Don't Be Bitters That You Can't Have A Drink: A Recipe

Recipe from Western Living Magazine

Please enjoy this recipe for Grapefruit Campari Bitters. I've become a big fan of bitters lately -- they are easily found in any grocery store, but why buy a ready-made bottle when you can make your life much more complicated and DIY your own? The actual way to make bitters is to extract the flavors from dried roots/herbs/fruits/etc. by soaking them in some sort of liquor. Vodka seems to be the most popular, according to the (minimal) research I've done online. Then, once you've extracted all of your individual flavors, you mix them together to make something more complex and delicious, and then you add tiny amounts of them to cocktails, or sparkling water or whatever you like. There is a much more in-depth explanation at Adventures in Cooking (also, amazing photographs!).

Bitters have become important in my life lately, so I'm building myself a little collection, and and I am really excited to get all the tiny mason jars and labels and eye-dropper bottles and herbs and whatnot to make my own. But that's later, and ain't nobody got time for that today, so above is a quick/dirty method for making grapefruit Campari bitters. Which sounds delicious, let's all go make some.* But first, a story:

The reason I've come to love bitters so much is because, 32 days ago, I quit drinking. And sometimes a girl needs to have something that feels like a cocktail. 

I'll give you a minute to compose yourselves.

Now, y'all know I love a drink. I'm from the South. I'm from LOUISIANA, for God's sake, where our definition of binge drinking is not the same as your definition of binge drinking. We can and will turn anything into a celebration: LSU games, Mardi Gras parades, a crawfish boil, Wednesday morning. And much of my identity for at least as long as I've been writing on this site is tied up with that kind of celebrating. I serve champagne ALL DAY at my design camps. It's supposed to be fun! What makes everything funner? Booze!

But there comes a time where, somewhere, your body crosses a line. Where drinking isn't fun anymore -- it's maintenance. Not the kind where you hide bottles of vodka in your car or go all Meg Ryan in When A Man Loves A Woman -- it's much more subtle, like, "Now cocktail hour starts at four." "Now cocktail hour starts at three." "Why have one glass of wine with dinner when six is better?" It's all about numbing pain : the anesthetization of a bad week; a bad day; hell, a bad hour. It's not affecting your day-to-day life, or your job, or your family, right? (PS, these are all lies.) That shit creeps up on you.

Anyway. A few months ago I read Drinking: A Love Story, by the inimitable and much-missed Caroline Knapp, and saw myself in so many of the passages: the romanticizing of a glass of white wine hit me hard, for example. During some parts of the book, I was so ashamed and embarrassed at the self-recognition that I almost had to stop reading. And I realized that I didn't just love drinking -- I was IN LOVE with drinking. 

I. It happened this way: I fell in love and then, because the love was ruining everything I cared about, I had to fall out.

II. I drank. I drank Fumé Blanc at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel, and I drank double shots of Johnnie Walker Black on the rocks at a dingy Chinese restaurant across the street from my office, and I drank at home. For a long time I drank expensive red wine, and I learned to appreciate the subtle differences between a silky Merlot and a tart Cabernet Sauvignon and a soft, earthy Beaucastel from the south of France, but I never really cared about those nuances because, honestly, they were beside the point. ... I drank when I was happy and I drank when I was anxious and I drank when I was bored and I drank when I was depressed, which was often.

I read those passages over and over. They were me: I identified so completely with them that they nearly burned me alive. And so, 32 days ago, following an incredibly humiliating bender involving multiple bottles of Jameson, I knew I had to quit. And I did, the next morning. My body revolted. I detoxed for over a week, which experience included nausea, tremors, insomnia, anorexia, an almost fanatical devotion to hydration, and an inordinate amount of feelings. OH, THE FEELINGS. I haven't felt so many feelings in so long, mainly because I was deadening them every night. And I knew I was drinking a lot of wine, and bourbon, and whatever else, but I didn't know I was drinking that much. I was.

The funniest thing about this is that every single one of my friends were like, "GOD, FINALLY." Girl, you could have knocked me over with a feather. I was all, "Whaaaa?" As if they didn't know. That's one of the dumbest things about drunks -- they think they're so damn smart. My friend George said, "The only thing standing between you and conquering the entire world is that bottle." THAT IS SOME HEAVY SHIT, MAN.

