Lusciousity

Lushes, summer is ‘icumen in, and we all know what that means… it’s time to start drinking summer drinks. As you may remember from the early days of Lusciousity, one of our first featured drinks was the Chelada or Michelada. The savory chelada (beer mixed with fresh lime juice and served in a salt-rimmed glass) is a perfect summer sip, or swill, depending on the occasion. Diego and Frida introduced it to us during a soiree last year, and I have kept good acquaintance.

Recently, I started noticing a particular billboard on US 1 as I drive into south Miami, one that advertises a new beer from Miller called Chill. The website describes it as “a chelada-style light beer brewed with a hint of lime and salt,” and while I was skeptical I knew that inevitably I would give it a try. It’s kind of irresistable, in concept.

Well, last week I toted home a 12-pack of Chill and started drinking. I didn’t make it very far. For starters, it’s a light beer, and while I have nothing against them in principle and drink my fair share of Corona Light and Yeungling Light and sometimes even the Sam Adams variety, when it comes to straight domestic light beer, I usually can’t get very excited. No exception here. Still, some quality flavoring could theoretically overcome a lackluster foundation. Unfortunately, this is very much not happening with the Chill. The lime flavor is way too sweet and has nearly none of the tang that I consider essential to a true chelada. Further, I think because it’s a light beer, they are seriously paranoid about adding any extra calories and have decided to sweeten the lime (which shouldn’t have been sweetened in the first place) with just a hint of aspartame. Gross! The salt flavor they claim to have brewed in is just plain non-existent. So, the end effect is more like light beer mixed with diet Sprite rather than a refreshing summer beverage.

All in all, it’s a big fat thumbs down on the Miller Chill from this Lusciousity editor. As always, it pays to stick with homemade. On that note, I’m off to Publix for some Negro Modelo and some limes.

Verdict: Miller Chill = unluscious

Boca got a Chipotle this year, and my first trip there was a disaster. The line was long and the food was too spicy to eat. Yes, for the second time in my life I left almost an entire meal untouched due to gratuitous pepper content. Against my better judgment, I went back tonight. After a scary first couple of bites, my steak burrito calmed down and allowed me to finish my Chipotle meal, so I can now say with authority, eh. The meat was somehow both pink in the middle and too chewy to eat, the rice was flavorless, and although the fresh salsa was tasty there wasn’t nearly enough of it to offset the dryness of the rice. Also, the Manolo likes to knock the Crocs for being proof of a dystopian future, but I say the pared down Chipotle aesthetic is even better proof. Everything was either brown, olive, or chrome. The menu only has like three things on it. And on top of paying six bucks for your fast food burrito, not just the guac but the chips are extra. So Chipotle, eh to you. You sell a t-shirt (what? you think I want to shell out actual dollars to commemorate my visit to the mid-market wing of McDonald’s?) that says “Addicted” on it, but you are a long way from addicting me. I’ll take my chances with any shack called Paco’s, Pedro’s, or even cheesy Moe’s before I give you some more of my bucks. (Sorry to be harsh. I’m just feeling the need to have an opinion. I am fully aware this is not a particularly original one– I just can’t believe I went there twice!)

If I have to watch the commercial for FiberSure, in which delicious food such as spaghetti sauce and chocolate chip cookies are assaulted with added fiber, one more time, I think I am going to bean someone over the head with a bag of lentils.  Only Americans would think it was a good thing that someone had invested colorless, tasteless dissolvable fiber to add to their already disgusting and nutrition-free food. Why would we eat something natural when technology can make something inferior for more money? Lusciousity tip of the day: don’t add fiber to your processed food! Eat less processed food with more fiber!!! Much more luscious that way.

So a Baldwin who shall not be named lest search engines accidentally direct his fans to this blog has just written a book. In it, he claims that free will is a trick of Satan and that trying to alleviate poverty is aganst God’s eternal plan. Thousands and thousands of people all over the country are apparently buying this book, and this is an election year. So from time to time I get a bit nervous. And yet, while you’re having the living daylights scared out of you by Mr. Baldwin and his Christo-fascist ilk, make sure and take time to laugh. After all, this quotation from Salon’s article on the book represents the kind of stuff he does believe is God’s will:

After his rebirth, Baldwin saw everything in a new light, including his career. His “Usual Suspect” costars were speeding toward Oscar-anointed careers. But God had bigger plans for Baldwin, like starring in “Bio-Dome” with Pauly Shore. The stoner comedy offered Baldwin the chance to utter sacred lines like, “When we’re not saving the environment, we’re thinkin’ of you, naked, thigh deep in tofu.”

He’s also the guy that wants to take a certain famous actor out for a big Spicy Jesus Roll and tell him that Scientology is, like the fight to cure AIDS, the work of the devil. I’ll admit that’s hilarious, but it’s definitely not luscious. Let the small freakish troll believe what he wants already.

