the day you are holding the game. Potentially the only hockey game I could have seen this season and I can’t go. BOO! (But still YAY for the cause!)

Oh, and another BOO for this stupid ass NHL lockout. While you are busy fighting over your hundreds of thousands of dollars, there are people who work for minimum wage in your arenas that are OUT OF WORK because of you! Get over yourselves, all of you!

4. This last one requires a bit of back story… A little over a year ago, a woman ON A BICYCLE crashed into my car which was parked on the street (something I rarely ever do). She took off my power mirror, and dented and scratched the front end of my car. Apparently my neighbor across the street saw what happened, and made sure she came up to the house to tell me what she did. My boyfriend answered the door, and when she said she had hit my car and was going home to get her insurance info (homeowners I guess?) he believed her. Had we known that the only reason she came up in the first place was that she had been nabbed trying to just take off by the guy across the street we would have just called the cops. Anyway, of course she did not come back, and we had not taken any info from her.

So last week my boyfriend is out front and the lady drives up and says, “Oh, I see you got the car fixed. How much did it cost so I can pay you?” Mind you, over a YEAR has gone by at this point. So he tells her the cost to replace the mirror (I still have the lovely marks from her bike handle bar) and she says, “I don’t have a job, I can’t pay you,” gives her address, and drives off in her BRAND NEW Toyota Corolla.

So I want to thank her for a). drunk biking or whatever the hell she was doing when she crashed my car, b). saying she would return that day to take care of things and then disappearing and c.) randomly showing up a year later to rub in my face that she still hasn’t paid for the damage to my car, and apparently doesn’t have a job but has a much newer, nicer car than I do. Piss off.

OKAY, I feel a little better now. On to some things I am actually thankful for.

I would like to express my thanks to The Domestic Rebel for this blog post, in which she alerted me to the fact that such a thing as Hot Cocoa with Marshmallow 3 Musketeers bars exist in this mad world. I found them today, and they are awesome.

I might actually try her recipe in which she melted the candy bars down to make icing for cupcakes (hello, genius!), if I don’t eat the whole bag first.

Next, I would like to thank Pinnacle Vodka for making Pumpkin Pie flavored vodka. I have had so much fun making drinks with this stuff over the past month and today I might have outdone myself…

I loooove those mucho mudslides you get at Friday’s or Applebee’s, loaded up with ice cream and whipped cream and chocolate syrup. So after a twenty minute argument with customer “support” at T-Mobile, this was just the thing I needed to bring my happy back.

Pumpkin Mudslide
Ingredients
1 oz Pinnacle Pumpkin Pie
1 oz Kahlua
1 oz Baileys
2 scoops coffee flavored ice cream
ice
chocolate syrup and whipped cream for garnish
Directions
Blend liquors, ice cream and ice in blender. Drizzle chocolate syrup around the inside of a glass, pour in drink, and top with whipped cream.

Mmmmmmm….what was I annoyed about??? Oh, that’s right, not a damn thing! : )

Lastly I would like to say thanks to those of you who, whenever I manage to post something, take a few minutes out of your busy day to read what I have to say here in my blog. It’s been awesome so far getting to interact with all of you and I wish everyone a Happy Thanksgiving! (If you aren’t in the U.S., just have a happy Thursday!)

Why I Like Cocktails More Than Cooking

September 17, 2012September 13, 2013 ~ Angela ~ Leave a comment

I like to eat. My ever tightening jeans can attest to that. I follow quite a few blogs that post fabulous looking recipes on a daily basis and I would love to try to make nice dinners with fresh ingredients every night, but I have some issues. Most involve my kitchen.

The previous owner of our house was a big “do it yourself” type who had absolutely no idea what he was doing. Not only that – he also had TERRIBLE taste in decorating. These were the kitchen cabinets when we moved in…

Yeah. Those would be salmon colored kitchen cabinets. They have since been painted, but unfortunately we are still stuck with the stupid kitchen layout left behind by the DIY Dodo. Wall oven, tiny sliver of counter top, sink, slightly wider bit of counter, ELECTRIC cook-top (I grew up cooking with gas; how to properly bring something to a boil and then simmer on this god awful thing still eludes me), another tiny bit of counter space, wall.

Electric range heating element (Photo credit: Thom Watson) – EVIL

Trying to chop up a bunch of fresh veggies and whip together something on the stove is always a test of my patience. I have no room, and the stupid cook-top is either not hot enough or so hot that whatever I am trying to cooking ends up looking like a lump of charcoal. I HATE trying to make dinner in my kitchen.

