This week I decided to clean out the liquor cabinet. Back when we were first married (and recently out of college), we used to make cocktails like Whiskey Sours and Rum & Coke. But I think the only time I've been up into that cabinet in the last 15 years was when Courtney and I poured a little Amaretto into our Christmas eggnog. Rather than just dumping it all down the drain, I thought I'd be creative and use some of it in cooking. I found a recipe for Bourbon Chocolate Chip muffins. The muffins turned out OK (anything with chocolate is always good), but not worth hauling the bottle to Colorado.
I also found an old bottle of wine in the back of the cabinet. When Brian was born, my sister bought him a bottle of 1973 Chateau Lafete Rothschild red table wine. Obviously he couldn't drink it as a baby, so over the years, we hauled it from house to house waiting for a special occasion to drink it. Most of the time, when something momentous popped up (like graduation from college), he wasn't in town. And these days you can't even take a bottle of water on an airplane let alone a bottle of wine, so I could never take it to him. This time, when we pulled it out of the cabinet, Bruce said it wouldn't survive another move, because the cork was shot (it was actually so loose and dried out that it slid down into the bottle). Bruce poured himself a glass and said the wine tasted like fermented grape juice, because all the alcohol had evaporated (I thought it tasted like regular old wine, but I'm not a wine drinker). So we made a good-bye toast to St Louis with Brian's 48-year old bottle of wine. Thanks, Janet.
