#ferdinand and isabella's punch

[sapores]

My Own Ferdinand-and-Isabella Punch Bowl

Next weekend is the Eurovision final, and we have friends coming over to watch with us. I spotted a drinking game official enough to have its own domain and twitter account (ie, not very official, but certainly interwebs savvy) - and that they recommended their rum punch.

...but I didn't much like their punch recipe.

So I looked around for alternatives, and ran into Ferdinand and Isabella's Punch. This looked a lot better to me, but still I wouldn't want to make it without a few tweaks here and there.

So I tweaked. And for some ingredients that I didn't have at home, I replaced, or I went with DIY.

I plan to go back and edit this post as I settle on some of the amounts, and possibly add more spices than currently planned to the falernum.

Velvet Falernum Batavian Falernum

Since I didn't have any falernum at home, and want to largely avoid purchasing extra booze at this point, I decided to make my own falernum.

And since many historic punches used Batavian Arrak, and while I don't have any white rum at home, I do have Arrak, I decided to build my falernum on that instead.

So, here comes the Batavian Falernum. Based largely on the DIY recipe from Serious Eats.

Ingredients:

1/3 cup raw almonds

30 cloves

2 sticks of cinnamon (added by me)

30 allspice berries (added by me)

1 inch ginger (added by me)

1 cup Batavian Arrack (changed by me)

8 limes

520 g Demerara sugar [actually used: palm sugar + white sugar] (changed by me)

130 g (~1/2 cup) water

Day 1:

Coarsely chop and toast the almonds in a dry (non-stick) pan over medium-high heat until fragrant but before they burn (approx. 5 minutes).

Place almonds, cinnamon and cloves in a tight-sealing jar, cover with arrack. Steep for 24h.

Day 2:

Add allspice berries. Steep for 24h.

Day 3:

Finely zest 8 limes, with as little pith as possible. Put limes in ziploc bag in fridge to juice them later for the syrup and even later for the punch.

Thinly slice ginger.

Add zest and ginger slices to infusion. Steep for 24h.

Day 4:

Juice 4 limes (from the fridge stash), strain into pot. I got 130 g juice from this. Add water (equal amount, so 130g) and sugar (quadruple that, so 520g, to make it 2:1 sugar to liquid by weight), and cook a 66 brix (rich) sugar syrup, until sugar is fully dissolved.

Let it cool, then strain infusion and combine infused arrak and syrup in 1:2 proportions by weight.

Shake/stir until fully combined, strain through coffee filter, and let it rest for 12h.

Ferdinand and Isabella's Batavian Punch

Ingredients

1 lemon

2/3 cups sugar

2-3 tbsp Imperial Earl Grey

1/2 bottle (375ml) Ron Zacapa 23

1/2 bottle (375ml) aged Malmsey Madeira (changed by me)

1/2 cup lemon juice (squeezed from reserved fruit)

1/2 cup lime juice (squeezed from reserved fruit)

1 tsp Angostura Bitters

1/2 cup Batavian Falernum (see above)

Extra additions chosen day of:

Not enough Madeira: swapped half for Lillet Blanc

1 tbsp rich gomme syrup

1/4 tsp 4:1 saline

1/2 tsp Fee Brothers Black Walnut Bitters

1/2 tsp Fee Brothers Molasses Bitters

1/2 tsp Angostura Orange Bitters

Day 1:

Peel or zest the lemon, avoid the pith. Combine with sugar, muddle slightly and let it rest to produce oleo saccharum. Put the zested lemon in the fridge in a plastic bag to squeeze later.

Fill baking tray or bundt pan partway with water, put in freezer to produce ice block for the punch bowl.

Day 2:

Steep 1.5 cups of boiling hot water with the tea leaves for 3 minutes. Strain and set aside to cool.

Squeeze lemon and lime from the fridge and measure out the required amounts. (if not enough, fill it up with the Meyer Lemon super juice in my fridge)

Combine rum, madeira, lemon juice, lime juice, and the oleo saccharum. Stir to combine, and then strain to remove lemon zest from the mix. Pour into punch bowl.

Add tea to punch bowl.

