[Sca-cooks] Absinthe

[Christiane]

I said:
> One or two glasses of it, drunk slowly, make me feel very floaty. It's less of a feeling of being drunk than high, but no hallucinations or anything like that. Although I would imagine if I drank glass after glass, day after day, I would experience thujone poisoning, but more likely it would be cirrhosis from all of the alcohol. I don't have it very often because I am not a big fan of anise or licorice flavoring. 

Jadwiga replied: 
That would be reasonable: the active ingredients are a nervine-- a mild 
nerve poison. Slightly more effective on the central nervous system, in 
a different way, than alcohol. 

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Being involved in the goth "scene," I've encountered a lot of would-be Oscar Wilde-types thinking that absinthe is just as essential an accessory as a top hat, cane, and velvet frock coat. Some of them brew their own (usually by steeping the mugwort, artemisia, anise, etc. in vodka). I've had some that was hideous, and some that was more than quite palatable. For awhile a friend was importing some Sebor from the Czech Republic, which is OK but not as nice as some of the homemade stuff a friend in California. 

If you want to have some of the absinthe ritual experience without the worries of thujone, try Pernod (which is absinthe without the wormwood). Do as the old men in "A Year in Provence" do, put the sugar cube on a slotted spoon suspended above your glass, and slowly pour the water through the spoon until the sugar dissolves. 

Now, to drag this back on period and on topic, anyone have any idea how old the oldest of the herbed liqueurs drunk today is? A lot of them seem to have been invented by monks ... Frangelico, for example.

Gianotta