Rum in Jamaica

It’s food has a reputation for satisfying the soul, whilst their drinks are no disappointment!

These drinks found anywhere in Jamaica and are a cooling treat to complement any meal and the island’s year round summer temperatures.

Appleton Bird Cocktail

This creamy recipe comes from the Appleton Estate:-

Ingredients:

1 1/2 oz. Appleton Special Jamaica Rum

1/4 oz. Tia Maria

1/2 oz. creme de banana

4 oz. orange juice

Directions:

Pour ingredients into a cocktail shaker and shake well.

Pour into a tall glass over ice.

Garnish with a cherry or orange wedge.

An island adage, “One of sour, two of sweet, three of strong and four of weak!”

Traditional Recipe for Rum Punch

Ingredients:

4 Cups water

1 Cup lime or lemon juice

3 cups strawberry-flavored syrup

2 cups Jamaican white rum

Directions:

Stir all ingredients together in a punch bowl.

Add slices of lemon or lime.

Serve with ice cubes.

For a traditional Jamaican dessert, try this recipe for

Papaya Cream

Papayas are fragrant and add vitamins to this creamy and delicious dessert that is quick and easy to make.

Ingredients:

2 fresh Papayas (papaws)

Rum raisin ice cream

warm caramel

3 tbsp. grated nutmeg

Directions:

Peel papayas and blend with ice cream and nutmeg.

Pour into dessert dishes and top with warm caramel.

Enjoy this tasty dessert and these traditional Jamaican drinks whilst relaxing and enjoying time with friends.

For further ideas for Jamaican cooking and Christmas Recipes , visit Worldwide Recipes.

Why is the Rum Gone? – Remix

Links between alcohol and depression

Which came first, the barley or the hop? Does alcohol cause depression? Does depression cause alcoholism? Ask any psychiatrist or psychologist and the response will likely be “What do you think?” And I think that’s a justified deflection of the question because there are no equations that describe the relationships between people, alcohol and depression. We could collect millions of bits of empirical data but we’re never going to derive a formula that fits all. Personally after many years of doing the Cha Cha with both alcohol and depression, my firmly ambiguous answer is that alcohol can lead to depression, depression can lead to alcoholism and the two can be loosely linked or hopelessly intertwined.

First let’s look at “Alcohol Leads to Depression.” I believe that it’s the simpler of the two to understand and treat (although I’m not a doctor). Let’s say that you had a wee bit too much fun last weekend and overindulged. That alcohol that made you feel so good, spent the weekend over-stimulating the release of Serotonin in your brain. Serotonin is one of your feel-good neurotransmitters that many people frequently over stimulate to get high or drunk. But come Monday it’s time to pay the piper. Your natural supply of Serotonin is shot, or at least low. You might feel depressed or just have a case of the Monday blues. But if your drinking is infrequent (and that doesn’t mean every weekend) then your brain chemistry will likely return to normal.

On the other hand, if you repeatedly indulge over an extended period of time and your alcohol consumption becomes regular and excessive, eventually your brain chemistry is altered, but this time it’s not so readily able to bounce back and repair itself. Your “feel good” chemical mechanisms are shutting down and enough damage has been done to lead to a long-term bout with depression. So the person in this example has created his own battle with depression for no other reason than he drank too much. If he eliminates the alcohol and seeks professional counseling, over time he will more than likely recover from the depression.

Conversely, some people are born with or “hardwired” for depression, or can develop depression due to a wide range of stimuli that arise from stressful life events. The stress will come and go and hopefully coping skills can be learned to help smooth out the depressive periods. Others might begin with a classic Generalized Anxiety Disorder. Over the years these can lead to periods of emotional

Board game reviews: Sorry!

Sorry! is a strategic race game. It is a very playable version of the ancient game of Parchesi, but it has added several very amusing variations. It is a braod strategy game, and adapts well to players of nearly any age.

The game is designed around a square track with four home bases. Travelers take their pieces and travel around the board until they get back to their home base. there are special slide arrows that allow you to move your token forward several squares. There are also cards that allow you to move backward, trade places or move a number of spaces. With all these variables, the game becomes much more exciting than Parchesi. Finally, add in the ability to send a token back to its home base by landing on it or sliding past it on an arrow, and the game adds an element of ruthlessness that I have seen only in vicious backgammon duels.