Add ice block to punch bowl.

Garnish with lemon and lime wheels studded with cloves.

Timing for this time around:

May 7: Day 1 of Falernum

May 8: Day 2 of Falernum

May 9: Day 3 of Falernum

May 10: Day 4 of Falernum

May 12: Day 1 of Punch.

May 13: Day of Eurovision show. Day 2 of Punch.

#cocktails #cocktail #rum #falernum #punch #ferdinand and isabella's punch #batavian arrak #madeira #lemon juice #lime juice #historic punch bowl #large batch

[the-scariest-librarian]

Amor Vincit Omnia

Things You Said When We Were Afraid.

This is for @mercurygray‘s 1000 follower celebration, and for the 2 year anniversary of The Darkening Sky! Congratulations, Merc! 

This ultimately ended up nothing like I had originally intended, but I hope it's okay nonetheless. I hope I did it justice.

There isn’t a science to it, when one will Remember. Some go their entire cycle without the memories of selves past, and some –her name is Molly this time around– live countless lifetimes at once. “An old soul,” her nana once called her, mistaking the imprint of millenia for solemnity uncommon in a girl of just eight.

Lewis Nixon remembers; she knows as soon as she sees him in the blazing Georgia sun and he sends her a cheeky wink. The last time they had seen each other was in the court of Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain, and before that in Londinium. For all that their numbers are comparatively few, the Reincarnated always seemed to find each other.

There are a surprising number in Easy Company. Eileen and Connie both give her a knowing nod when they’re introduced, as do Shifty and Joe Toye. The looks Marjorie shares with her sometimes make her think that the other woman’s trigger was recent, but she can be counted among the number of those who remember at least something. The others just think that their quips are some odd sort of humor.

“Why would I play with you when you still owe me six denarii?” Molly asks blandly as she idly flips through a dog-eared copy of ancient poetry.

Billie wags a finger at her playfully from the poker game occurring several seats down.

“Don’t give me that; you know damn well I paid you back in the ninth century.”

Molly doesn’t even look up from her book.

“You forgot almost eight hundred years of interest.”

For all that she grew up with the memories of numerous lifetimes, none of it prepares her for the punch to the gut that is seeing the man who spent millenia at her side. He was Glaucus and she was Agape. When she was Iðunn, he was Eadric. No matter what tore them apart, be it war, disaster, or old age, they always found each other again.

In Troy, when Greek ships darkened their shores, he spoke to her the words that never failed to soothe her. In Pompeii, when ash and pumice fell from the sky and the ground shook with Vulcan’s terrifying might, he held her to his chest –she was Hadriana then, Molly remembers– and spoke them again.

Again, before every raid. Again, when he left to explore the New World. Again, when he donned the Patriot’s blue, and later the Union’s.

“I will always return to you.”

And so he has, even if she can see in his eyes that he does not know her as she knows him.

She doesn’t push; it wouldn’t change anything even if she did. Still, if he notices that she keeps an eye on him more than most, he doesn’t give any indication.

When he’s stabbed by a jumpy comrade, Molly feels as if the rest of her life has already been stolen from her. Something of it must show on her face as she watches him –his name is Floyd this time around– being carted away, because he calls to her as he passes, voice tight with pain.

“Aww, don’t worry Mahoney; I’ll be back before you even have time to miss my handsome face.”

When artillery around them shatters trees and bodies alike, he pries her anxious hand from his jacket and makes to leave the meager protection of their shallow foxhole to answer a nearby call for help.

“Stay down, Molly, I’ll come right back. Promise.”

When the war is over and this goodbye could very well mean forever, she gets just a moment’s hesitation and a muttered “See ya around, Moll.”

She can't remember a single lifetime where it ever took them this long to return to each other, both in body and soul. They’d always been lucky before, but it seemed their luck had finally run out and this would become their first life apart. It’s happened to others.

She'd rather live with his ghost than stay with this shadow who doesn't understand why earthquakes terrify her, or why she sometimes dreams of being thrown to her death from an ancient city's walls. She could have done it, once, she thinks, but she's used up a lifetime of strength in these last few bloody years.

So, Molly lets him go.

