The Pittsburgh Penguin

Recipes for cocktails called the Detroit Red Wing and Dallas Star exist. I believe I invented something that can fairly be called the San Jose Shark a couple weeks ago. (Like other people, I got inspired by the teal color of their uniforms. I won't post it until later, if at all.) When I decided to share the San Jose Shark on Twitter, I felt kinda bad that I'd never gotten around to creating something worth calling the Pittsburgh Penguin.

Then I found out about a Kahlua cocktail called a Panda Bear. I love pandas. I love all black and white animals. I'm not ashamed to admit that this is why the Penguins logo initially caught my attention. I liked the concept of the dark Kahlua with something creamy, but hate milk in a cocktail. I also got inspired by the Dallas Star to use Goldschlager, as Vegas Gold is part of the team's colors.

I enjoyed the hell out of it last night, though the Penguins weren't on. I like almost every cocktail I improvise. They're like children--I value each one because I made them and it cost a bomb to bring them into this world. (I don't use cheap liquor.) So I did a quick Twitterpoll. My tweeps' response confirmed that I was on to something.

So, finally, *the* Pittsburgh Penguin cocktail!

Pittsburgh Penguin

1 1/2 ounce Kahlua
1 ounce cream of coconut
1 ounce Goldschlager
crushed ice

Shake all liquid ingredients in a shaker. Fill an old-fashioned glass about two-thirds of the way with crushed ice. Pour the liquid over the ice.

Should any Penguins fan have a different idea of what would fit, or know of a drink called the Pittsburgh Penguin that existed before this one, I'm listening.

Note on ingredients: I am not compensated by any company, and do not endorse any brand. I use brand names here only because I don't know any substitutes for the types of liquor used.

Hockey and Cupcakes--What Else Do You Need?

Even though it's mid-July, cupcakes and hockey dominated my Twitter timeline late last week. The New York Islanders, who I really want to stay in the area just because I hate the Rangers so so much and don't want them to be the only hockey team in town, gave a local businesswoman a contract to sell cupcakes during games. Other hockey teams' fans made fun, but they're probably just jealous. You don't get tons of food choices in a hockey arena.

I can't have their cupcakes (although I'm certain a few will be thrown at me and L'Ailee's direction should we show up in Pittsburgh Penguins gear next season.) I can't have most cupcakes, because they contain eggs and I'm allergic to them. However, I could indulge in the Twitter hashtag trend that inevitably resulted. I tend to indulge in lots of Twitter hashtag trends. Oh, there was lots of fun to be had with #NHLCupcakes. These were mine:

Marc-Andre Fleury: Sweet, flaky, often tasty, but OH GOD STAY IN THE WRAPPER!
Martin Brodeur: Big enough to share with your sister.
Sidney Crosby: It only looks super-sweet and plain vanilla.
Brooks Orpik: Comes with Free Candy sprinkles, may damage internal organs.
Daniel Carcillo: Can be eaten without incisors, but tainted with rat hairs.
And the one my wife liked best:
The Detroit Red Wings: Bitter old ginger

Given all this, I wanted some cupcakes. L'Ailee bought me vegan chocolate-orange cupcakes from one of NYC's many, many cupcake shops for my birthday in March, but she can't remember which one. So really, my only choice is to get baking. (Hey, grocery stores need support, too!)

Non-vegetarians tend to get all lemon-faced at the mention of vegan baked goods, but if I'm going to be eating them, I can't really bake anything else. To make these, I blatantly ripped off a moist, tasty cake recipe at the Fat-Free Vegan Kitchen, poured it into a cupcake pan, then ripped off an orange frosting recipe from About.com Southern Food. These don't rise quite as high as regular cupcakes, but you won't care. L'Ailee and her best friend sure as hell didn't!

Vegan Chocolate-Orange Cupcakes

1 1/2 cups unbleached flour
1 1/2 cups white whole wheat flour
1 1/2 cups sugar
2 teaspoons baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup cocoa
1 teaspoon cinnamon
3/4 cup soy yogurt
1 teaspoon vanilla
2 tablespoons balsamic vinegar
1 1/2 cups water
1/2 cup fresh orange juice (I used Florida's Natural with pulp instead, because it's summer.)
2 tablespoons grated orange peel

Spray a muffin pan with non-stick spray and dust the cups lightly with unsweetened cocoa. Preheat oven to 350F.

