7 Best Hot Beverages for Cold Nights

7 Best Hot Beverages for Cold Nights
by PartyFan

Winter is here, and the nights grow cold. What better way to ward off the chill than a hot beverage? They are good for both body and mind, and besides, they are tasty! Here are my 7 favorites, in no particular order. Feel free to comment and tell us all about yours.

1) Cocoa. It is hard to go wrong with chocolate! There are many good instant mixes available on the market, and you shouldn't feel bad about taking advantage of them. Quick and convenient, for most people they are every bit as tasty as the stuff made from scratch. If you insist on being a purist, here's an honest from scratch recipe for you, that doesn't require scalding the milk, which I always screw up:

1/2 cup sugar
1/4 cup hot water
1/4 cup cocoa powder, unsweetened
4 cups milk, or 3 3/4 cups milk and 1/4 cup
half and half for creamier cocoa
2 pinches salt
3/4 teaspoon vanilla

Mix the water, sugar, cocoa, and salt in saucepan.
Stirring constantly (I can't emphasize that enough,
heat on a medium stove until it boils, keep stirring
while you let it boil for one minute. Stir in the milk
and let it warm up, but do not let it boil. When
warmed, remove from the stove and stir in the vanilla.
Serve right away.
4 servings.

Optional. Add 1/2 to 1 1/2 Oz. (to taste) of dark rum, brandy, or cinnamon schnapps. Yum!


2) Hot buttered, or mulled, cider. This stuff is delicious! Most of the recipes I've seen use a little too much butter for my taste, so I've cut the amount down in this recipe. You can add more if you like it, or leave the butter out for the simple mulled variety. Cinnamon sticks are best, they give you something to stir the butter back in with as it separates, and they seem to infuse a little more flavor, but ground cinnamon will do if that's all you have.

3 cups of apple cider or juice
2 cinnamon sticks or 1/2 tsp. of ground cinnamon
2 Tbsp. brown sugar
2-4 cloves (optional)
1/4 tsp. ground nutmeg (optional)
2 tsp. butter (preferred over margarine)

Dissolve the brown sugar in cider in a saucepan. Add
cinnamon sticks or ground cinnamon, and the cloves if
you decide to use them. Heat until it just starts to
boil, and remove from heat. Place 1 tsp. butter in each
of two glasses. Strain the cloves and cinnamon sticks
from the cider, saving the sticks (placing the cloves
in a piece of cheesecloth will make this easier), and
pour the hot cider into the glasses. Put the cinnamon
sticks back in as a garnish, and sprinkle some nutmeg
on top if desired. Some people add a dash of vanilla.
2 servings.

Optional. Add 1/2 to 1 1/2 Oz (to taste) of dark rum, spiced rum, or cinnamon schnapps.


3) Coffee. Long a beverage of choice for combating the cold. If you need to avoid caffeine late in the day, make it decaf. For a long time I considered decaf as blasphemous, and I very much notice a difference in taste. As I've gotten older, I find that I can't get to sleep well if I drink the fully charged stuff later in the day, so I've gotten used to decaf. I have a trick to make it taste better, which is to blend caf and decaf together. Some people do this blending 50/50 (half caf), but I've found 25% caf to 75% decaf works best for me. If you can't taste any difference between caf and decaf, or if you are going to be putting booze in it, you won't need to use this trick. I've recently seen some partially decaffeinated coffee in the stores, but I haven't tried it yet.

Optional. Add 1/2 Oz. (to taste) of Kahlua, Amaretto, Frangelico, or cognac (with cognac it is called Cafe Royale). We'll discuss some other additives next. It is easy to overdo the liqueurs, so I recommend the smaller amount, you can always add a little more if you like.


4) Irish Coffee. Ambrosia! I have found few drink recipes that cause as many arguments as Irish Coffee, probably because the two main ingredients, coffee and whiskey, are things that many people hold very strong opinions about. I certainly have mine, which are: Irish Coffee should be served in a glass coffee mug, the rim of the glass should be frosted with sugar, it must be topped with whipped cream, the whiskey must be Irish (which to me means Bushmills, although Jameson will do nicely), and finally (I can hear some people screaming already) the coffee should be poured into the whiskey, not the whiskey into the coffee. There are many recipes for Irish Coffee out there, and I've enjoyed most of them. Here's a basic variant to get you started, although it uses heavy cream instead of whipped, and I usually don't use the brown sugar:

1 1/2 Oz. Irish Whiskey
1 tsp. brown sugar
6 Oz. coffee
heavy cream

Pour the liquids into a glass coffee mug, stir in the
brown sugar. Float the cream on top - do not stir it in.
Serve.
1 serving.


