"rare" news and stories

Dancing Spirits Elixirs Golden Djinn Gin is 62.7% abv. / 125.4 proof. Bottled as a Private Reserve – Distillers Strength Gin, it's uncut by water and strong as sin. Only its exceptional smoothness keeps this incredible powerhouse of a spirit from being overwhelming. In Islamic mythology, the Djinn are fiery spirits, and this is one fiery spirit., but magically tempered with the dancing botanicals.

That's right, this is not your traditional London Dry Gin, but one of those new, super premium, in your face, brash as brass, strong as a super hero, golden gins. It starts as a quintuple distilled dry gin made in the traditional fashion with juniper, coriander, angelica root, and a plethora of other botanicals. Then it is infused with even more botanicals which amp up the aroma and flavor, and gives it a deep, rich gold color. This is one of those rare, difficult to track down, incredible spirits that can change your life with a sip.

As the label says, "A vibrant and bold, golden, old style gin, infused with piney Yugoslavian juniper berries, fragrant Zanzibarian green cardamom pods, smoky Nepalese black cardamom pods, intense Indian turmeric, tart Syrian sumac berries, complex Jamaican allspice, herbaceous Indian celery seed, floral Zanzibarian black peppercorns, sweet Vietnamese cinnamon, fragrant Indonesian nutmeg, floral Indian kala jeera, and pungent Ceylon cloves."

I love lobster. I'm not unusual in this and many others do as well, but not everyone. I think that it is a love/hate food and you immediately know which side of the fence you are on. Last month I was in mid-coast Maine on vacation. I love the area, visit there several times a year, and am planning on moving there in the next few years. Maine is known for lobster, so of course that's what we had to have for dinner.

I went to my favorite lobster purveyor, Jeff of the Oyster River Lobster Company, to pick up a half dozen or so for dinner for me and my guest. As I was grubbing around in the tank helping myself to the big bugs I saw a flash of brilliant blue. Jeff's son, Josh, ran over to help me out and brought out a living jewel, Mr. Blu Genes (see pic). It was an unusual and very rare blue lobster that they were keeping as a mascot. Blue lobsters are found only once in a blue moon, actually the odds are even greater than that. Only one in 3-4 million lobsters are blue, they are even more rare than calico lobsters, but not as rare as a live red/orange lobster, the albino, yellow or the elusive two-tone lobster. My buddy and I played around with the cute little guy for awhile, posing and taking pics, before returning him to his tank.

Then we headed back home with his cousins for a feast of steamed, grilled, caked and chowdered crustaceans to carry us over for a day or two. If you would like to check out some more cool lobster pics you can always go to the U of Maine lobster of the month page for more tasty looking, interesting and weird, deep sea creepy crawlies.

A lobsterman in Maine caught a very rare two-tone lobster this week. The little critter was split right down the middle, with one half a typical greenish color and the other half a bright red tone. The odds of finding such a lobster are between 1 in 50 million and 1 in 100 million. The reason that such an unusual color scheme is even possible is that each side of a lobster actually develops independently; in this case, one side simply lacked the blue pigment that would have darkened the red side.

The lobsterman, Alan Robinson, donated the lobster to the Mount Desert Oceanarium in Maine, which has only had 3 two-tone lobsters in its 35 year existence.

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I had almost forgotten about an old New Yorker profile of David Karp, Fruit Detective, until Bad Things posted a link to it along with a new Karp article on heirloom strawberries. As his title suggests, Karp is an investigator of fruits, a scout for specialty stores and a writer. By all accounts, he's very passionate, some would say crazed, about finding and tasting rare or outstanding fruit specimens. The strawberry piece finds him following a horticulturist around fields outside of Miami in search of new crossbreeds of prized musk strawberries. The photo of Karp comes from a short Smithsonian interview, wherein he explains the pith helmet, among other things.

A family of cousins went under the knife to have their stomachs removed. The procedure wasn't done to cause them to lose weight, as it is in gastric bypass surgery, but to prevent them from developing what would most likely have been fatal stomach cancer. The particular cancer that runs in their family is very rare and, due to a genetic mutation that they all inherited from a common grandmother, there was a 70% chance that they would develop it. After seeing parents, aunts and uncles die at young ages from the cancer, the decision was one that all the cousins wanted to make.

The surgery involved the removal of not only the stomach, but the surrounding lymph nodes. The esophagus was attached to the intestine directly. Because digestion and nutrient absorption occurs in the intestine, the cousins can still eat and live healthy lives, but they must eat very small amounts, very frequently and often have difficulty putting weight on. There are some foods that no longer agree with them, like ice cream, while other foods are easier to digest, such as small pieces of meat. Even with eating challenges to face, they have all been much happier since their surgeries at the end of 2004, which gave them piece of mind even as it took their stomachs.

As one of the family members, Bill Bradfield, put it: "We're all going to die of something, but I know I won't die of stomach cancer."

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