She watches him until his jeep turns the corner and then banishes the thought of him from her mind. It works for a time, at least until she returns to her remaining comrades and Joan meets her gaze with sad, knowing eyes.

When she’s back stateside for the first time in years, Molly immediately enrolls in UC Berkeley’s anthropology program and leaves it as Dr. Mahoney. Four years of graduate school work well enough to keep her busy, but although she keeps regular correspondence with several members of Easy, there is still a kind of hollowness inside of her that finally makes her desperate enough to upend her life once again.

She moves to Italy in 1951 to assist in the restarted excavation of Pompeii. She’s seen the pictures; she knows what’s there. Still, it takes her several weeks to muster the will to seek it. She’s not afraid that it will hurt; she knows it will. It’s the fear that seeing it will make her regret ever letting him leave at all.

Despite the Allied bombs that damaged chunks of the city, ancient feet guide her path as if she had never left, stepping easily over crooked paving stones and wheel ruts in the street. She doesn’t work in this section of the city –doesn’t know if she could bear it if she had to– but she remembers every home and every storefront. The graffiti on the walls she passes has faded with time, but she was there when her countrymen scratched their thoughts into plaster, and she is still here as it is rediscovered.

At last, but also much too soon, Molly stops in front of a small villa, more familiar than the rest. It’s in poor shape; she knows by sight alone that the building is unstable enough to be dangerous, but she cannot find it in her to turn back. She’s already come all this way.

With a deep breath, she steps into the shade.

The inside is just as she remembers, and yet not at all. The roof is gone, although some of the second floor walls remain. The paint that decorates the walls is faded and the plaster is missing in chunks, but it is still their home, Hadriana’s and Marcus’.

Careful steps take her around a crumbling corner, and there, frozen in plaster, they sit. She is curled in his lap, head tucked beneath his chin. The plaster is rough, but she can just make out a fold of fabric here, the curve of his nose there. It’s the closest she’s been to him in both six years and two millenia at once, even if all that remains is just an imprint of his life left in stone and ash.

It steals the breath from her lungs, to see the only thing that proves that her memories are not just elaborate dreams. A gravestone is one thing, and any tintypes that once existed are lost to descendants she doesn’t know in this life, but this is real. They existed once, and here they remain.

Molly steps gently closer and a patch of purple catches her eye, stopping her short.

She stares in surprise at the flower, identical to the one clutched in her own hand but wilted a little from the heat of the day, that lies upon the tragic figures. In the weeks it took her to build up the courage to visit her ancient home, she hadn’t seen a single blossom left in remembrance for any of Pompeii’s dead. The flower there in her own lap –or at least it belonged to her two thousand years before– brings tears to her eyes. Someone has remembered them.

She kisses the petals of the crocus in her hand and places it gently beside the first. She thinks the words, but cannot find it in herself to say them out loud.

The sudden crunch of dirt behind her startles her, tells her that she is no longer alone. She straightens; guilty shoulders hitch up to her ears in anticipation of a scolding from one of the site supervisors for being in such an unstable building. She knows better.

The voice that comes from behind her doesn’t belong to an aging archaeologist at all, but rather someone she hadn’t dared hope to see again.

“Heya, Moll."

I told you I’d always return to you, didn’t I?

#So I completely lost track of time and cranked this out last night #I hope you like it! #The darkening sky #Molly Mahoney #Floyd Talbert #Band of Brothers #OC #Fanfiction #Mercurygray #this is my first published fanfic on here yikes #tds birthday bash

[latristereina]

TBH, you are not the only one who is not rooting for HVII and EOY by this point in series. Cause really H7 is made dumb and weak af and also by now batty hysterical at times and EOY for the sake of feminism (?!) was made into an unpleasant bitch who is bitchy pretty much to everybody around her, yet still she is quite boring. So any other couple in this series where the guy is not such a wet blanket and the girl is not so obnoxious will do for me.