5) Mexican Coffee. This is a delightfully simple variation, and I've enjoyed it on many occasions. Basically brew your coffee as you prefer, and then add an ounce or two of brandy to it. If you are doing decaf, there is no need to blend it with regular coffee, the brandy will cover up any taste difference you might normally notice.


6) Hot lemonade. Normally associated as a frosty treat on hot summer days, this is much better hot than you might think. I think sweet is better than tart when it is served hot, but you can certainly vary this to suit your personal tastes. Here's a basic lemonade recipe, simply heat it in a saucepan or the microwave after you've made it:

Make a sugar syrup first, everyone agrees this works best.
One cup sugar, one cup water, mix together in a saucepan
and stir over low heat until the sugar is dissolved. Let
this mixture cool before using, you can save any extra for
another time. Next mix one part syrup, one part lemon juice,
and four parts water. If you are using all the syrup, that
will be one cup of the syrup, one cup of lemon juice, and
four cups water. Mix well. If this is too sweet, add a
little more lemon juice. Too tart, add a little more syrup.
Too thin, add a little more of both. Too thick, add a little
more water. If you don't mix the syrup first, the sugar will
settle out of the lemonade, which is undesirable.

Optional. Add 1/2 - 1 Oz. (to taste) of vodka, lemon or orange flavored vodka, or peppermint schnapps. Don't overdo it, it is easy for the alcohol to overpower the lemonade. Again, you can always add a little more if you desire it.


7) Tea. Wars have been fought over tea. White, green, or black, it is all good. Most people find that tea is low enough in caffeine that a cup or two at night doesn't bother them, but if you are overly sensitive, there are literally hundreds of caffeine free herbal blends out there, I'm sure you can find one that tickles your taste buds, and the search for the perfect one might be fun all by itself. If you sugar your tea, try a little warm honey for a special treat.

Optional. Well, I haven't any options, as I haven't found any booze that mixes well with tea. That certainly hasn't kept me from enjoying a hot cuppa, though. If you have found something that works for you, please pass the information along, I'd appreciate it!

So, there's my list. Hope you find at least one of these hot beverages enjoyable.

Stay warm!

('')

New Year's Alternative

New Year's Alternative
by PartyFan

If you have grown tired of alcohol fueled soirees full of people trying too hard to have a good time, staying up until midnight and later, worrying about your guests getting DWI's or worse, and other New Year's Eve annoyances, but you still enjoy hosting parties, consider the alternative of a New Year's Day party. This can be a wonderful event, enjoyed just as thoroughly by your guests, perhaps even more than the Eve.

Families are more likely to attend and have a good time, but the singles will show up and enjoy themselves if you do things right. I'm going to rely on a party that a friend of the family threw every year, that was very well attended, and enjoyed by all, as an example of how to do things right. I'd say her parties were legendary, but mostly they weren't talked about - yet everyone in the world showed up, at least for a quick drop-in to pay respects (which often turned into staying for "just a little while longer").

When I asked a few people who had attended her parties to tell me what the best thing about these events was, the first thing everyone mentioned was food. Yet no one mentioned the same food! That brings up our first tip - lay out a good spread, and the guests will come. Variety, variety, variety. I remembered fresh fruit platters, hollowed out pineapples filled with chunks of all sorts of goodies. Another person mentioned stuffed mushrooms, and artichoke dip. Yet another the bowls of fresh cherries and short, sweet Mexican bananas. Meatballs, lasagna, cakes, pies, chips, dips, hamburgers and hot dogs for the kiddies, you name it and there was probably a platter of it. Now she knew the party would be well attended, but there were still always leftovers, and I heard she had an arrangement to give them away to some local places that could use them - nursing homes or somewhere similar - and she had some of the guest take home plates as well.

You'll want to imitate the variety, but do try to keep the amount of food reasonable to the amount of guests you can expect to show up, especially if this is your first time throwing such a party. Once you get the tradition started, if you want to start a tradition, you can go more and more overboard as your party gets more and more attendance. This can be a chicken and the egg situation: the better the spread, the better your attendance; the better your attendance, the better you can do the spread. Don't be afraid to experiment, and while she never used full-service catering, I'm sure she didn't do everything herself, it wouldn't have been possible.

The next most common praise I heard was about the guests. Again, variety, variety, variety! There were always interesting people to chat with, folks that you might not normally encounter in your daily routine. Invite everyone you can think of, not just your close circle of friends or co-workers, and make sure the people you invite feel free to invite others. Do your potential guests have holiday visitors from out of town? Tell them to bring them along! The more the merrier. If you have space constraints or can't afford to feed the world, then you'll have to tone this down, but you do so at the risk of a having a homogeneous group of party goers boring each other with stories they've already heard. Everyone knows a character or two, so if you have to limit the guest list, make sure the characters you know are on it first and that will help avoid this potential buzz kill.

