I have to say, its good to see Bastet back. It ain't the same without DFG around (in a bad way, the place was lesser for her fire being absent)
Was worried about her for too long.
As for another favourite of mine, a mojito is tough to beat IMO. Although with a bit of freshly grown lemon balm (Melissa officianalis), bruised to allow the scented terpenes to be better extracted, its even nicer. And to one up that, freeze the same into a sorbet.
They even did a commercial frozen mojito sorbet in Aldi last time I was in there. Reminds me, I should go there again soon to see if they still have it, because those were SO damn tasty. Came in single serving foil pouches, just freeze, slash open and squeeze out into a bowl. And generous size portions too, not the sort of crap you see with ice cream etc. in restaurants, where its a few spoonfuls and gone. Enough to fill a bowl, and with 3-4 of them, a stomach too.
Lets see...quite like campari, just as is, on the rocks.
And not exactly a cocktail, but I quite like bitter shandy, although not if it's made with that sickly sweet vile shite known as sprite, or 7-up. Ew. R.Whites is the ideal one for it IMO, not actually HAD one in ages, but it used to be a staple of old family camping trips, or more likely as not, going camping or hiking in the middle of buttfuck nowhere with the ol' man, it might as well have been classed as a food group, ideally served with plenty sweet patries.
Just the sort of thing a kid that's bloody well exhausted from a day-long hike through dense woodland or else up steep animal grazing pasture in search of wild mushrooms grows to really appreciate, in the middle of a summer (odd season to go mushroom picking I know, but there are species out there to be had if you know where to look and what to look for). Probably appreciate it now as much for the memories as for the refreshment, technically, probably wasn't legal to serve me, at the young age of most of those trips, but I found that rural landlords generally don't give a stuff about serving something like a pint or two of half-and-half to a kid who's stopping there for a meal, with folks, since it isn't exactly pisspot fodder.
Brings back memories of some good hunts and some nice botanical finds, the ones I remember best being one particular camping trip near lake Bala in wales, big bugger of a hill/small mountain beside the lake, getting up at the crack of dawn, and making straight up there, to pick a bag of fresh oyster muhroom, alongside a load of larch boletes and slippery-jack (a pair of coniferous-associated Suillus species, which have slimy caps, that need peeling off before cooking, but when cooked well are really quite a favorite of mine, fried in garlic butter, and served russian style, with a squeeze of lemon; and found my first ever Hydnum specimens, quite peculiar fungi, that whilst shaped like the traditional 'toadstool' generally, the Hydnum genus has, instead of gills or pores, the underside, covered with spines, on which the basidia form, called hedgehog fungi in the vernacular, and the one found, Hydnum repandum, is regarded as a really good edible.
Bloody good meal was had with those, plus a few other finds, just taken back down to our tent, and fried up in butter with bacon, fried eggs, fried sausage, plus tinned baked beans, everything heated up on a little portable propane stove, little more than an upright-pointing blowtorch with a small pan stand on top really, easily portable with squat, compact gas canisters, but for a first meal of the day, the satisfaction coming back down to a cold one and a fry-up that I've spiced up with whatever tasty wild fungi nature has seen fit to provide that day, quite fantastic.
I swear, everything tasted better than usual, although a pre-breakfast hike up a mountain probably had something to do with it.
Another time, some really nice looking stands of hemlock (Conium, of Socrates infamy, not the water-hemlocks or the conifer of the same name, all rusty looking in age.
And something that really sticks in my mind, is this HUGE fucker of a thistle, a scotch thistle, most likely, with a thick primary stem inches thick and towering height, tall or taller than myself at the time, with four corners formed of fleshy ribs, that bore some truly vicious dagger-like spines.
And that sticks in my mouth...and my old man's. We'd been out somewhere in the countryside, and I'd spotted a blackthorn hedge, got him to bite into one of the sloes, tried it myself and fucking hell, the astringent effect is quite astonishingly powerful. Like sucking on a tarnished copper penny, if it were covered with superglue and dipped in battery acid.
Although the fruit are the same as used to make sloe gin, have been meaning to try making some for quite some time, buggering hell only knows how those things can be processed into anything fit for human consumption, let alone pleasure I do not know.
Should get myself some long pieces of the wood too when I next find it growing, as I need a new cane, and blackthorn wood is extremely hard and durable.
