drinking: hot toddies

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Toddies are just the thing when you’re under the weather. So say I. This is such a flexible beverage, you can use brandy, whiskey, scotch, bourbon… (or, I mean, you can use anything you want), any kind of tea or just hot water, any herbs or spices you want to toss in…a hot liquored up infusion of any sort I would say falls under this toddy umbrella. Toddy is such a cute word.

While it is flexible, mine generally tend to be something like this:

1-1.5 oz bourbon (often like the slightly sweeter bourbon over whiskey for this application, here Buffalo Trace)

1/4 lemon, juice of

cloves, allspice berries, cinnamon stick

1 Tbs honey

tea (lemon, chamomile, or something fruity, or whatever, here I’ve used Teavana’s Youthberry, a sweet white tea)

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Match Convivio mug, spoon, and Libeco Grainhall napkin on loan from Didriks.

Elaborate beverages cheer me up. Don’t they you? Get someone else to make one for you and it’s even better.

It just got distinctly colder here in Cambridge, so a toddy here and there is all the more welcome. They’re easy drinking, though, so they can sneak up on you…

worth it: wet n wild balmstain

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Imagine my astonishment when I tried this $3 lip crayon (a meet-the-shipping-minimum gamble) and absolutely loved it. Slick, gel texture, uniform pigmentation but not so opaque as to be any kind of trouble, any kind of fuss, nice gloss level (not too high), moisturizing (not amazing but it’s not a farce to call it a balm, as with some we could mention), no strange smell…really kind of surprisingly great, and especially great for $3. This color, officially the Wet n Wild MegaSlicks Balm Stain Moisturizing Lip Color in Red-Dy or Not, is lovely, too. A warm rosy red that comes up a little more terracotta on me than it seems in the stick.

I’m often throwing on whatever lip thing in the morning and investigating later on, how it’s going, and this one was impressively present, still, a few hours in. I kind of made a face in the mirror, like, what are you still doing here?! It’s not like it doesn’t wipe off on things like your coffee cup, it does, there’s just somehow still some left on your lips for a good long while. I think it might actually stain a little! [Research not yet conclusive] Like no lip stain ever seems to be able to do.* And the cap clicks on pretty well! And hasn’t fallen off on me. YMMV but this ticked a lot of boxes for me.

*Work on this technology, industry, this is a gold mine.

Upshot: there are much worse things you could do with $3. On top of which they’re bound to go on sale sometime soon in a pharmacy near you. I may try some of the other colors.