Picture of the Day: Beautiful Anna

Anna has a stunning face that makes her the ultimate girl next door. We discovered her in Kiev on our World Tour.

Beautiful Anna

  

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Picture of the Day: Alexis in red and black

The beautiful Alexis starts to slip off her red top in a revealing pose.

Alexis in red and black

  

Drink of the Week: The Clover Leaf (The Clover Club Trilogy Concludes!)

The Clover Leaf. It’s just about Labor Day weekend and today we have one cocktail that I’ve really labored over. In fact, if you’ve been paying very close attention, you’ve been following us through two different versions of an old and, I think, under-appreciated pre-prohibition era drink named after a social club of rich guys from Philadelphia with, I gather, pretty decent taste in beverages.

In the way of nearly all trilogies, today’s drink brings us full circle. I started this series out by musing how a Gibson differed from a Martini only in terms of a garnish, switching out the usual lemon twist or olive in favor of a cocktail onion. The Clover Leaf  differs from the Clover Club only in that it includes an actual leaf as a garnish, but not — and I’m sure this is for very good reason — an actual Clover Leaf. This recipe, however, does contain other alterations in the recipe from prior weeks, but I’ll explain about that on the flip side.

The Clover Leaf

1 1/2-2 ounces gin
1/2-3/4 ounce fresh lemon or lime juice
1/4 ounce grenadine (or raspberry syrup…but never with lime juice!)
1 egg white
1 sprig of fresh mint

Once again, combine all the ingredients in a cocktail shaker and “dry shake” the drink without adding any ice to emulsify the egg white good and proper. Then, add plenty of ice and shake very vigorously. Then, of course, you strain the resulting beverage into a chilled cocktail glass. Add the fresh mint sprig. I’ll let you come up with your own toast this time.

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You might recall from a couple of weeks back that I found Robert Hess’s recipe from The Essential Cocktail Guide a bit much for my tart-sensitive taste buds, even with all that wonderfully frothy egg white. This week, however, I noticed that some recipes I was seeing online called for a full two ounces of gin instead of the 1.5 ounces I’ve been calling for. As the Clover Club is a relatively mild drink, with just one type of booze included in an entirely reasonable amounts, and as I had finally finished my enormous bottle of 94 proof Beefeater Gin and had switched to merely 86 proof Bombay Dry, it seemed to make sense to try the Clover Leaf with a tiny bit more gin.

What I found was that the slightly increased booze cut the tartness level just enough that using the full 3/4 ounce of lemon juice was now not only acceptable, but kind of delightful. In fact, while the vast majority of the Clover Clubs and Clover Leafs I’ve made using both grenadine and Torani raspberry syrup have also been delightful, the last one I made, using 3/4 ounce lemon juice and raspberry syrup, might well have been the best of them all.

A couple of additional notes on ingredients: I used Master of Mixes grenadine, which contains the oh-so-hated high fructose corn syrup but also has, we’re told, real cherry and (the key ingredient) pomegranate juice. I haven’t tried the other mass market brands like Rose’s, but I have a feeling that the more real pomegranate juice, the better and, as far as I can tell, they don’t have any actual juice at all. Feel free to spend a bit more on a more upscale grenadine or go crazy and make your own — it’s your delicious funeral. Also, a quick caveat emptor as I was just Googling around and found the Master of Mixes product for the criminally inflated price of $23.00 and above at some places online. I paid, I’m pretty sure, $3.99 or less or so at BevMo for mine.

Finally, it occurs to me that I haven’t really discussed the effect of the name-changing garnish in the Clover Leaf, that sprig of mint. I have to say that, even though I was using literally the freshest possible mint — no thanks to me, there’s some growing in the backyard of the Drink of the Week ‘Plex — it really didn’t alter the flavor of the beverage very much, give or take some nice minty fragrance. On the other hand, it sure did make the drink look pretty.

  

Breaking Bad 5.11 – “Confessions”

As happy as I am that Vince Gilligan has been given the opportunity to take “Breaking Bad” to its conclusion on his own terms, allowing him to end it now rather than a season or two down the road, each new episode of this final batch continues to further cement just what a tremendous, gaping hole is going to be left in my television viewing habits when the series is gone for good.

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I’m not trying to paraphrase the immortal Stiff Records slogan here—there are plenty of series beyond “Breaking Bad” that most certainly are worth a fuck—but no other show on television has ever…and I mean ever…grabbed me the collar the way this one does, making me so profoundly love and so deeply loathe its characters, often shifting between the two extremes within the same scene.

Read the rest of this entry »

  

Irritated? Tweet @EdgeShaveZone and win prizes

Edge-Shaving-Gel

As a man, what’s your biggest irritant? And even more specifically, what’s the biggest source of irritation in the city you reside? Edge Shave Gel took the time to figure both out.

Today marks the return of Edge Irritation Solutions, a campaign designed to relieve irritations for men one tweet at a time. First launched in 2010, the Edge Irritation Solutions campaign struck a chord with irritated Twitter users around the country by providing clever, real-time irritation relief to people venting their frustrations online.

Edge Shave Gel released the Edge Anti-Irritation Index, a study of geographical influences on irritation that uncovered the most irritating cities for guys in the United States. From high costs of pro sports tickets to lack of available single women, these cities provide men with constant sources of irritation:

1. Chicago – The Windy City may soon become the Whiney City; it came out on top for being the most irritating city for job seekers, with high unemployment and few available positions.

2. New York – The city that never sleeps may have lots of nightlife options, but New York’s extremely high rent brings it to the top of the irritation list.

3. Baltimore – Despite a high ranking in sports team success as home of football champions, a high crime rate makes this an irritating city for guys.

4. Philadelphia – A lack of fitness options combined with chilly winter weather pushes Philly into the top five.

5. Atlanta – The high price of tickets and poor team performance make this an irritating city for sports fans.

6. Los Angeles – With one of the highest male-to-female ratios of any U.S. city, L.A. is an irritating place for men looking for love.

7. Detroit – Guys in Detroit will have an irritating time planning date nights since this city lacks nightlife options.

8. Houston – Terrible traffic and a sprawling layout makes Houston an irritating city for residents on the move.

9. Washington D.C. – With some of the highest crime rates in the country and pro sports teams that seem to never make the playoffs, D.C. is a capital of irritation.

10. Boston – Extremely high rent and expensive pro sports ticket prices make Boston an irritating city for guys’ wallets.

In order to ease men’s frustrations, Edge Shave Gel, a brand that pioneered irritation relief with a collection of moisturizing and protecting shave gels, will offer prizes to irritated citizens one tweet at a time through @EdgeShaveZone.

Don’t see your city listed? Tweet @EdgeShaveZone and let Edge know what really gets under your skin.

For more information, visit Edge on Twitter @EdgeShaveZone or on Facebook at Facebook.com/EdgeShaveGel.