The Fairy Queen would live
In an apartment of books and spices
(With a kind and patient landlord down the hall).
It's been written here before: the FQ is not a fixer, really. (Phrodaux: not entirely true, FQ on an early date showed potential mate her pipe wrench and told the tale of the evil P-trap, she has done plumbing, but as all wise and knowing people do, deny the fact when others are willing to deal with that oh so evil task, f-plumbing) Though she did put the coffee press back together recently, and was very pleased with herself. And Phrodaux is not just a fixer, he's a maker. In fact, in PPL (Pre-Phrodaux Life), it would never have occurred to the FQ that regular people who live in regular houses and have actual jobs would make a whole number of things. Such as, you ask? Well...
* Furniture
* Giant rebar flowers
And it certainly would not have occurred to her to make bitters from scratch, because really, who would do that? And what are they, anyway? It's just a little bottle that gets lost in the door compartment of the fridge, right? And they're all the same anyway so what is the big old deal?
Wrong and wrong and wrong again. I officially apologize to Camera Guy S, who once asked if we had Peychaud's bitters for the drink he was going to make and I said, "We have some kind of bitters, how can it possibly matter?"
Apparently there is a whole world of bitters, maybe a universe or at least a galaxy or two. Now that we have taken one tiny step in that direction, it seems that we are hooked. This is a journey, pumpkin heads, so get a drink (maybe a cocktail...which must have BITTERS) and relax.
It all started with the Professors, who gifted us with this at Christmas:
We headed off with our fragrant purchases, looking for the next store. No, not a store, a house. An old, creepy house with nasty aging hippie patchouli stink wafting out of it. So much worse inside: crystals and dream catchers and posters for drum circles and covens and all manner of stupid quasi pagan sh#t (Phrodaux here: don't forget the magic knives). The FQ knows, she ran with those people for a time. Camped with them, actually, out in the rainy woods, where there was nothing to eat except oatmeal for breakfast and millet all other times except at the erotic feast where there were strawberries and chocolate but you had to have someone feed them to you and they were too stoned and I was starving and cold and really, really hungry. But that is another story.
ANYWAY. Dippy black velvet-clad girl on a sagging fainting couch sees us and says, "Did you need me?" To which FQ gets to reply, sternly, "No, we need gentian root." Which you buy in a tiny ziploc for something like $1.25.
But we still need quassia and dried black walnut leaf. Phrodaux finds, while we Portland-out at the food cart/wine store combo, another herb store. We go with much trepidation: please, no more patchouli, no runes, no divination. We are happily surprised, though. This place is bright and clean and not stinky. My only complaint is that the black walnut leaf is filed under B for black, not W for walnut, black. Quassia, by the way, is tree bark. (Phrodaux: not even tree bark, but just ground up wood, granted, really really bitter wood chips, yes I tasted them, why do you ask?)
Good gravy, this is a long post. Are you even reading anymore? Let's fast forward to bitters assembly:
What is all that stuff? Oh, I forget. High proof vodka for one recipe, high proof rye for the other. Piles of dry citrus rind Phrodaux had been hoarding for weeks. That tree bark thing. It's a lot of stuff. But once you have all the stuff, it's easy - you pour it all into a jar, leave it on the counter, and shake it once/day for two weeks. Voila! All ready to take to your lovely friends on your annual beach weekend exactly 2 weeks from now! Right?
Hmm. This, lovelies, is when we remind you to read the entire recipe first.
While we were enjoying beach weekend, the bitters were in phase 2.
OK, granted, it doesn't look like much, given the hunting and gathering and pagan-suffering and shaking and straining. But, oh, bunnies, if only we could convey the scent of this stuff. The orange bitters smells like every kind of citrus, back when you could only get oranges in winter and MAYBE one kind of super seedy tangerine and when the FQ's dad brought home a box of Texas ruby red grapefruits from a kind trucker customer, there was much rejoicing.
And the aromatic bitters, which is something like (but of course much better than) the Angostora bitters we saw for $15.95 per tiny bottle, smells like every lovely thing. Like Christmas, and a kindly great grandma's spice cupboard, and nice things baking in the coffee shop/bookstore you always meant to open.
Seriously, this stuff is EVOCATIVE. They are bitters, but the process of making them has been pretty sweet. (Sorry, didn't that joke have to be made?) At any rate, we are now stocked up with two kinds of bitters, but plotting the next batch. Rhubarb, maybe, or wild carrot. Who knows? Our cocktails and our spice cabinet will never be the same. (Phrodaux: they have been giving us blood oranges at work lately, that he has been squirreling away, like a squirrel does with nuts, but with blood oranges. Kinda feel like a vampire without the scurvy.)