So, it's been 32 days. I am still working through all the feels, of course, but I already feel like a different person. I feel like a person who is present in her own life, after a long time of doing the opposite. I have an amazing support system, including my friends, family, and some perfect strangers who have become devoted pals. And for those people, I am so grateful.

I don't know what the future holds for me and alcohol. I don't know that I'll never have a drink again. But I certainly won't have one today, and that is what counts right now.

*I find it very funny that bitters, which are allegedly non-alcoholic, are made with such vast quantities of booze. Way to get off on a technicality, bitters.

PS. If anyone has any favorite boozeless bevs ideas, I'm all ears. A girl can only drink so much iced coffee.

I Made A Thing: Celebratory Decay

A few weeks ago we had a series of crazy thunderstorms in Monroe, one of which broke an entire ligustrum (I think? Correct me if I'm wrong) in half. I am currently in the midst of the non-stop spring cleaning/decorating/styling binge that happens to me and my house every year. This venture includes trolling my yard -- in a robe and slip flops, shut up -- for suitable vegetation to bring into the house. I don't really care what it is as long as it is big. So above, you see parts of the destroyed shrub, along with some of my beloved lantana, and the Carolina jessamine that threatens to take over my yard on a yearly basis. I would like, here, to give thanks for the product known as Oasis, for allowing me to basically cut everything up and shove the branches haphazardly into this concrete urn.

It's been long established that Maggie's favorite decorating style is what she describes as celebratory decay. I love the idea of that: something lovely and old, just waiting to be found and reclaimed, its very antiquity informing its beauty. My decorating style, which I'm not sure I've shared before, is what I like to call rich old grandmother: a ridiculous mix of old, new, high, low, modern, antique, masculine, feminine, a little bit Southern, and just the right amount of batty. So this beat-down old bush is giving me some celebratory rich old grandmother decay feelings. 

This week, I'm at the beach on the east coast. I have never been to the beach on the east coast, having been raised visiting the Emerald Coast of Florida, also known as the Redneck Riviera. Anyway, the first night here I came across this enormous horseshoe crab, a creature I'd never seen before. It's basically an old-timey helmet with a tail. It was really dead and smelled like it, so of course I picked it up and took it back to the beach house with me.

Per the instructions I found on the internet, I soaked the crab -- henceforth to be known as Horace H. Horcrab, PhD Horticulture, Horvard University -- in alcohol for 48 hours. Then I cut out Horace's, um, soft parts with kitchen scissors. Please do not tell the owners of this beach house. Horace then took a long soak in a tub full of bleach, and is now resting peacefully in the sun, drying to a golden crisp. Later, I will spray Horace down with a few coats of lacquer and use him as decoration. 

Horace has been my project all week, and is making me happier than an old dead crab should make someone. And that, my friends, is some celebratory decay. BOOM. 

 Horace.

Your Thursday Farm Equipment Photo

Sometimes you just have to sit out in the middle of Missouri on a now-defunct airplane runway while sitting on a running tractor, checking your Twitter, and smoking a Virginia Slim. What?

I want to thank you most sincerely for all of the comments, links, tweets, emails, and carrier pigeons I received yesterday re: my mission statement post. Many of them made me cry, and a couple made me do the ugly cry. ALLISON.

Today I am off to the beach for a week, and I am so excited about it I can't sit still. Look for me next week, during which time I'll tell you a story about the beach. It will involve sand, photos of my legs, and a lot of books.

In Which I Type A Whole Bunch of Words At You

Instructions for living a life:
Pay attention. 
Be astonished.
Tell about it.
--Mary Oliver

Ready to spill some dirt.

Let's talk, y'all. Actually, I will do the talking -- all you have to to is listen. Ooh, am I nervous about this. I feel like poor old Jerry Maguire handing around his mission statement.

But, if you've read any of the camp recaps, you know that the first thing I tell my campers is: BE BRAVE. In fact, part of my decision to write this was informed by my experiences at design camp: something happens there in which genuine connection and community is built in a really short amount of time, which phenomenon is truly astonishing to see and be a part of.

I also tell my campers that design can change your life. And, OH HELL YES IT CAN. I believe that with my whole heart. People need a little more pretty in their lives. And a little more pretty helps to burnish those ragged edges of real life.

