Thursday, July 8, 2010

For those long summer days




Wine as nice as it sounds, is not one of my favorite things. I've often hear comments of the type: "It is impossible not to like wine", "What do you mean you don't like wine?" and some more.
Well, being grown up doesn't really make you like things! The only time I like wine is when I pour some expensive-ish wine over pork chops or chicken livers. Period.
I like glass of bubbly every now and then, but that's just about it.
However, visitors often bring me wine and sometimes I end up with quite few bottles on my hands before I manage to give them away.
Last Christmas, my husband's niece and her husband gave me one of those expensive-ish wines and by Zeus, I had to try it!
I tried it and didn't like it, so I decided to try my hand in making a cocktail with it.
Thing is, I had seen this cocktail being made on TV for what it seems centuries ago and the presenter said it is called "Philomena cocktail".
So, all you need is bottle of red wine, cold Fanta orange, glass, teaspoon and endless patience coupled with steady hands.
Pour 3/4 Fanta in the glass and take dry teaspoon which you'll keep at an angle in the glass,taking care the spoon not to touch the Fanta.
Get the bottle of wine and pour very slowly onto the teaspoon. It is very important to pour really really slow.
Unfortunately, since I was home alone, there was no one to take photos of the method, so there are only the end result pictures.
Well...enjoy your Philomenas responsibly :)

Wednesday, July 7, 2010

Somewhat different wedding





OK, as I mentioned before, while the eternal hell (which is also known as summer) is here, I won't be going anywhere near the cooker. It is not enough that inside the house is 36 Celsius, and to add cherry on the cake, there are the marches and the endless noise of the village feasts.
Now...there was interesting twist to summer (which I really,really dislike) when I got wedding invitation. You see, I have been living here on the little rock for almost 11 years and haven't been to a wedding here, so I didn't know if I'm looking forward to it.
It was my husband's niece's wedding and staying at home was not an option. Being summer, the only thing I was looking forward was the wedding to be in the evening and it really was!
The interesting twist was that the bride and the groom had decided to go for a beach wedding on the sand and explicitly demanded the guests to be in smart-casual clothes and flip flops or barefoot :)
It was really nice that the wedding place was at the north of the island and there was nice cool breeze all the time. Not so nice for my hair do, which had little locks at the ends when I left from home, and by the second hour was frizzy and messy, but nobody seemed to care. Everyone had the fun of their life!
The newlyweds arrived on water jet and started greeting the guests which were scattered around the beach. The beautiful sunset and lighting was picture perfect!
About the food there is nothing much to say. It is not like the Balkan weddings with 5 meal courses. All is finger food and the catering staff makes rounds every few minutes with full trays of nibbles.
However, the bride and groom had came with a nice idea of setting wine bar, cocktail bar and regular drinks bar, the cocktail bar being the most popular.
The guys were making mean mojito's sex on the beach and myriad of other nicely colored exotic cocktails.
There were fire jugglers and the bride and groom were releasing mini air balloons in the air as well as fire flowers in the water.
I'm sorry that I didn't try the wedding cake, as it was already 3am when we left and I was exhausted.
Well... I'm looking forward to the other 2 nieces getting married on the beach.