A pleasant evening out on South Beach last night turned into a wall-to-wall dining debacle. Well, maybe that’s a bit of an overstatement, as nobody lost any limbs, but this establishment which shall remain nameless shall not be benefitting from our patronage again any time soon. Half the fam arrived for our 8:15 reservation, and although they report the welcome was not quite warm, they were promptly seated. The rest of us, including two Brazilian guests (hailing from São Paulo, arguably the restaurant capital of the hemisphere), wandered in over the next half hour or so due to extreme parking difficulties which were not helped by the fact that the restaurant’s valet dude had gone AWOL with no expected time of return. By the time our wine and entree orders had been taken, an hour had already gone by. Little did we know that would be the last individualized attention we got from any wait staff until an hour and twenty minutes after our order had been taken, when the waiter returned to the table to inform yours truly that chef’s special pumpkin ravioli that I had ordered on his recommendation had run out, and would I mind if he just made me up some four cheese ravioli. Like the good Midwesterner I am I said that would be fine, all the while thinking, dude, if I had wanted something as pedestrian as four cheese ravioli I think I would not have ordered the pumpkin ravioli with pink mascarpone sauce in the first place. I tried to figure out what I had done to get sqeezed off the menu, and all I could come up with is that I should have traded my sandals for stiletto heels, but then again the waiter hadn’t actually seen my feet and the rest of my outfit didn’t seem that out of step with the endless variations of cute top and jeans in evidence all around. Also, our table had ordered three bottles of wine, which has to count for something. I guess it didn’t count for enough, and I was not to be tasting any pumpkin ravioli that night. So this establishment not only failed me, it failed Lusciousity, and that is simply unforgivable. As it turns out, none of us would be tasting anything for another hour anyway. Our food finally arrived after three solid hours of waiting. That’s right: an 8:15 reservation equated with an 11:30 entree arrival. Three hours of waiting, three bottles of wine… you know, I’m flexible. I’m not that hard to please. If the food had then been stellar, I probably would have happily written off the wait. Alas, even to my relatively untutored palate, what we were served was clearly mediocre and in no way worthy of a three hour wait. Two of the dishes had to be ready-made: spaghetti with pesto for the youngest sister and capellini with red sauce for the older sister. Three hours for red sauce? There were three shrimp pasta dishes, which had a pleasantly subtle marine taste to them, but no other flavor. The two people who ordered the chicken special were probably the happiest– it looked pretty good and had some flair to the presentation. As for me and my 7 petite four cheese raviolis, swimming in a lake of white cheese sauce to which somebody had added a sprig of parsley lest I not be able to differentiate between the white sauce and the white plate, I can’t tell you all that much because while it was hardly terrible it was definitely not special. At approximately 600 calories a bite, I decided the bland little pillows of cholesterol were not worth it and turned to focus on Daniel’s black linguine instead.

I’ve always heard how terrible it is to eat on South Beach, and now I know for sure: stay away!

I already have one co-worker singing the praises of Flava Flav into my ears every Monday morning, I hardly need the New York Times to follow suit. Although I applaud their use of the fantastic  adjective “ghetto-fabulous,” I must give NYT a firm wag of the finger when it comes to giving this unluscious excuse for television any additional lipservice. Just say no to Flavor of Love!

So much for Studio 60 On the Sunset Strip, mine DVR hath betrayed me and delivered into a world of images so pixelated they remind of playing Oregon Trail on my fourth grade classroom’s Apple 2 in 1991. A barbaric “aaargh” I am trumpeting over the condominium community green space.

I’m not sure if the word is upsetting or just nauseating.

Much of what I hate about Florida packed into such an unnattractive little package… but I guess the Bushies got just the candidate they deserved.

What did I tell you? As the New York Times reports, this new crowd of savvy consumers aren’t even old enough to be called tweens, yet there are entire emerging consumer markets to serve their every whim. This article entitled “Fashion Aims Young” chronicles the rise of eight year olds who proclaim that they will only wear Seven jeans and plan their outfits with all the care of someone well, three, four, five times their age. Besides the fact that all of this costs an insane amount of money (which, let’s face, their parents can probably afford)? One of the shopowners quoted says it quite well: ““You get this idea that there is a kind of lost innocence,” Ms. Guzman of Cookie said. “It’s not so much that there is now a little-girl’s version of adult clothes as that the gap is diminishing between what’s meant for children and what’s intended for their elders. I find that a little sad.” Indeed. For those of you who read my personal blog, you might not think my mom did me any favors by letting me run around for years in courdoroy overalls and t-shirts, but I know that in the final analysis that I was a happy little kid who cared not a whit about fashion. I had time to read all the books I checked out from the library because I didn’t spend an hour dressing to go to the library. There is indeed a time and a place to care about one’s appearance, but should it really be the third grade? Granted, the little girls profiled in the article have names like Ondine and Maisy, so they probably need all the help at school they can get. Still, the whole reason that ads for designer clothes are being targeted to younger and younger girls is because somebody realized they could make more money if they taught girls to judge themselves by their appearance sooner, and that’s just not luscious.