Singapore Slings!

I had a great dinner at 801 Franklin (nice restaurant in Huntsville) tonight. Good food and great company, what more can you ask for? Dawn and I have been looking forward to the meal for more than two days. All week we’ve been mentally preparing for it. Lunch was carefully selected to prepare the gastro intestinal landscape for dinner. It’s always sad when you consciously hit the high point of your week. I guess now that we have the rest of the week is downhill.

I said what more can you ask for? Well I’m greedy, so I managed to think of something.

I had some unfinished business with 801 Franklin. The last time we were there it was my birthday, when I ordered their Singapore Sling. When it came out it was a pink girly drink…but one sip and I forgave it. I’ve looked up recipes on the internet a few times since then, but nothing the net hive-mind has suggested has been nearly as tasty. This weekend I tried one recipe from a bartender handbook that included sloe gin, which I hadn’t tried before. Even though the drink recipe was a failure, as soon as I tasted the sloe gin I knew it was part of the 801 Franklin recipe. Since then I’ve been making a concerted effort to replicate the 801 Franklin Singapore sling. It has required diligent toil, every night I’ve made two Singapore Slings and recorded each attempts recipe as I’ve slowly mutated it. Tonight, after I ordered my actual 801 Franklin Singapore Sling I asked the bartender if she would mind sharing her recipe. She happily complied! It turned out that my most recent attempt was only ½ an ounce off on the sweet and sour mix. My diligent toil was paying off! I include the actual recipe here for my own future reference:

Singapore Sling
1 oz Bombay Sapphire
½ oz Sloe Gin
1 oz Sweet & Sour Mix
½ oz Cherry Brandy

I say if you’re going to drink a girly drink then at least half the ingredients should be gin based.

The Other Strangeness
On the way into work this morning I caught a fragment of a strange local news story. It simply said that the City of Huntsville had given an award for recycling to a homeless woman who lives under the I-565 overpass. That was it. No other details.

The story has been gnawing at my mind ever since. I need more details! I feel that I need to better understand her situation to know what my response to the story should be. It is suppose to be 15 degrees outside tonight. If the lady isn’t happy about being homeless then the city showing up and giving her a certificate for recycling instead of some sort of help seems like a pretty dick move. On the other hand, perhaps it’s possible that she chooses to be homeless and the city wanted to recognize her efforts anyway. It’s not like having a mailing address is some sort of requirement for civic pride. Which is it!?!?

Fortunately I found slightly more informative version of the story. The woman’s name is Missy “Lynn” Morvant. She has been living homeless in Madison County for the last 25 years. In addition to the award for recycling they also gave her a backpack full of food, condiments, and lotions. I think the most interesting part of the story is that she started recycling around her homeless camp because it “looked so trashy everywhere. It got on my nerves."

I still feel like the brief news clip could provide more details. I want to know what lead up to them deciding to give her the award. In my head I imagine someone from the city had regularly been visiting the homeless camp and one day looked around and said something like “you know what, I really like what you’ve done with the place.”

I’m sure I’m coming off as uncompassionate and cruel. I don’t mean to. I actually think it’s a pretty cool thing for the city to do. I am still just reacting to the way the story is presented. I would have thought they would have gone through the effort to provide some context, but they seem pretty cool with leaving it as a blurb with no obvious explanations. I don't think the news knew how to handle the story.

If you watch the video about the story on the link above don’t expect to see her receive the award or anything. Evidently the news folks only know one way to cover homeless people stories. It's a lot of slow pans across their tents and talking about dead cats.