The game has enough vindictive thrills to make it fun for youngsters, and it is enough of a strategic game for adults. Anyone can win through sheer luck, but careful play almost always has the advantage. It is a wonderful game for a party, and it can be played by both children and adults with hilarious results. You know how they advertise the game with pictures of happy white families laughing and the little kid is delightfully sending the father’s token back to home base. Well, for once, the advertising is fair. This is a fun game, and it can get pretty wild if the players take it in the spirit of fun.

On a side note, and one strictly for adults, the game can be modified with just a few obvious tweaks, into a really wicked drinking game. It brings the cry “sorry!” into a whole new context.

Sorry! is a very simple game to learn, easy enough to allow even young players to be competitive. It allows for some good-natured revenge and aggressiveness, in spite of the truth that such play is not always to one’s benefit. I heartily recommend this game for every family.

Thoughts on food and beverages – Part 45

In an interview with the Sunday Times David Miliband said there is no conclusive evidence that organic food was any better for us than intensively farmed food. But Megan Coles of the Soil Association was quick to respond giving statistics that suited her purpose to outweigh the notion. Once again the public is mesmerised by facts and figures which, at the end of the day, cannot be proved one way or the other.

Mr. Miliband says that buying organic food is a lifestyle choice and to a certain extent I would go along with that, because being a pensioner one has to go for cheaper prices and of course organic foods stretch the pocket.

But many consumers are vehemently concerned about the scaremongers who warn us about the impurities in processed foods – how apples are sprayed to make them shiny, remember the scare about carrots when they told us to scrape them before cooking – yet by the same token we are equally at risk just inhaling polluted air every day.

Heaven ! Where does it all stop? Well perhaps I should bring out the proverbial violin and just say when my generation was young we ate food loaded with all sorts of nasties, it was how it was in those days, cabbage and green vegetables came unwashed, complete with the maggots and worms and small snails, but mum always washed them thoroughly and there seemed to be no problem with that. If occasionally a small grub did get through it ended up being boiled sterile anyway and if noticed mum would always tease, “well that’s your meat and veg all in one!” I guess at that time our concern, living north of London, was more about getting killed in an air raid in that ghastly war. Yet with the slogan regularly drummed into our ears on the wireless and posters to dig for victory’ our gardens were regularly turned over to growing our own vegetables and how good they were, imagine: fresh runner beans picked smaller than you could get them in the shops and so much sweeter, along with freshly dug new potatoes with that special unbeatable flavour derived only by one’s perseverance and hard work to produce vegetables fit for any table. And how good it all was for the gratification and feel good factor. But are we really any better off for sanitised foods? I mean our antibodies don’t have one iota of a chance to build up any resistance as when I was young, no wonder when some horrid virus does get through most of us suffer the consequences. These days we are bombarded by good hygiene, health and safely

Drinks: Wheat Beer

Witbier, Weissbier, Wheat Beer, call it whatever you want. If you are looking for a drink with a great taste and you want to be up with the latest trend in beer then read on.

One of the big trends in the drinks industry to emerge over the last five years has been the popularity of wheat beers which are made from a mixture of wheat and barley rather than just barley alone.

The term wheat beer in the UK is not that well known as there are only a very limited number brands brewed locally. However terms more familiar to people are witbier from Belgium and weissbier from Germany. These two countries provide the bulk of the wheat beer drunk in the UK

Wheat beer is brewed with most of the sugars coming from malted wheat. Using wheat gives the beer a light, sweet flavour with a creamy texture and a good head. More importantly, the use of wheat and special brewing yeast provides a very distinct taste, being described as akin to spices and bananas. Its this that makes drinking wheat beer interesting, as every different brand offers a unique taste experience.

Probably one of the best known of all the wheat beers is the Belgian Hoegaarden, named after the location of the brewery in Flanders. The company making this beer was founded in 1966 by Pierre Celis, a former milkman. Celis had seen the last brewery in Hoegaard close in 1957 and always regretted the loss of the witbier that it brewed.

Celis started a farmhouse operation called the Cloisters (De Kluis, in Flemish) and based his famous brew on a recipe created by monks in 1445. To give the drink a very light body unmalted wheat is used and extra flavour is provided by the addition of coriander and dried curacao orange peel.

