Things are better with kalamansi power

My mother made my father pick kalamansi from their tree last week. The kalamansi, also known as the calamondin, is an awesome little citrus plant that is well-used in the Philippines for an assortment of home and health care activities. It’s used in cooking, skin care and also used as a remedy for a sore throat and cold, hence why my father was plopping several of these little guys in a small Office Depot bag for me on Superbowl Sunday.

Since Hao has unfortunately caught a bit of my cold, I took a big handful of kalamansi and mixed it with hot water and a wee bit of sugar to make a drink for him. It was something similar that my mother made for me once when I was sick in the Philippines on a trip we took back in ‘04. I think it really helped me out back then, and Hao doesn’t seem to be as sick as I was days ago–thank goodness.

Granted, Hao and I have different immune systems, and it could be something totally different, but I think kalamansi helped a good deal with its tart punch of vitamin C.

So give it a go the next time you have the sniffles. Tell my ma you’re sick, and she’ll go get my pop to pluck some kalamansi for you. Just don’t make the mistake of just popping one in your mouth like this guy on YouTube.   If you want to taste the flavour of the kalamansi, but don’t want to be sick to try it out, the Burnt Lumpia blog has an awesome pictorial entry on making a Kalamansi Granita.  Go make some, and I’ll try it out and tell you how you did.

Casey’s Concoction and Other Fun with Beer

My friend Casey in North Carolina would like me to share this with you all:

Here is one beer tip I like to share with fellow aficionados: put a shot of espresso in a glass of stout. It should be a pretty sweet and chocolaty stout to balance out the bitterness of the espresso. I really like Lost Coast Brewery’s 8-Ball stout. Oh, and of course the espresso should be very good and relatively fresh. I dash from the best coffee shop in town (which is fortunately only a block away) back to my work just to enjoy this delicacy.

Do you have any other beer concoctions you’d like to mention? Most of us are familiar with the Irish Car Bomb, the Black & Tan and the Snake Bite. I’m rather fond of making shandies, though sometimes I wind up with half a bottle of beer that I don’t feel like downing–terrible, I know. The lemonade I buy is rather tart, so really I use the beer to cut the lemonade with. My favourite beer to use in a shandy are Czech pilsners or German/Belgian-type whites, and I’ve also used Sprite or ginger ale instead of lemonade.

The Wikipedia article on the shandy led me to this article from The Prague Post: Magical blends. I’m including the list of mixes in its side bar below: The “bee sting” looks like something I might like:

• Beer bloody mary: beer with tomato juice, Tabasco and Worcestershire (optional: vodka, raw egg)
• Bee sting: dark beer and orange juice
• Black velvet: stout, such as Guinness, cut 50-50 with Champagne
• Boilermaker (or depth charge): a shot glass of whiskey dropped into a glass of beer
• Broadway (or diesel): beer and cola
• Liverpool kiss: dark beer with cassis
• Magické oko: a shot of zelená liqueur dropped into a glass of beer
• Radler (or panaché): beer with lemonade or lemon soda, usually around 2:1
• Red eye: a shot of tomato juice added to beer (also known as a red rooster)
• Shandygaff (or shandy): beer with ginger beer, ginger ale or lemonade
• Skip and go naked: beer with lemon juice, gin and often whatever else is on hand
• Snakebite: beer cut with cider, 50-50
• Terminator: Long Island iced tea, beer and Kahlua

The “bee sting” looks like something I might like, but beer and cola just seems unholy, and I don’t know if I’d try mixing tomato juice with any perfectly good beer. If you do, though, maybe you’ll let me grab a sip out of your glass to see how I like it.

Cheers.