Combine the flours, sugar, baking soda, salt, cocoa, and cinnamon in a large mixing bowl. Add the yogurt, vanilla, balsamic vinegar, water, and orange juice. Beat by hand or with a mixer on low speed just until well-combined, about 1-2 minutes. Stir in the grated orange peel, and pour into the prepared pan.

Bake for about 20 minutes, until a toothpick inserted in the middle of one comes out clean. Cool in the pan for 5 minutes, then pull out, using a knife if necessary. Cool the rest of the way on a wire rack. Then ice with...

Orange Frosting

4 tablespoons softened margarine
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
3 cups powdered sugar
3 to 4 tablespoons orange juice
finely grated zest of 1 orange

Beat margarine with vanilla until light and well blended; beat in powdered sugar slowly. Add a few tablespoons of orange juice and the orange zest. Beat and add more orange juice as needed to make the frosting spreadable.

Hungry yet? No, I don't know which hockey player or team those cupcakes should be compared with.

Carrot Top on a Dare

MouthGuard, a frequent reader/commenter, dared me to make a drink and name it "Carrot Top" in, um, honor of the Philadelphia Flyers' Scott Hartnell. Since I am superstitious enough to make Sidney Crosby shake his head and say "Damn, girl," or whatever they say in Nova Scotia, there was no way in hell I'd try it until the Stanley Cup was safely in the Chicago Blackhawks' hands. (Anything but a Flyers win, was my philosophy.) I tend to Google recipe ideas so nobody can come here and tell me that, for example, the drink I named after Brooks Orpik was first created by Pierre McGuire, named "Leadership," and has been served in Philadelphia's best sports bar for years. Turns out there's already a cocktail called Carrot Top. I'm sure it's fine, but I had other ideas.

The "carrot" made me think of something that would taste like carrot cake in a glass. This cocktail purports to do that, but you'll see that something crucial is missing--namely, carrot. So I started with carrot juice. Also, I wanted to do something with Absolut Brooklyn, which is flavored with red apple and ginger. Frankly, I'd have liked it better in the fall and don't think there's anything particularly "Brooklyn" about this flavor combination, but it's good.

I came up with this. The Frangelico adds a bit of nuttiness and creaminess. Though it's martini-sized and worked nicely in a martini glass, I don't think it qualifies as a martini. My cocktail mentor sure wouldn't think so. Whatever it is, it matches Scott Hartnell's hair and his team's uniforms, but isn't nearly as repulsive as the Flyers organization or most of its players. Since it's the off-season, I'd even serve Hartnell one if he could swear he understands that Penguins are opponents, not food.

Carrot Top

2 ounces carrot juice
2 ounces Absolut Brooklyn vodka
1 ounce Frangelico
Dash or two of cinnamon
Cinnamon sugar to rim the glass

Combine all ingredients except cinnamon sugar in a cocktail shaker with 2 or 3 ice cubes. Shake thoroughly. Place cinnamon sugar on a plate; moisten the rim of a martini glass with water. Dip rim of glass into cinnamon sugar to coat. Strain liquid into martini glass.

Note on ingredients: I don't like to specify brands if I can avoid it--nobody's paying me to advertise for them and I don't want any perception that I am unless the company is actually delivering product to my home. However, I don't think any adequate substitutes for the liquors mentioned here exist.

Sometimes I bet pride.

You'll notice the blog looks disturbingly different. Well, once again I pride-bet L'Ailee's best friend A., who is a rabid Detroit Red Wings fan like her. This time, the Penguins and I lost. I must maintain this disgusting color scheme for 24 hours. I have my beloved wife's ugly-ass Winged Wheel earrings in my earlobes, also for 24 hours. (This is the kind of fun two-woman couples can have!) I must put up a Red Wings screensaver on my work computer for the day tomorrow, and not change it until Wednesday morning. And I need to post this drink which would be good, except for the name. This was first created and named years ago.

The Detroit Red Wing

6 ounces Vernor's Ginger Ale
2 ounces cinnamon schnapps

Combine ingredients with ice in a tall glass. The Vernor's is important--it's very Detroit, and is the only good thing to come out of Detroit lately. My Michigander mother believes it has medicinal properties.

You can make that if you wanna, but I'll be making Crosby Sucks for the upcoming Capitals and Flyers games. Hopefully our captain will give them something to really complain about once again.

"Oh, God, McGuire's talking."