Have some booze available. It doesn't have to be a large quantity, or top shelf stuff, just cover the basics without resorting to generic rot-gut. There will be some folks who will enjoy having a cocktail, but most of the serious drinking people will have indulged the night before and will be unlikely to tie one on.

Don't start the party too early. Even people who didn't party hardy may have stayed up until the clock rolled over, and they will want to sleep in. You probably won't have to worry about the party running too late, by around sundown most people will have had about all the New Year's fun they want to have, but having a reasonable ending time won't hurt. If you do decide to shut things down at a certain time, make sure your guests know about it in advance.

Make a television available. Usually this is a distraction you don't want at a party, but in this case it is better to make an exception. You still don't want it to be a big distraction, so try to keep it out of the way and not in a central area, but having it there will be a plus. These parties always had a TV on in the den, so that people interested in the college football games could pop in and watch for a bit. If that outlet wasn't there, I'm sure some of the sports fans would have passed on the party, and being able to watch the games in the company of other folks to talk football with I'm sure was a plus. No one stayed glued to the set for all that long, and many casual viewers enjoyed being able to pop in for a moment, get an update, watch a few downs, and chat a bit.

I could go on and on, but I think that I've covered all the major areas: variety in both food and guests, just a little booze, not too early, and give the sports fans an outlet. There were other traditions to be followed (decor, certain regional dishes, good luck symbols and myths, etc), but yours will vary by region and personal taste. Make your party unique by using your own ideas and creating your own traditions. Feed them well, and they will come!

Have a good time, and Happy New Year!

Offfice X-mas Party - Don't Have a Great Time

Office X-mas Party - Don't Have A Great Time
by PartyFan

Normally, being a fan of parties, I relish any excuse (or no excuse at all) to throw or attend one. The office Christmas party is one event, though, that has very little upside and a lot of potential downside, so I usually try to avoid them if I can. Unfortunately, while attendance is rarely mandatory, social customs and other pressures frequently mean you have to go. Even the most determined eventually wind up attending one. One of my past employers always gave out the Christmas bonuses at such a party, and while no one actually believed he would withhold the bonus of someone who didn't attend, they didn't believe it strongly enough to test the theory! So, make the best of it, have a good time if you can - just don't have a great time.


The impressions you make may have lasting repercussions in the workplace. I'm not just talking about getting roaring drunk and dancing on tables, or Xeroxing parts of your anatomy best left covered, although that certainly would have impact. Much more subtle events can have effects for months to come. Here's a few tips to minimize the potential risks, while still managing to enjoy yourself. No need to suffer, just for suffering's sake, it is a party after all. Just don't overdo it.

Good cheer is a wonderful thing to bring, but don't be too enthusiastic about it. Laughing too loudly or too often, overdoing the personal charm, or otherwise goofing around can make you seem frivolous. Frivolous workers don't get serious assignments. No need to be a buzz kill, but stay away from over the top behaviors and jokes - especially the risque. If you wouldn't feel comfortable saying it at an office meeting, it is probably a good idea not to say it at the party. If the joke someone tells you is really funny, don't be afraid to guffaw, but polite chuckles are better, especially if the jokes aren't that funny.

Moderation with the booze is key, and avoidance altogether might be your best option. If you don't drink alcohol for whatever reason, you are ahead of the game. If you do drink, make sure you don't go past a pleasant but mild buzz. Alcohol lowers the inhibitions, making it more likely you'll do something silly. People who have been drinking also have a tendency to be much louder than the sober, and this can be quite annoying, so even if you don't do anything you wouldn't do sober, you may give a bad impression without realizing it.


For some reason, there is always someone who will want to pour the booze into you, don't let them! Sip slowly. If the bar is self-serve, mix your drinks a little weaker than normal for you. Drink something non-alcoholic in between your cocktails. A great trick to fend off that person who seems determined to get you drunk is a mock-tail - something that looks like the cocktails you are drinking, but without the booze. Rum and coke your thing? Have a few plain cokes - but throw a wedge of lime in there so it looks like a Cuba Libre. Clear sodas (club, lemon-lime) are wonderful for this, the only way to tell it isn't a gin or vodka tonic is to taste it. Keep a few appropriate stock phrases at the ready: "I'm still working on this one, thanks!" and "No, thank you, I'm driving" usually work well.

