The Perfect Drinking Game - Downton Abbey

"I'm a woman, Mary. I can be as contrary as I choose." Lady Grantham

And so we drank.

Herbal tea, that is. Sunday night was the third episode of the second season of Downton Abbey aired, and as Brittany and I were in the same room on this joyous occasion it only seemed right that we have a viewing party. But what would be the theme?

'Of course!' Thought Brittany, 'An Edwardian tea. With tiny cupcakes and sandwiches. Where's the butter? Do you have any margarine?'

'Of course!' Said I, 'The tea is the thing! A lovely Victorian tea party.'

'Edwardian.'

'Gesundheit.'

While scouring the internet for the perfect recipes to use, we came across other articles about parties hosted by other Downton lovers. One thing caught our eye- a drinking game. The rules were simple. When Lady Grantham, played by the incredibly talented Maggie Smith, said a witty one-liner, everybody took a drink.

This amused us, but we had no wish to die of alcohol poisoning, as those who laughingly thought up the game before must have done. Let us now bow our heads in silence for their departure from this world...

It was decided that the cakes should be vegan and the frosting too. The sandwiches were decidedly not, as they were made with butter and a bit of brie. I refer you to Lady Grantham on this one.

We scuttled about, creating our sandwiches and making our cakes. Then we positioned ourselves in front of the television, and raised our mugs.

***

I shall now give you, dear reader, a play-by-play of the events that took place.

"He's going to die! No, sorry, I meant his mother. Definitely his mother."
"Dead. Dead...sooo dead."
"I knew that was going to happen. It was just like Gilmore Girls when Lorelai sings karaoke and Luke walks in."

The Importance of Eating Muffins

JACK: How you can sit there, calmly eating muffins, when we are in this horrible trouble, I can’t make out. You seem to me to be perfectly heartless.

ALGERNON:  Well, I can’t eat muffins in an agitated manner. The butter would probably get on my cuffs. One should always eat muffins quite calmly. It is the only way to eat them.

JACK: I say it’s perfectly heartless your eating muffins at all, under the circumstances.

ALGERNON: When I am in trouble, eating is the only thing that consoles me. Indeed, when I am in really great trouble, as anyone who knows me intimately will tell you, I refuse everything except food and drink. At the present moment I am eating muffins because I am unhappy. Besides, I am particularly fond of muffins.

- Oscar Wilde, TheImportance of Being Earnest

Muffins are irresistible to everyone, except celiacs, masochists, and people of that sort. Why else would a celebrated wit such as Oscar Wilde choose the muffin over an abundance of British tea time treats? What about bread and butter, teacake, or those queer, porous crumpets? Clearly they are all inferior.

There comes a time each year when I crave pumpkin. (Some call it “fall.”) My seasonal instincts are telling me to eat those bulbous orange squashes that grace the entrances of every supermarket. I thought a lot about making pumpkin muffins. I knew I needed to make pumpkin muffins or I would think about them day and night until that thought circuit became a reality. 

This vegan pumpkin coconut muffin recipe is adapted from a Mark Bittman recipe clip from the New York Times site. (Watch the video and catch the Milan Kundera joke at the end.) Rather than the usual half all-purpose, half-whole wheat approach, Bittman uses whole wheat pastry flour and a cup of produce puree. I veganized this recipe by replacing the stick of butter with a half cup of coconut oil, which I also rubbed all over my skin. Try not to get it on your cuffs.

Some say the best way to prevent muffin-provoked violence is to make enough for everyone. This recipe makes 12-14 muffins and one small bowl of vegan pumpkin pudding.

Vegan Pumpkin Coconut Muffins

2 ½ cups whole wheat pastry flour

¾ cup maple syrup

2 teaspoons aluminum-free baking powder

½ teaspoon aluminum-free baking soda

½ teaspoon salt

1 cup pumpkin puree (Bake and puree peeled pumpkin or buy it canned like a square. Your choice.)

½ cup coconut milk

½ cup melted coconut oil

¼ cup unsweetened coconut flakes

1 teaspoon cinnamon

½ teaspoon ginger

¼ teaspoon nutmeg

Preheat to 375 degrees.

Combine the pastry flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt in a mixing bowl and stir. In another bowl, combine the pumpkin puree, coconut milk, coconut oil, and shredded coconut. Gently blend the two mixtures together and keep in mind that over-mixing will result in unpleasantly tough muffins. Grease a muffin tin with coconut oil or fill the tin with muffin cups. Pour in the batter.

Place the tin in the preheated oven and bake for 20-25 minutes.

As you wait, eat the remainder of the batter with a spatula. Rename the recipe “Vegan Pumpkin Pudding” and call it a night.

I try so hard not to look like one of those people who stuff their mouths incessantly, but it still seems like whenever anyone speaks to me I have a mouthful of corn chips. Call me Chipmunk Cheeks, but what can be done? Could I grow my own self-control with a green tablet in a tub of water and use the resulting spongy-thing to soak up my unbridled addictions? Probably not.