I am not really watching TWP but while making gifs, I am forced to see many scenes and you are right. Henry VII is a total moron and EoY is even worse because she is not only an idiot but a bitch on top of that. I can not stand this bitchy look on her face. It makes you want to punch her really bad. Besides, to me Jodie and Jacob have no chemistry, so it is hard to really watch them as a couple, and believe they are in love, even while having sex, with EoY riding Henry. Smh. As much as I don’t really care about historical pairing, I hate EoY and HVII in this series. I prefer sweet Cathy Gordon and Richard (Perkin). Seriously, Frost made me want Richard to kill HVII and take the throne with Catherine Gordon as his queen…And one thing that gets me, the shippers cry about Cathy Gordon as if she was totally made up, while she was real and we have evidence that Henry VII gave her gifts of expensive clothes, and at least admired her beauty. The show did not depict them having sex, so what’s the matter? Like I have said, I would not bet a penny on any medieval king’s fidelity. Ferdinand in Isabel TVE murdered his young son-in-law, which did not really happen, he was partly responsible for Isabella’s miscarriage, which was not true at all, he slept with her lady-in-waiting, which was not proven, because the first texts to mention it, and not even as an affair, come from 1526. Do you see me moaning? Shame they are crying about supposed infidelity more than the fact HVII actually raped EoY in this show, which was a true slander on PG and Frost’s part and is truly damaging Henry VII’s reputation.

#askbox #the white princess #henry vii #elizabeth of york

[clustertalia-blog]

Ivan Braginsky. Xiao Mei Lin. Lai-Ying Wong. Alfred F. Jones. You are all called to assembled in the main lobby. Unlike the other initiations, this felt a bit more.. different. You all meet in the main lobby where the head mod, Francisco, awaits you all. He looks professional for once, the only unruly thing would be his hair, that’s it. With a raise of a hand, a group of well dressed men appear, all holding guns. “Follow me, will you?” And with that he takes the lead, the rest of you being forced to follow with guns aimed at your heads.

It’s Mod Francisco, of course nothing will be easy. You are guided to the to a large, very secure door, it’s mere presences intimidates you. Francisco attempts to open the door with a flick of his hand, only for the security check to reject him. Another flick, another rejection. 

“Give me a moment,” he mutters angrily as he steps closer to the small screen next to the door and messes with it. A few minutes later and call to Isabella (who is still out god knows where with Ferdinand), he pushes Isabella’s emergency code and the door opens slowly. It would be hilarious if not for how obviously irritated Francisco look.

Mei and Leon knew what was coming after all.

Immediately the room is filled with multiple lab techs, with Francisco being the last one to enter and letting the doors close behind him.

Francisco opens up four pod-like chambers filled with lukewarm water, and punches a bit of information into the screens on the outside. While he does this, the four of you are asked to strip down to your undergarments and then have a small vile of blood taken from each of you. Once this has been accomplished, the people in lab coats lead each of you to a pod and begin hooking you up to what could only be compared to the monitoring cables one would see in a hospital.

You are each asked to lay on your back inside with pod with your faces above the water, and told to just breathe and meditate as best you can. Isolation can sometimes cause people to panic.  

The doors to the pods are closed and you’re left in complete darkness, wading in the pool of water. The only sounds you are able to hear are the sounds of your own breath and heartbeat. You lay in the chamber for five, fifteen, thirty minutes until your heartbeat has slowed significantly. Then, without warning, a jolt of electricity comes through one of the wires connecting you, and you jerk from the shock. The pain lasts only for a moment and then the pod is opened and you are taken out, disconnected from the wires and then are given bathrobes to cover yourselves.

Without warning, Alfred is grabbed by Francisco in a frontlock and then slammed down to the ground. All of you either recoil or fall in pain from the suplex.

“You all share pain now. The pain will be split among you all, just like what happened right now.” A nurse quickly rushes to Alfred’s aid.

“This is Level I.” He tells the four of you, “In the levels that follow you will begin to share emotions, be able to communicate telepathically, share memories, and even take over each other bodies. The closer the four of you become, the quicker you will be able to access these abilities. But until then, pain is your bond.”

And with that he dismisses all of you, leaving the room first without bothering to check if you all were alright.

With that, the four of you are sent back to the living quarters, are given free reign for the rest of the day; your connection has now officially been initiated.

#connection initiated #cluster 03