Another week, another Sunday afternoon Penguins game on NBC. This time, the Pens take on the Detroit Red Wings! This means either way, L'Ailee and I will be kissing to celebrate every last goal, so I'm kinda hoping both goalies are sieves and the Penguins win by, like, 11-10. I have also pride-bet. L'Ailee's best friend loves the Wings, too. If the Pens win, his daughter and I get to decorate his cab with Penguins-iana so he and his customers can enjoy it all Monday. If *shudder* the Wings win, I have to turn this page red and white all Monday and post the official recipe for the Detroit Red Wing cocktail. Let's go Pens!!!

Have I mentioned that there needs to be a cocktail worthy of being called the Pittsburgh Penguin yet? I'm still soliciting suggestions. Something black and/or Vegas gold, maybe? Or something really Pittsburgh? How about something that'll start out awesome, make you sick in the middle, then make you really glad you stuck with it until the end?

Anyway. Some of you may feel that it's too early to drink (and if you're in Detroit or further west, you're probably right.) Some of you may not want a cold drink, since it's pretty damned cold in many parts of the US already. But some of you might really want to run the blender while the idiots on NBC are talking and get yourself into a mellower frame of mind. To this end, I post another blender drink.

You know how that Verizon commercial with the hockey teams stranded in an airport with an icy runway is pretty cool even though the teams are the Washington Capitals and the Philadelphia Flyers? This is kinda like that. I hate bananas, with a passion, and I can tolerate this. Other people I know really like it. Essentially, it's most of a Bananas Foster dessert--no flambe-ing, sorry--turned into a daiquiri.

Bananas Foster Daiquiri

1 whole ripe banana
1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 heaping teaspoon brown sugar
2 ounces dark rum
1/2 cup crushed ice

Break the banana into several pieces. Put all ingredients in the blender. Blend at a low speed for a few seconds, then on high until everything's together and the drink is firm. Pour into a cocktail glass.

"It's NBC, go ahead and run the blender"

I hope that I don't ruin it by typing this out, but I'm pretty confident that the Pittsburgh Penguins will win tomorrow's game against the Philadelphia Flyers even though it's in the afternoon. You see, I have a pretty good track record. Every month this season, there's been a game late in the month that I've had to miss because I was unavoidably busy doing something else, whether it was clubbing in Orlando with friends I hadn't seen in a year or watching the Detroit Red Wings with L'Ailee at Joe Louis. Inevitably, as I was getting drawn into a bar fight with some woman who thought I was stealing her boyfriend (won it, by the way) or whining because I'd paid to watch the Wings get their asses handed to them, the Pens would have themselves an amazing game that I'd have to learn about via text updates.

Tomorrow, I will be performing with other members of my belly-dancing class. I am extremely nervous, because there will also be actual Middle Eastern women who've danced all their lives in that room and I am at the shallow end of the talent pool. No way in hell can I get out of it, especially since I have a tandem performance with my best friend in addition to my solo. I will have to watch everyone else, and I will be expected to stick around for tea and snacks with my instructor. Our guys lost against the Flyers the last time. They lost the first game of the season against the Washington Capitals on Thursday. They can't be anything but motivated tomorrow. I fully expect that while I'm dancing to the Revels' "Comanche" and hopefully not tripping over my own feet, the Penguins will be playing on fire.

I'm gonna be drinking herbal tea and lots of it. I hope somebody has a Crosby Sucks for me. (It seems like that's the signature drink of this blog, at least for the moment.) But since y'all are going to have to endure NBC's hockey commentary in order to watch this game, you might want something that makes it a little more bearable. Something that involves running the blender to drown their gang of idiots out during intermission. Something like the Pensacola Bushwacker, a true Floridian original that is so bad for you in so many ways that it's excellent. Some people say you should use half-and-half, some people say ice cream, and some people say both. I come down firmly on the "ice cream" side.

Pensacola Bushwacker

4 oz cream of coconut
2 oz Kahlua
1 oz dark rum
1 oz creme de cacao
1/2 cup vanilla ice cream

Pour all ingredients into a blender with two cups of ice, and blend until completely mixed. Serve in a hurricane glass.

And, for another multi-recipe post, a cocktail that is somewhat less horrible for you, but probably much more horrible for your jersey, couch, and carpet if you're not careful. Tasty, though. This is something my sister-in-law likes to do with cheap red wine. Her name for it seems more appropriate for Flyers hockey than anything I can think of, too.

