Spring, Swing and Swagger

Something we haven't seen before - Uncle Jake holding Miss Ramona.

He's pushed her stroller, and we see now her swing , but it looks like Ramona is no pushover. It's Uncle Jake who is, looking at those smiles. (R - work it girl)

And who doesn't love a little lady who wears red shoes.
Every girl should have a pair or tw0. : )

The Swing

by
Robert Louis Stevenson

How do you like to go up in a swing?
Up in the air so blue?
Oh, I do think it the pleasantest thing
Ever a child can do!

Up in the air and over the wall,
Till I can see so wide,
Rivers and trees and cattle and all
Over the countryside--

Till I look down on the garden green,
Down on the roof so brown -
Up in the air I go flying again,
Up in the air and down!

Talk about a walk off. Just paparazzi pictures but they could be from a photoshoot.

Bottoms Up

It happened and we missed it, International Cocktail Day, was this past Tuesday.

Well how to celebrate and rectify this oversight?

Maybe the recipe for a Jake Walk cocktail from the The Jake Walk bar in NYC, in Food & Wine's Magazine blog, and reading what Nick Fauchald, Senior Editor wrote to describe The Jake Walk bar, how could it not make a post. Life brings things to you when they are attune, there is no need to hunt them out, they just find you.

"If Stinky Bklyn is Gossip Girl, then the couple’s latest venture, The Jake Walk, is John from Cincinnati. Its name is obscure—“jake walk” is 1930s slang for the partially paralyzed gait exhibited by Prohibition-era vagabonds who drank Jamaica Ginger, a highly alcoholic (though legal) patent medicine found to be loaded with, whoops, neurotoxins—and, like John from Cincinnati, you’re not quite sure how to describe Jake Walk , except for “singularly awesome” (if you disagree with me about JfC, don’t hold it against Jake Walk)."
Mouthing Off/Food &Wine Magazine


The Jake Walk Courtesy of Dan Wondrich (The Jake Walk)
Makes 1 drink
Ice
3/4 ounce reposado tequila
3/4 ounce J.M. Rhum Blanc (or other white rum)
3/4 ounce St-Germain (elderflower liqueur)
3/4 ounce fresh lime juice
2 dashes Peychaud's bitters
Candied ginger, for garnish
Fill a shaker with ice. Add everything except the ginger and shake vigorously. Strand into a chilled coupe and garnish with the candied ginger.

Now, you wonder if there's an Austinotsotini to go with it?





For those who missed their Austin Friday, no fear it will be a double shot next week to start and end your work week.

JakeWalking

Thought the moonshine post was coming when Jake went to Dixie --think again.

During Prohibition (1920-1933) in the United States, all alcohol was banned, family "recipes" came out, bathtubs turned into gin mills, moonshine brighten and "medicinal tonics" were the cure. Or where they? Seems that some of these solutions to a "dry thirst" led to a condition called Jake Walk or Jake Leg.

JAKE LEG - Paralysis brought on by drinking jake, Jamaican ginger extract, a patent medicine. It is believed that the malady was first discovered in Oklahoma City by Dr. Ephraim Goldfain in February 1930. "The first person to record a connection between jake and the paralysis may have been Ishmon Bracey, the black blues singer who cut 'Jake Liquor Blues' in Grafton, Wisconsin, in March of 1930." Jake leg "afflicted enough souls to instigate an entire subject of folk music. Blacks and whites were affected. It rendered men impotent. And it was no longer inspiring musicians by 1934, which meant it was a cataclysmic but discrete event." What had turned the harmless patent medicine into a crippler was the addition of tri-ortho-cresyl-phosphate, TOCP, a "plasticizer" used to keep synthetic materials from becoming brittle. This was during Prohibition and the Treasury Department tackled "the problem of people getting too much pleasure from patent-medicine tippling by ordering that the solids in fluid extracts be doubled." TOCP was believed to be harmless and was used to "boost the solids."

─ "Annals of Epidemiology: Jake Leg: How the blues diagnosed a medical mystery," by Dan Baum. The New Yorker, Sept. 15, 2003, Page 50.


Now don't go a thinking that every time Jake is seen walking funny he's got the Jake Leg, despite what he might say to southern girls.


Hipsters note: The JakeWalk is a new bar in the Carroll Gardens section of Brooklyn, NY from Stinky Brklyn owners Michele Pravda and Patrick Watson.

Thanks to Romo inspiration for this post.

A huge apology to Destiny. A thousand pardons faire D.
Destiny mentioned the JakeWalk bar during the
J/R/Week in NYC. I think I missed it in the flurry of
their whirlwind schedule. Forgive me.