One area you can indulge in safely is food. Holiday overeating is almost traditional, and making a pig of yourself is mostly expected and overlooked. If the spread is anywhere near decent, and it usually is, go ahead and stuff your face. So long as you mind your table manners, don't pile things on your plate approaching record altitudes, or get caught sneaking food into your pockets or purse for later consumption, you won't get much more than a stray joking comment, and no one will be talking about your appetite in January. Take reasonable servings, and go ahead and go back to the buffet eight, nine, a hundred times.


Try to avoid talking shop, although a certain amount of this is unavoidable, and try to mix and mingle with people you don't normally see much of at work. There is a natural tendency to clique up, and hang out with people who are familiar, but you'll probably enjoy yourself more if you aren't hearing the same stories from the same faces you see every day. Use the opportunity for a little informal networking, but keep it casual, or you might come off as overly anxious about your job, or just mildly annoying. There is almost always one person in the office who thinks they are everybody's friend, and most of the office can't stand them - don't be that person!

Last, but not least, don't be a pest to the opposite sex, and keep any potential romances exactly that - potential. Keep your flirting casual, or don't flirt at all. Be aware of signals, and if your casual flirting isn't going anywhere, stop. Serious flirting should probably be saved until a better time and place. If you really hit it off with someone, go ahead and make a date (assuming inter-office romance isn't forbidden in your circumstances), then you can pursue it in a more appropriate venue. Don't get caught necking in the hall, nothing can spoil your professional image like being seen behaving like a teenager. Behaving like a teenager can be fun, is certainly OK in certain circumstances, and I'm all for it, but getting caught at it when it isn't appropriate could be ruinous.

Don't let me scare you too badly. You probably already knew most of this stuff, and can carry it off well. Keep these tips in mind, but do try and relax and enjoy yourself. No one wants to see you bored or uptight, and I'm sure you don't want to *be* bored and uptight. Have a good time - just not a great time.

A Bachelor's Guide To Gift Wrapping

A Bachelor's Guide To Gift Wrapping
by PartyFan


I know I am posting this article early. No self-respecting bachelor, or self-loathing one for that matter, has even thought about going out to buy gifts. The possibilities of an online purchase may have flirted with you, but have more than likely stayed right there at the flirting stage. I'm sure when it comes down to the wire, you will manage to remember a few of the things I'm about to tell you, or at least be able to find this article again - even though you won't bookmark it. (Google isn't just for porn!)


I'm going to presume that you are forgoing the traditional bachelor cheats like buying your gifts at stores that offer a free or low cost wrapping service, buying pre-wrapped items, giving a card or other goodies easily stuffed in a decorative envelope, or using gift bags. If you were going to cheat like that, you wouldn't be needing my advice. You want to do it yourself, for whatever reason. More than likely the reason is you want to impress somebody, and it is also quite probable that that somebody is a female you think is cute.


OK. So what is a bachelor to do? I have heard it said that one can get through life quite handily by merely following quotes from either _The Godfather_ or _Caddyshack_, but in this case I think we can't go wrong with Clint Eastwood: "Man's got to know his limitations." If you are a fumble-fingered klutz, you are going to want to keep things real basic and simple. If you aren't, you'll probably still want to keep things real basic and simple.


Most of us have seen and unwrapped a few gifts by this time in our lives, so you probably have the basic concept. Gift goes in a box, with padding if necessary. Box gets wrapped in pretty paper. Ribbon or other ornamentation is applied to the wrapped box to jazz it up. There is nothing wrong about going with this simple tried and true formula.

Here are a few places that will tell you how to do it right:

eHow Article: How to Wrap a Gift
wikiHow Article: How to Wrap a Present
YouTube Video: How to wrap a gift professionally
YouTube Video: How to Gift Wrap a Box


If you want to do something distinctive, yet still stay in the basic and simple safety zone, here's a unique idea I ran across in of all places, the library. Get a clear glass jar with a cork top, large enough to hold the gift. They sell these at most department or big box stores, and you can probably find them elsewhere at reasonable prices. Cut a round disc of wrapping paper to cover the bottom - remember to put the print side down so it can be seen through the glass. Now line the sides of the jar with wrapping paper, again print side out. Use a small piece of tape to make sure the paper stays in a tube shape, which will help hold it against the sides of the jar. Now you can paint, use magic markers to write or draw, and/or glue doo-dads or glitter, on the outside of the jar. You can do the same to the cork, making sure you don't glue things where they will keep it from still fitting in the jar. You can tie ribbons around the neck of the jar easily, or staple/pin them to the cork. Go nuts! Now put the gift inside, use some padding to keep it from rattling against the glass, and cork it.

The result will be unique, memorable, and hand-made by you, without being very time consuming or difficult. So when you finally get around to buying gifts around December 24th, remember this advice. Or cheat. I have!