The Most Intense Vegetable

“The beet is the murderer returned to the scene of the crime. The beet is what happens when the cherry finishes with the carrot. The beet is the ancient ancestor of the autumn moon, bearded, buried, all but fossilized; the dark green sails of the grounded moon-boat stitched with veins of primordial plasma; the kite string that once connected the moon to the Earth now a muddy whisker drilling desperately for rubies.”

-        -   Tom Robbins, the opening of Jitterbug Perfume

Is it possible to love beets more than Tom Robbins? For a few weeks, the beet was my obsession. It began with a quinoa salad in a quaint Quebec café, continuing passionately into bowl upon bowl of borscht, both warm-and-creamy and raw-and-gushing.

Robbins calls the beet “passionate,” perhaps because it resembles an uprooted organ hairy with arteries. Cut mercilessly into the beet and it will dribble magenta unicorn blood upon your impeccable white tablecloths and imitation granite. The scene of the crime will not be pretty sight and you will most certainly be caught red-handed. The evidence will be the ink on your fingerprints.

I ate my beets raw, from the skin to the flesh. Some say that the skin of the beet contains potent cancer-destroying compounds, so skip the peeling process in this raw beet salad. You know what other vegetable I love? Kale. I needed to include that somehow. This recipe is for one, because I never sit down and eat four servings of salad by myself.

Intense Beet Salad

2 leaves of kale, rinsed and dried
Squirt of lemon juice
1/4 teaspoon sea salt
1 teaspoon of olive oil
1/4 teaspoon chili powder
1 handful of beet greens
1/4 cup grated beets, washed and unpeeled
1 handful of golden raisins
1 tablespoon of sunflower seeds


Viciously rip the kale into bit sized pieces and drop them in a bowl. Add lemon juice, sea salt, olive oil, and chili powder. Work the dressing into the kale with your bare hands so that it gets a bit wilted, otherwise it will probably slice your gums open. Mix in the beet greens and grated beets. Top with raisins and sunflower seeds.


The chili powder, raisins, and lemon give it a sweet-sour-spicy flavor that I find delicious. (Disclaimer: I'm also the sort of girl who would put Sriracha on ice cream just to get conflicting sensations. If you presented me with a standard garden salad of iceberg lettuce and chopped tomatoes, I would probably fall asleep with my face marinating in the ranch dressing. Perhaps I am an intense vegetable myself.)

Advice from a Caterpillar

“One side will make you grow taller, and the other side will make you grow shorter.”

“One side of what? The other side of what?” thought Alice to herself.

“Of the mushroom,” said the Caterpillar, just as if she had asked it out loud; and in another moment it was out of sight.

Alice remained looking thoughtfully at the mushroom for a minute, trying to make out which were the two sides of it; and, as it was perfectly round, she found this a very difficult question. However, at last she stretched her arms round it as far as they would go, and broke off a bit of the edge with each hand.

“And now which is which?” she said to herself, and nibbled a little of the right-hand bit to try the effect. The next moment she felt a violent blow underneath her chin: it had struck her foot!

- Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland

As humans, we sometimes eat fungus when prompted by cheeky insect larvae. And we sometimes eat them just because it’s tasty. I imagine Alice must have felt like that lonesome, hungry cave man that picked the first (poisonous?) mushroom and thought, Should I consume this? Or perhaps she felt like Eve with the serpant coiled beside her ankle hissing, “Just eat it, it’ll be awesome!”

Outside of the US, where “don’t touch it, it’s deadly” is the wild mushroom mantra, foraging mushrooms is an international pastime for friends of the fungus.

For instance, last year in Italy, eighteen mushroom zealots were killed mushroom scouting in the uncharted Italian backwoods. In most cases, the deadly dapperling and false skullcap were not to blame. These foragers had no idea what they were doing. Rampant mushroom lust led one elderly woman to plunge to her death. A wounded man holding a bag of frozen carrots to his forehead famously admitted at the crime scene, “A caterpillar told us to do it.”

So don’t be afraid to love the mushroom. You’re probably not an idiot. Here’s a recipe, adapted from Barefoot Contessa's Sauteed Mushrooms.

Basically Harmless Sauteed Wild Mushrooms*

2 pounds mixed wild mushrooms (I used cremini, shiitaki, and oyster)

½ cup olive oil

1 cup chopped shallots (or 4 large shallots)

4 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil

Sea salt and pepper to taste

6 cloves of garlic

1 teaspoon dried thyme

1 cup flat-leaf parsley

Clean the mushrooms somehow. Slice away the stems and keep the caps. You might chop them up if you have larger mushrooms. I, however, did not.

Heat the olive oil in a large frying pan. Sautee the shallots until they become translucent. Then add the olive oil, mushrooms, salt, and pepper. Continue cooking and stirring until they look juicy. Add the garlic and stir. After about two minutes, mix the parsley and thyme into the mushrooms and serve.

*No Italians were harmed in the making of this side dish.