So you can imagine my excitement when I started seeing all these pins on Pinterest about freezer crock pot meals. A few hours of torture in the kitchen on a Sunday afternoon and then you have dinner for the rest of your life! Okay, more like two weeks but that seemed like a good tradeoff to me! So I picked out some recipes, got all the necessary ingredients and enlisted the boyfriend’s help in prepping everything and loading the meals into freezer bags. After about two hours we had ten nights worth of meals (leftovers for lunch were promised too!) stacked neatly in the basement freezer. All I have to do it grab whatever I want the night before so it can thaw in the fridge and then drop it in the crock pot in the morning. I’d need to make some rice or noodles or whatever to go with each meal, but that’s easy. THIS was going to be the solution to all my cooking woes! Right?

Well, not exactly. I have made three of my meals so far. Each one had the house smelling yummy and tasted pretty good, there was just this minor issue. All these lovely blogs about freezer meals failed to mention that EVERY STINKING MEAL was going to end up under a foot of water by the time it was done cooking. I have cooked plenty of meals in the crock pot (without freezing them first) and have not had this problem. So unless my grocery store is secretly injecting my vegetables with water to up their weight so they can charge me more I think it has something to do with the whole freezing bit. Nobody wants sopping wet beef fajitas. Just saying…

So cooking dinner is STILL annoying and it will be until the day – hopefully in the not so distant future – when we can redo the kitchen.

Making a cocktail, however, is easy no matter how much counter space I have. All I need is a shot glass, a cocktail shaker, ice and some easy to open bottles of booze. The biggest annoyance there is when someone puts the ice cube tray back in the freezer without refilling it. Ahem.

In addition to the ease with which a great cocktail can be created the fact remains that crock pot Chicken Teriyaki could NEVER taste as good as a Kahlua Pumpkin Cheesecake Martini.

That’s right. I said Kahlua Pumpkin Cheesecake Martini. It was a decadent as it sounds! This is definitely a dessert drink. It’s rich and creamy and sweet and…drool.

Kahlua Pumpkin Cheesecake Martini

Ingredients

2 parts Pinnacle Pumpkin Pie vodka
1 part Kahlua
1 1/2 parts half & half
2 teaspoons cheesecake pudding mix
ice

Directions

In a cocktail shaker combine vodka, Kahlua and cheesecake pudding mix. Stir until the mix is dissolved. Then add half & half and ice. Shake, pour, and float away on a creamy, dreamy cocktail cloud.

Kahlua Pumpkin Cheesecake Martini #3 — having a little fun with my camera settings

One Mudslide Cupcake, Hold the Kahlua

May 24, 2012May 24, 2012 ~ Angela ~ 1 Comment

Last night I was making cupcakes for a birthday at the office. I was just going to do something plain, so I grabbed a box of Devils Food cake mix and dumped all the ingredients into a mixing bowl. It was after this that I was struck with the idea to make Mudslide cupcakes. Not sure why, but I have had Applebee’s giant ass (because it’s huge AND contributes to one having a giant ass) Mudslides on the brain lately.

Mucho size Mudslide from Applebee's — Mucho size Mudslide from Applebee’s (Photo credit: Newbirth35)

I thought I could kick my craving with some Kahlua and Baileys cupcakes. I didn’t want to add any more liquids to my cupcake batter because I had already put in the required water, eggs and oil so I figured I would just brush the tops of the baked cupcakes with Kahlua and then frost them with a Baileys buttercream. I should have just gone to Applebee’s.

Don’t get me wrong, the cupcakes tasted good but apparently I should have soaked them in Kahlua rather than just brushing the tops with the booze because I tasted no Kahlua. Any good alcoholic knows that a Mudslide contains Kahlua. : (

Another little snafu I ran into was the icing. I used a recipe I found online. It called for two sticks of unsalted butter, three cups of confectioners sugar and three tablespoons of Baileys. I went with this one because I didn’t have any more sticks of shortening, which I usually use when I make my icing. I won’t tell you where I got the recipe from because it sucked!! When I did my requisite taste test, all I could taste was butter with a hint of Irish Cream. BLEH.

I added another cup of confectioners sugar and then ANOTHER.

Five cups got the job done and the finished product was pretty good; it just wasn’t what I had hoped for. So now I have eaten a cupcake that will go straight to my thighs, and I still need to hit up Applebee’s for a Mudslide.