Months of outstanding tiki cocktails culminated in Quato Lives. A simple but ultra delicious bevvy where I used the humble, misunderstood, and seasonal loquat with housemade spiced rum, and good ol’ coconut milk. Oh, and bananum. Denise suggested to finish it with a spritz of blackstrap, and voila, hall of legends status. Never underestimate the power of bananum. At this point, I’ll have it inscribed onto my tombstone or at least on my urn. “Here lies a simple bartender and family man, he wrote a few really weird books too, but this oddball’s real claim to fame is bananum.” Then there will be an etching of a bottle and a banana. In reality, my actual final request is to have a proper Viking burial. My body floated out on a still to be named body of water inside a canoe atop a pile of kindling and sticks and a dousing of kerosene for good measure. I’ll need someone to shoot a flaming arrow into the whole mess to send me off to Valhalla. I have no idea who will get my comic collection, probably Sean. I’ll state in my will that any doubles he’ll have to give to Daniel. He’ll be excited to get that first issue, first printing of Preacher as well as the Incredible Hulk #181 with the first appearance of Wolverine. Oh yes, Daddy’s got some great ones in there. I could go on for days.

Ok, that went to a weird place. I only know one person in my life with any archery skills, my deer slaying crazy as fuck buddy, Clark, from Hinesburg, VT. Back to Quato Lives. At some point we were just pumping out amazing tiki drinks. Some quite legendary in our own minds. Shit. It all started with the Hummingbird in January, then bled into the rest of the early part of the year with Tooger’s Revenge and Nobody’s Fool, shit, even End Zone is cool as hell. At one point we had a seasonal tiki section on the menu and we weren’t even in what I call a proper tiki season at all (fall).

I’m sad to report, the feces touch is strong now. The kitchen kicked down some of these miraculous raspberry nectarines last week and I soaked them in some overproof Wray and Nephew white rum. It’s taken days to filter it all. If you’re reading this, B.J., here’s the link to preorder the Spinzall 2.0. The infused rum came out great, a beautiful pink, but any R&D attempts ended up flat and boring. I’ve got some almond amazake orgeat that seems like it would be fantastic. And now that I think about it, we’ve got liters of noyaux made with O.F.T.D. How it all comes together is another thing. The Wray and Nephew is a pretty uncooperative product. Very funky and strong. It’s possible I’m adding too much of it to whatever I’m making. I can sense another great one around the corner and the menu feels naked without a rum cocktail. I’m lucky Angel came up with his new one. The Umami Issues is almost on death’s door as the Koji Kid’s umeshu from last year is waning. I’m feeling the pressure big time now. Ah, but there’s corn now. I’m thinking of using the Koji Kid’s idea of making corn pudding out of the spent cobs. I made some interesting corn salt last year and there’s a traditional Mexican drink called Atole de Elote that we sort of skirted around a little while ago. I think it would be great with mezcal and I also think Angel would be super impressed if we could somehow pull it off. Maybe all I really care about is impressing him and Denise. Is that weird? They seem to think highly of me even though I’m a goddam scatterbrained disaster. Some cool ass clay mugs to serve it in would be awesome. Again, are you reading this B.J.? we need you, dude.

I can’t seem to find many recipes illustrating how to make the pudding by using the spent cobs. Calling the Koji Kid, calling the Koji Kid. Are you out there? I’m wondering where that idea originated. Also how long do you boil/simmer and how long does it take to get it nice and thick? Do you also add corn juice? Was it from a cookbook or direct from the depths of your mad scientist’s mind? What would be your version of a bat signal? This picture of a blown up spore projected onto the clouds?

Too many questions. Yeah, corn, cinnamon, corn pudding, vanilla, mezcal, corn salt, corn chunks…More corngeat maybe…They say the corn broth itself is heavy with umami. Maybe no mezcal? Maybe this is a job for Mellow Corn?