March 2022

The Best of the Best

Food and Drink / By

“The editors of Robb Report scour the globe (and the Internet) for the best of the best and only endorse products we love—and think you’ll love, too.” Got any job openings!?

This Robb Report article explores the best 21 tequilas that they’ve found. We’ve only tried a few but we love Clase Azul. Other choices range in price from $37 to $7500.

We’re definitely going to look for Santo Fino Blanco.

“A handshake agreement between rock god and spirits pioneer, Sammy Hagar, and an Ed Hardy shirt in human form, Guy Fieri, begat this tequila. Go ahead and roll your eyes if you must. Or you could check that bias, head to Flavortown and enjoy Santo Fino Blanco for what it is — old-world style tequila designed for session drinking.” Session drinking sounds good!

Cheers!

  • Jet Cannon

Walk This Way

Fitness / By

We’ve talked about the benefits of walking so let’s take some of the fun out of it by adding ankle weights. Adding a little weight can help further tone those calves, quads, hamstrings and…… glutes! The weights can also be used during exercising. Healthline.com has a solid article explaining the pros, the how-to’s, and risks (choking hazard is not one of them.)

No major endorphin Buzz here but we always feel better after putting in those steps! Forward, march!

  • Jet Cannon
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Natural Wine in a nutshell

Food and Drink / By

Have you been wondering if “natural” wine might be the thing for you?  We haven’t either.  Nonetheless, in the pursuit of greater knowledge, we did a little reading.  The short-story version is that natural wine is not made using additives that regular wine makers use.  (The exception is sometimes the use of sulfites to help preserve the wine.)  In regular wine, additives are used to keep what goes into the bottle the same as what we end up drinking.The upshot is that natural wine won’t likely age well because wild yeasts and microbes may come alive in the bottle and give the wine a kombucha-like tang or even a barnyard-y flavor.  

Traditional wine lovers generally prefer to let a good wine age and mellow which the additives allow them to do without changing the other characteristics.  And traditional wine can also be organic meaning the grapes weren’t subjected to pesticides.

So add natural wine to your grape-based options.  More choices is better. 

  • Jet Cannon
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Fire Up those Guns

Fitness / By

Gyms are opening. Spring is here. Time to tone up those arms and especially those biceps.

Well + Good says there are alternative exercises to bicep curls that aren’t as isolating and may reduce the risk of injury. Those exercises include chin-ups, single-arm dumbbell rows, reverse-grip bent-over row, reverse-grip cable pull down, and seated cable rows. You’ll need a decently equipped gym but these alternatives should show good results. Read the article here.

  • Jet Cannon
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Healthy Kickstart

Caffeine, Fitness, Food and Drink / By

Coffee and breakfast are a good way to start the day. So combine the two with a coffee smoothie. Here’s some ingredients to consider:

  • Coffee
  • Almond Milk
  • Banana
  • Walnuts or almond butter
  • Vanilla Protein Powder
  • Ice
  • If no one is looking, add chocolate

 

Fire up the blender and away we go!

 

  • Jet Cannon
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More Smoke

Music / By

A savvy Buzzed Boomer pointed us to a 1989 Smoke on the Water tribute/fundraiser featuring some classic rock stars including Brian May, Alex Lifeson, Tommy Iommi, Chris Squire, Ian Gillan, Bruce Dickinson, Paul Rogers, Keith Emerson, Geoff Downes, and Roger Taylor. Not a bad lineup. Enjoy.

  • Jet Cannon
Photo: Rockandrollgarage.com

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Countdown to Cocktails

Food and Drink / By

March 24th is National Cocktail Day. Here’s what nationaldaycalendar.com has to say about that.

“Celebrate all your favorite cocktails on March 24th. National Cocktail Day ushers in all the best ways to savor a beverage at the end of a long workday. Whether you like a fruity drink, blended or on the rocks, this day is for you. Mocktail, virgin, or the real thing, celebrate the lemon, lime, bitters, liquors, and liqueurs that make your favorite beverages the best in your bartender book.”

“It’s probably no surprise that nearly every month on the calendar celebrates a cocktail. The only exception is April, and since it’s National Alcohol Awareness Month, it makes sense to take that month off.”

  • Jet Cannon
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University of Rock

Music / By

We like the Beatles.  Great band.  Very influential and all that.  And for those who would like to dig a little deeper, there is now a Masters degree program at the University of Liverpool.  

“The Beatles: Music Industry and Heritage.  This programme aims to reframe and extend contemporary discourse about the Beatles beyond the historical and musicological into a broader and more robust 21st-century context.”

So there you go.  International students in this one year course will need to pony up over 20,000 pounds for tuition. “You Never Give Me Your Money.” – Abbey Road

Crack those books.  Study hall.  All-nighters.  Midterms.  Finals.

– Jet Cannon

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Exercise Versus Martini. Hmmmm

Fitness / By

As Margaret Talbot writes in The New Yorker, what we think about exercise today as being a good thing wasn’t always so.  Here is an excerpt.

“For much of the twentieth century, as the journalist Danielle Friedman writes in her canny and informative new book, “Let’s Get Physical: How Women Discovered Exercise an Reshaped the World” exercise has not always been recognized as an unassailable good.  

Friedman describes a 1956 radio interview in which Mike Wallace, later of “60 Minutes” fame, expresses incredulity at the vision set forth by the pioneering fitness advocate Bonnie Prudden. “You think there should be a formal exercise, a kind of ‘joy through strength’ period for husband, wife, and family when the father gets home from work at six-thirty at night, before the Martinis?” he marvels. “You think we should have a routine, all of us?””

  • Jet Cannon
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Mean Green St. Patrick’s Day Smoothie

Food and Drink / By

Don’t feel like green beer?  Not a fan of Black and Tans?  Mohito not your thing? Want to get a shot of your vegetables while celebrating the day?  Here’s some ideas for a free-for-all, DIY hard mogreen smoothie.  Select ingredients to suit your taste and your pantry.  You will need some baby spinach to keep it healthy and green.  But consider adding some of these to your blender.  Vanilla protein powder, lemon and lime juice, almond milk, ginger, kiwi, pineapple, mint, plus vodka, rum or gin.  And ice.  Yes, make it your own!

– Jet Cannon 

Black and Tan prep

Food and Drink / By

 

Get your ingredients and start practicing to impress your friends with a proper Black and Tan pour on St. Patrick’s Day.  Here’s a helpful how-to video…. and it’s especially good if you don’t want to bend a spoon or if you don’t have the little tool used to keep the two beers separated.

BTW, be careful ordering a Black and Tan in a pub in Ireland.  They may toss you out!

 

Cheers!

– Jet Cannon

Photo:  Reddit.com

 

Smoke on the Water

Music / By

We’ve never been too adept at decifering symbolic rock lyrics, other than that they often refer to sex.  So it was nice when Deep Purple recorded Smoke on the Water and, as Parade magazine reports, the monster hit could not have been more literal. “Some stupid with a flare gun” burned the casino in Montreux, Switzerland near where Deep Purple was finishing up their Machine Head album, “to the ground”.  Guitarist Richie Blackmore said he based his iconic riff on Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony.  Classic.

– Jet Cannon