Masculinity: Handle With Care

Good evening, friends and neighbors!

In the process of… “researching” for the top 10 cocktails list, one of my friends from back home asked a very serious and pointed question:
“What, no Cosmos?”​

If I’m honest, I’ve never had a Cosmopolitan. Besides the fact I’m not a huge vodka or cranberry fan (outside of martinis and/or scones), I rarely like my drinks too sweet. Those are all good reasons not to get a cocktail. There was also one bad reason- that it’s a “chick drink.”

“Dude, go get one. Get good vodka in there, and report back”
“
Alright, but I bet I’ll get a funny look from the bartender.”
“If you do, take a picture. Just get the drink- it’s like cranberry candy.”

So I did. I walked into a new bar that I had just found, bellied-up to the bar, loosened my tie a bit, and asked the bartender for a Cosmopolitan.
The bartender- a woman- didn’t make a face, but she DID pause for a moment before saying “Okay, you want that in a stem or a bucket?”

“Um.. a stem? That’s how it’s supposed to be served, right?”
“Oh yeah- but some guys find stemware girly.”

I’d already been conditioned to think of certain cocktails as “chick drinks.” That was bad enough- but STEMWARE? Using the proper drinking vessel for a certain drink is “unmanly?”

Guys- if this is for real, we have some SERIOUS fragility problems.

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Finding Your “Why” Where You Are

Good evening, friends and neighbors! Happy New Year! I hope everyone is starting 2018 off well. I’ve been starting mine off with getting a bit more reading in- and now I’m starting to look up more regarding Kabbalah.

No, not that fashionable, Madonna, celebrity bullshit. The real deal- and I started off learning about it with a book about a group of rabbis sitting down with the Dalai Lama.

No, that’s not a joke.

Cover of The Jew In The Lotus by Rodger Kamenetz

“Ok, so 6 Rabbis and a poet walk into India…”

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Guys, We Need To Talk

Good evening, friends and neighbors.
This post is dedicated to the women who have saved my life- they’ll know who they are.

This blog post is… well, it’s going to be a little rough. I’m going to be talking about kitchen culture, of course- but in particular some of the big problems with it. Ones that we ourselves are causing and perpetuating- the abusive, macho, meathead culture that we have glorified, and how it hurts our female comrades and ourselves. We have seen icons fall, and powerful culinary empires crumble, simply because the man in charge decided he was going to be a “guy” rather than a man.

I promised myself a long time ago that I would never EVER discuss politics on this blog, and I am holding to that. Regardless of the political twists that other pundits have put on the topic, this state of affairs transcends political philosophies- it cannot be allowed to continue.

This blog post is aimed mostly at the guys in the audience, and especially those who are frowning or wincing after that first paragraph. If this is a little much for you, then carry on- hopefully the next topic will be a bit more lighthearted, maybe with some goofy pictures or foodporn.
Guys, I hope you stick around though- because fixing this is absolutely 100% on us- all of us- and I will tell you exactly why.

I’ll start with one time I was a coward.

Picture

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