Punch in the Mouth

3/4 cup merlot or shiraz
3/4 cup frozen berries. (Raspberries, blackberries, blueberries, or a combination of those will work)
1/2 cup pomegranate juice

Put all ingredients into blender; blend until completely mixed. Serve in a hurricane glass or large tumbler. You notice that there is no ice in this one. This is why I emphasize that the berries should be frozen...and, of course, your blender should be strong enough to handle such a job.

Y'all make the drinking game, I'll make the shooters

I've thought of creating a Ovechkin versus Crosby Capitals versus Penguins drinking game for a week. The problem is, I've had a few other things on my mind, and I don't have a lot of inspiration left for a drinking game. I do, however, have a few excellent ideas for shooters. So, I'll post a couple shooters, and as we count down the hours, maybe other Penguins fans can make suggestions in comments.

Each of these is a single shot; you can multiply the quantities for multiple shots. The Goldfish is my adaptation of the Finnish fisu (fish) shot, which combines Fisherman's Friend cough drops with chilled vodka--mine tastes, but doesn't feel, a little gentler. Being a Southerner, I regard the Alabama Slammer Shooter as a classic. The Peanut Butter and Jelly...well, readers of Puck Huffers know why.

Goldfish

1 ounce Pernod
1 ounce vodka
2 Fisherman's Friend cough drops

Combine ingredients with a handful of crushed ice in a shaker, then shake. Strain liquid into shot glass.

Alabama Slammer Shooter

1/2 oz sloe gin
1 oz amaretto
1 oz Southern Comfort
dash of lemon juice

Pour all ingredients into a highball glass with ice. Stir well, then strain into a shot glass.

Peanut Butter and Jelly

3/4 ounce Frangelico liqueur
3/4 ounce Chambord liqueur

Fill a cocktail shaker with ice. Pour ingredients into it, shake well. Strain into a shot glass.

I close with a haiku I wrote:

Go ahead, call him
'A caveman-looking asshole'.
We know you want to.

Cyanide

No, it's not the ingredient in a cocktail, not even if I were serving Scott Hartnell or Martin Brodeur. Nor is it the name of a drink. However, it occurs to me that Penguins fans need something to cheer us up, and the Winter Classic might just be rain-delayed tomorrow, and we'll be putting up with the idiocy of NBC announcers regardless of the weather. As a lifelong NASCAR fan, I know how to cope with both rain delays and irritating announcers. This is one of the ways I do it. (Won't be trying it tomorrow, though--it's our wedding anniversary! NBC will provide lots of other opportunities to play later this season.)

Cyanide is a verbal game that my wife and I learned from A., who is a NYC cab driver. He learned it from a group of tipsy partyers in the back of his cab one night a few years ago, and shared it with us. We do not know its original name. I named it "Cyanide" because the poison plays a large role in it. It can be adapted for a number of things. We got through Election 2008 by playing a political version of it, for example. (Cyanide got picked a *lot*.) We've played it during movies. We play it during any boring parts in NASCAR races. Obviously it is not to be played around children or in an arena, and the NHL version will probably not be played by straight men or lesbians.

Questions are asked of the group in this format: Would you have sex with Person A, have sex with Person B, or take the cyanide pill that you keep handy for such an occasion? These are your *only* choices.

Example: "Jay McKee, Bill Guerin, or cyanide?"

The rules of Cyanide are simple and finite:

1. You don't have to stick to celebrities or public figures, but it's very helpful for avoiding hurt feelings in the group.
2. Keep it to pairings of people in somewhat similar positions or who have something in common. For instance, "Eric Staal or Jordan Staal" works because they're brothers, and "John Tortorella or Dan Bylsma" works because both are coaches, but "Eric Staal or Dan Bylsma" is too random.
3. When using dead people, act as if they are still alive and in their prime.
4. "Both" is not an answer.
5. "None of the above" is not an answer.
5a. When the "Crosby or Ovechkin" pairing comes up--and don't kid yourself, it will--anyone who answers "Malkin" may be punched in the shoulder or otherwise punished.
6. You may not hypothetically force-feed one of the people suggested your hypothetical cyanide pill, no matter how bad you hate them.
7. Defending your choice is not only permitted, it's encouraged. But if you feel like holding out on the group, you don't actually have to defend your choice.

Believe me, you will learn lots of interesting new things about your friends playing this.