With that said, I've been doing a lot of thinking about the direction in which I want this site to go, and what I want it to be. I've been writing online for over ten years now, and this blog has gone through so many iterations I can't remember them all. Once upon a time, this was a personal diary, where I talked about my feelings and emotions and what chapter books my first-grader was reading. Then that little girl grew up and this space became a design blog, and I feel like somewhere along the line it lost its voice.

The thing about design blogs is that they often give the illusion of perfection: that every single detail of life is under control; that everything is shiny and beautiful and styled just-so; that there is no dirty laundry shoved behind a closet door. We all do it, of course -- it's human nature to want to present one's best self (or one's best table vignette) to the world. And it is one of my greatest pleasures to present a lovely, aspirational world to you. As I said before, this positive skewing of life is a great counter-balance to the pressures of reality. But this ginned-up perfection also comes with its own set of problems.

Perhaps you are thinking, “What in the damn hell kind of problems might you encounter while taking photos of outfits and jetting off to parts unknown every week or so?” And you'd be right to ask: to the casual observer, my life seems easy, and simple, and my job seems kind of not like a job. But there is a funny kind of pressure that comes with pretending everything is wonderfully perfect all of the time. It's not honest, or brave, or authentic, and frankly, it's kind of exhausting. There are many, many people out there who are great at this kind of job, and I have nothing but the utmost admiration for them. Sometimes I feel like I'm scrambling to keep up. But maybe I don't need to keep up. Maybe I need to bring it down a notch. Maybe I need to bring some of that true, authentic, camp-type connection right here to this blog.

So while abchao.com is still going to be entertaining and delightful and inspirational -- I'm still going to post pretty things; I'm still going to hold super-fun design camps; and I am certainly not going to stop posting headless photos or painting things white -- I want to reset things a bit. Let's just put it out on front street: this site is no longer about the mere superficial. My grand plan is to co-opt the space where, interspersed with all of the pretty things, I share personal things too. Where I show you more of my real self again. Where I get some dirt on my hands. Where things maybe get a little sloppy, because sometimes, you know, life is fucking messy.

I also want to get back to that place where I write in a meaningful way. Through all of this site's transformations and permutations, I was and always will be a writer first. Mary Karr, memoirist extraordinaire, once said, "I believe a writer makes a contract with the reader to tell the truth." I'm going to try to listen to that voice. Maybe it will invite criticism, or complaints, or comments and suggestions I am afraid to hear. But I've learned recently that if I can't take responsibility for my own words, I'm probably the asshole in the scenario.

So, let's recap: I'm tired of hiding. I'm tired of pretending that everything is perfect when it really ain't. I'm tired of falling back into the same old easy patterns of posting. I'm tired of being a headless cipher with a one-note voice.

I do have a head, y'all. And I aim to use it.

That this new blog philosophy meshes up with the major changes happening in my life is no coincidence. Madeleine's graduation isn't the only thing on our minds, although obviously that has been the main event -- but now it is over. And my beautiful, nearly-grown daughter will soon be off to college, where she will begin forming her own story to tell. But that hasn't been the only thing going down, of course. Life still happens to you while you are busy ordering caps and gowns. The last year, and more specifically the last six months, have unfolded like some ridiculous screwball comedy (of errors). And the next few months are sure to serve up even more challenges as we all settle into our new places in life. I want to tell you those stories, and I will, in time. Don't be thinking I'm vague-blogging here: I am going to get to them all, and I hope you'll be patient as I ease into it.

Now, you know I'm not promising a college-length essay every day, or even every week. Sometimes I might just show you a photograph. Sometimes I'll take you along as I attempt to cross something off that big old life list. Sometimes it will just be a sentence or two. But it will be my sentence, and it will be real, and it is my fervent hope that you will jump in beside me for the ride.

Whew. That was a lot of words. Let's call it a day. Be brave out there.

Beach Books 2013

1 / 2 / 3 / 4 / 5 / 6 / 7

Let's go to the beach and read things. Yes? YES.

I'm hitting the beach on Friday, and I'll be taking these books along. We've got two memoirs, three fictions, one true crime*, and one historical fiction. That about ought to do it, don't you think? 

OMIGOD I CANNOT WAIT. Where are you going this year, and what are you reading?

*Thanks, as always, to Hateful Buntsy for her excellent true crime recs.