Today's drink: Irish Temper

Today's ingredients: spiced rum, Irish cream liqueur, coffee, sugar, heavy cream

Today's vocabulary: sláinte!

Did you play Punch Bug growing up? Do you still? If you didn't, it's basically an excuse to physically assault--er, build character with your siblings and friends. It seemed more popular before Volkswagen resurrected and updated the Beetle since the original versions were increasingly rare, but the upshot is that you see a VW Bug in the wild, yell "Punch Bug [color]!", and punch this nearest person of affection in the arm with some degree of force. This was great for road trips, along with the cow herd game (each person takes a side, builds up their herd number by passing pastures on their respective side of the road, all cows die at rivers and cemeteries, restart count) and the license plate game (most states seen wins). With the renewed prevalence of the Beetle and the societal shift away from, ya know, physical violence, Punch Bug seems to have gone the way of the Le Car. The wife and I play a similar game, just with fake red hair. If we see that wholly unnatural magenta either streaking or plastering someone's mane, whoever sees it first will whisper/say/yell "fake red!" and punch the other in the arm.

One of my bucket-list items is to do a week-plus tour of Ireland on a Harley cruiser. I'd have to rent something since shipping mine over would be prohibitively expensive, but regardless, I want to see a city exactly twice: when the plane lands and when it takes off. Otherwise, I just want to wander the island, see some old castles, drink real Guinness in a hidden-away small-town pub, stay in a different place each night, visit a couple distilleries, and basically just go "be." I don't have any cultural connection to Ireland beyond whatever Heinz 57 Sauce of WASP ethnicities my father and my maternal grandfather contributed to my genes (the other quarter of me is Japanese). I don't have any fresh-off-the-boat Irish friends, though some of my friends can boast a full Irish heritage. Maybe it's a general romanticism of Ireland in American society, but whatever the reason, it's just something I want to do.

Irish Temper

I actually made this back when I made the Irish coffee since the ingredients are similar. I figured I already had the stuff to do it, so might as well knock out two cocktails at once. Plus, it's a good time of year for a warm dessert drink, and dontchaknow that the whole family get-together season can, ya know, become festive.

This was another random Internet find:

• 2oz Irish cream liqueur
• 1oz spiced rum
• 1Tsp sugar
• 4oz strong black coffee
• 2Tsp heavy cream
• dash cinnamon
• Lightly whip cream. Mix Irish cream liqueur, rum, and sugar. Add hot coffee. Float whipped cream and dust with cinnamon.

We've used all of this stuff before except the cinnamon, which you likely have lying around, so we brought back out some Bailey's Irish cream and some Carolina Coast spiced rum. Construction is pretty straightforward, so I won't belabor the point here. Sláinte!