Muscat Grapes Are Here!

My favorite table grapes are finally in stores. Yeah, yeah, they grow them in Chile or someplace and fly them here, but I don't care. They're sweeter and richer than regular grapes, with a honey-flower-citrus ping that I can't get enough of.

These are the same grapes they make Moscatel from, along with loads of other varieties, usually sweet. Asti sparkling wines from Italy are made from muscat grapes. I like 'em right off the stem. Check your supermarket.

A Fenny For Your Thoughts

I like booze. It's no secret. Love the stuff, and I've tried everything. When I go places I try to find exotic liquors, like the bottle of Suze (a gentian-and-vanilla flavored aperitif) I brought home from Paris, or the Xtabentun (Mayan honey-and-anise liquor) I enjoyed in Mexico.

Today I discovered a new one, from Goa in India. It's called Fenny, or Feni, and it's distilled from the cashew apple.


The cashew apple, as I also discovered today on Slog, is a false fruit that grows behind the true fruit (which bears the seed, or cashew nut as it's called) of the cashew tree.

I've never seen or heard of it before, and I'm quite certain it's never been sold in this God-forsaken state with its repressive licensing laws and state liquor stores. I don't understand why the State of Washington is in the retail business, selling me booze, and telling me what kinds I'm allowed to have and what days I can buy it on; or why the only place within a mile of where I'm sitting that can sell me ANYTHING stronger than beer or wine closes in FIVE MINUTES. Hmm, perhaps that's a rant for another day.

While poking around the web, though, looking for an online seller (whose deliveries would be illegal but unlikely to be traced or stopped) I did discover this Indian exporter, who praises his "Fantasy" brand Fenny with the words "it has been designed to manulise your string of ecstasy" and "you will find it hard to resist howling in to one now and then." Which is exactly what I like to hear.

"Howling into one" doesn't make any sense, but it's the best description of what happens to me and a bottle of 40-proof I've ever heard.

Tickets to Goa are out of my price range. If this was a perfect world, someone would tell me in the comments where I can order this stuff online. I won't hold my breath.

Not Grim Up North, Interlude: Fish and Chips

[Originally posted on http://www.fodors.com/forums/threadselect.jsp?fid=2&tid=35079360, answering many outstanding comments regarding fish and chips by other posters there.]

I know I will instantly lose all credibility here, but I'm pretty indifferent to mushy peas, and the best ones I've ever had were in, uh, Australia, piled on top of a pie, with mashed potatoes, at Harry's Cafe de Wheels in Wooloomooloo.

I had some peas with my fish and chips here, and was, well, a bit bored. I had whole peas, too, in the Tower Cafe in Blackpool, which were completely awful. I ate every single one.

The best fish and chips we ate, in order: Lobster Pot, Liverpool (takeaway, eaten leaning on traffic cones in a construction site); The Fish Pan, Scarborough (upstairs, fabulous view); Coral Island, Blackpool (greasy and delicious); Leo Burdock's Dublin (disappointing -- lots of bones in -- but admittedly we were at the one on O'Connell Street, not the original).

I rate haddock as my favorite. We can get really good fish and chips here in Seattle (and some pretty crappy stuff too), but I don't think anyone uses drippings. If they do, they'd do everything in their power to hide that fact from the Food Nazis.

York coming up next. Big change of pace!