Hoegaarden was purchased by Interbrew/Interbev (Stella Artois etc) in 1988 after a fire at the brewery, Celis retired and went to the USA but could not resist the lure of brewing and started making witbier again in Austin, Texas. The Hoegaarden brewery was closed in 2005 with the product now being made in Southern Belgium.

Hoegaarden continues to be a firm favourite and its ownership by a large corporation has made it universally popular and available. As an introduction to the pleasures of a wheat beer Hoegaarden is a very good starting point. Try it chilled, with a slice of lemon, it makes a great, refreshing drink in the summer.

The German weissbiers are primarily brewed in the southern part of the country. Depending on their region of origin naming variations appear

Drink recipes: French 75 – Part 1

A French 75 is an elegant and refreshing drink that can make you feel as glamorous as a character in Casablanca. Though it is generally made with gin and champagne, I also like versions made with cognac or rose champagne. The basic French 75 recipe is as follows:

1.5 ounces of gin (Bombay Sapphire is recommended)

2 teaspoons of superfine sugar or 1 tablespoon of powdered sugar

1.5 ounces of fresh-squeezed lemon juice

4 ounces of chilled champagne

1 orange slice

1 maraschino cherry

Fill a shaker half full with ice cubes, and then add the gin, sugar, and lemon juice. Shake vigorously until the sugar is dissolved. Pour into a chilled Collins glass and top the glass with champagne. Stir gently until combined and then garnish with the orange slice and the cherry.

If you would like to make a French 75 with less lemon and a bit more flair, try this variation:

1 ounce of gin

1 ounce of Cointreau or Grand Marnier

1/2 ounce of fresh-squeezed lime juice

1/2 dash of orange bitters

1 sugar cube

3-4 ounces of champagne

Pour gin, orange liquor, lime juice, and bitters into a cocktail shaker that is half-full of ice. Shake well until blended. Place the sugar cube in the bottom of a chilled champagne flute, and strain the contents of the shaker into the glass. Carefully top he flute with the champagne. a curl of orange peel makes a nice garnish for this drink.

Rose champagne can put a pink twist on this already special drink.

1 ounce of gin

1/2 ounce of fresh-squeezed lemon juice

1 teaspoon of simple syrup

5 ounces of chilled rose champagne

Combine the gin, lemon juice, and simple syrup in a cocktail shaker half-filled with ice. Shake gently to combine and then pour into a chilled champagne flute or coup. Top the glass with the rose champagne. Edible flowers, currants, or a slice of strawberry dramatically garnish this Rose varriation.

Lastly, if you prefer cognac to gin, I have the perfect French 75 recipe for you!

1 ounce of cognac (Courvoisier or Remy-Martin make especially good French 75s)

1/2 ounce of fresh-squeezed lemon juice

1 teaspoon of super-fine bar sugar

3 ounces of champagne

Combine cognac, lemon juice, and sugar with crushed ice in a cocktail shaker. Shake gently to combine and then strain into a chilled champagne flute. Top with the champagne and garnish with a lemon twist or maraschino cherry if desired.

A French 75 is the perfect drink to serve at parties or special celebrations because it can be made with either gin or cognac and it includes the sparkle of champagne. It is a drink that has something for everyone, and its presentation always impresses. The above recipes are easily increased, and they can all be made quickly in bulk in a punch bowl for an extra-special party punch that will require no additional spiking. Cheers!

Game reviews: Connect Four

Connect Four is a very simple and addictive game that employs a pick up and play aesthetic, simple strategies and short match time to capture the imagination. For all intensive purposes, Connect Four is a vertical version of Tic-Tac-Toe, which is where it’s pick up and playability comes in. You must connect four red or black chips on a vertical grid to win, employing the same blocking and psyche-out techniques as Tic-Tac-Toe. When someone wins, a level is pulled that causes all of the chips to fall to the ground, adding to the fun. Although it sounds overly simplistic, this is where the game’s beauty lies. Not only can anyone learn how to play within seconds, but variations on the rules can be made turning it into a drinking game, tournament, or more complex version of itself.

Personally, I don’t know why I’m even writing a review of this game, I’m sure you probably own it already. If so, go pick it up and play. And if you don’t like the rules, change them to your liking.

