Home Alone, plus #49: Make My Own Liqueur - check!

Roasted lunch

Sometimes, it's good to come down with a cold. I think I needed a little time by myself these last few days to rest, take care of myself, and get myself ready for spending the holidays in good spirits.

I'll often use a sick day to get a few miserable tasks done. For instance, when you can't smell anything, you might as well clean out the fridge and empty the compost bucket. As a reward, you can make popcorn for lunch and watch the Food Channel. Yesterday, though, during my fridge-binge, I used up the contents of my vegetable drawer to make a roasted lunch of cauliflower, fingerling potatoes and carrots with a little olive oil and salt and pepper, with some day-old bread. I exchanged the Food Channel for a steno pad and pen to jot down my final pre-Christmas to-do's.

The sun froze in the cold blue sky just long enough to brighten my lunch. Just look at that mound of vegetables. (My eyes were bigger than my stomach.) It was a lovely afternoon.

Not pictured: my ever-growing bag of used Kleenex

On another day when I was staying away from work with a cold this past spring, I got cabin fever and went out to Second Look Books and picked up a book on making liqueur. It was printed in the late 1970s and the first few pages promote the other books in the series, such as indoor gardening and how to decorate your home with macrame.

Since then, I've been dreaming and scheming about all the things I want to macerate. It sounds deadly, but it's not. Yesterday was the day to pop open and twice-filter my first little liqueur project: Kahlua. Just in time for Christmas. Every day for the last two-and-a-half weeks, I'd been shaking up the contents, looking forward to this moment. And now, all that good, hearty shaking paid off. Even though my taste buds are a little wonky at the moment, I could still taste the rich vanilla and coffee flavors.

I used vodka and instant espresso in this version, along with a split vanilla bean and simple syrup, per the instructions of my book, though I was tempted by many other version of this on the internet. Tasty.

Merry Christmas!