MetaBlog: Elba grease recipe

Dear Reader:

The new blog still has a number of unfinished elements; key words and some photos from blogspot are still making their way over here (given all the boxes we received, I’m surprised they’re not all here).  You can always go back to errorstatistics.blogspot.com to look something up.

I will continue with the philo of statistics agenda, but intersperse with lighter topics that arise.  Now that there are more than a few posts, I think we must group those on philo of stat each month so that they are by themselves.  I spoze “PhilStock” should be its own page.  (Of course what everyone is talking about is the Facebook IPO and whether it will do as well or badly as a bunch of other related IPOs: Zynga, Groupon, Linked-In, Renren.  I never use Facebook, so I haven’t a clue (comment if you have thoughts). )

I finally convinced the Bloglords at Motpress.com to permit me to meta-blog with my old cherished machine (you will detect it is a “metablog” by my using this pic), and also to use it to meta-meta blog (which you will discern by my using a zany distortion of this pic).  [use it for msc comments.]  I’m surprised there are rules about that, given especially that the type gets converted to match their modern font. Anyway, I’ve always been told I like to break rules.

My blog-reps from Elba, J. (Sailor) M, and D. (Drill) M, are still visiting here for a couple of more days, so hopefully everything will be working swimmingly by the time they leave.  So enough about the blog, now about last night:

Sailor and Drill suggested we go in search of a bar that would make some, what else? Elbar Grease!  (No bets this time.) There is an expression used (I don’t know if it’s only in the south) that always surprises and irks me.  Instead of just saying no to a question like, “Do you sell X?”, or “Can you make a Y?”, the answer starts out positively, and then disappoints: “We sure…don’t!” (we ‘shaw’ -longish pause-…don’t!)  My companions had the same let-down, irked feeling that I get when they were told

“We sure….don’t”

a split second after asking whether they could make, or try to make, a drink called “Elbar Grease” (with such and such ingredients). I always used to think it was kind of a deliberate tease: at a hardware-type store: “Do you sell vacuum bags?” First a big grin: “We sure”….getting your hopes up, only to dash them (“don’t”)—said with great certitude—, but I hadn’t thought about it in years until the bartender said it to Sailor and Drill.  (I guess it’s like that fad of adding “not” to the end of things.)  By the time we tried asking at a second watering hole, I think we were laughing too hard to hear the answer.  Sailor seemed to assume it would be no problem, as if this is moon-shine territory or some such thing.

Everyone has their own recipe for the Grease drink, the tough part is preparing, steeping and aging the lemon and liquor for as much as a month—much too labor intensive for me.  I think a week or even less actually suffices, especially if you sneak in store bought lemon liqueur.

To make something like ? a quart Elbar Grease:

• 12-16 large lemons pared
• 3 cups of Jack Daniels (most people use vodka)
• 1 cup lemon liqueur
• ~6-10 sacs of Splenda
• Steep peel in a screw-top jar with 2 cups Jack Daniels for some period* after which you remove peel and add remaining JD and Splenda
• Water-ice, however much seems needed
• A couple of lemons when served

*A week, some say, is the minimum for proper aging of lemon peels, so upon arrival, never mind attending to blog emergencies, Sailor** began the steeping with lemons from Kroger, so that before they depart they can have one solid shot of Elba Grease!  Here’s the jar from a couple of days ago; it’s darker now:

I don’t recommend trying this at home, as I am likely to have the measurements wrong.

**Sailor knows a friend of a friend of a friend of Schettino, back in Italy.  She was saying that at some point divers may try to grab sunken treasures left on the Concordia, from stores and whatnot—but I would have thought it would all go to the passengers and maybe the cruise line.