Stress issues linked to Multiplayer Online Games (MMOGs)

In a recent CSI Miami episode, it featured the death of a student through playing on-line multiplayer games. The death was as a result of the victim not moving from his seat for several days (he had urinated in a bucket next to his seat) and drinking only energy drinks high in caffeine. His body just gave out in the form of a heart attack as he was so dehydrated from the caffeine drinks, lack of food and high stress of the game. However, unbelieveable as it may have seemed, this episode really highlighted how people became obsessed with the games they played.

It is not surprising to see in December 2005, a 38-year-old South Korean man collapsed and died after a marathon game session that lasted over 10 days. However, in Agust of the same year, a 28-year-old player died after a session lasting just 2 days.

There have been reports into this issue that have sought to identify why the body reacts in this way. The following factors are believed to lead to serious health risks that could result in death:

Stress

Caused by the overwhelming desire to win and huge amounts of concentration

Physical Exhaustion

The gamers exert a great deal of energy in trying to win but actually consume very few calories to replenish the energy they use. When you add the lack of sleep, through playing continually, the body is pushed to its limits and the stress level goes sky high.

Eye Strain

The sudden visual stimulation on screen can irritate a part of the brain called the cerebral cortex. This can be particularly so if there has been a long period of dull coloured images on screen and a sudden flash of colour. This reaction in the brain can cause death.

Competitive Environment

The way in which games are played now has also added to the stress. When playing on-line, you are playing against millions of players and you are in a position where you can never win. This is quite different from how games were played before multi-players as once you mastered the rules and techniques, you would win again and again and very few people could take away your crown.

Risk to Children and Teens

Of course the worrying trend is to encourage younger and younger children to get gripped by playing on line, so even football games can now be played on-line. Where teenagers are playing such games, a few quick tips to help reduce possible health issues can be put in place.

* Make sure the room they play in is well ventilated and full of natural light.

* Encourage regular breaks away from the screen tempting snacks in the kitchen, to give the eyes a break.

* Drink plenty of non-fizzy fluids.

- fresh air and physical activity after a session of playing to wake up the body

Downloadable game review: Yummy Drink Factory, by Amaranth Games – Part 3

Yummy Drink Factory by Amaranth Games is a drink-stand simulation game that is fun and fast-paced but does not have much to do with factories; I guess Yummy Drink-stand’ just sounds odd.

There are four modes of play in Yummy Drink Factory; these are as follows:

Story Mode in this mode you assume the role of a young woman who has no consideration for other people. One day you upset the wrong person, an old lady in a remote coffee house who turns out to be a witch. She magically transports you to Fairytale Island, which does not sound too bad until you find out that the only way to get back home is by spending your days serving the islands’ inhabitants from a drink stand, this is as a lesson to teach you respect and humility. You have to learn to master 20, 28 or 38 recipes depending on the difficulty level you have chosen. Only when you have mastered these recipes can you return home.

There is a useful tutorial at the start of the first few days serving that teaches you how to grind cocoa beans, steam them and serve them using the simple point and click or drag commands. Every day or so you get new flavorings, types of cream and toppings and you must learn a new recipe, starting with simple drinks such as Hot Chocolate or Chocolate Floats leading to drinks containing swamp ooze and warts!

After a few days of trading you also acquire a tip jar, these tips are given to you in the form of gems which you spend at the General Store to buy garlands and other decorative items for your stand which pleases your customers.

Freedom Mode (our recipes) this mode does not follow the storyline but essentially keeps to the same format. You still learn new recipes and get new equipment from day to day but there is no tutorial for this mode.

Freedom Mode (your recipes) this mode is the same as the other freedom mode except that you get to use your own recipes; these recipes are designed in the final mode, create and share recipes.

Create and Share Recipes in this mode you make and share your own recipes combining the many flavours and toppings as you desire to make your own unique drinks out of the hundreds of combinations. These recipes can then be used to play Freedom Mode (your recipes.)

Yummy Drink Factory is not a new idea as there have been lots of food and drink simulations in the past but this is still hugely addictive and enjoyable. The point and click system is familiar and simple to learn and the graphics are colourful and fun even though they do lack variation when it comes to your customers. The music is in the form of soothing medieval music and the subtle sound effects are well used. Overall this game scores 4 out of 5 and is definitely on my shopping list.

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