Nettdata recently accused me via rep of buying a vodka based upon the looks of the bottle. This was my PM response, because he was wrong and I am right: Spoiler Some of the best vodkas I've had came in plastic containers. What got me sold on Kru was when Costco was doing a sampling, as they usually do (yaaa!!! Free booze!!!), except the marketing idea was to compare Kru to "generic vodka" (it tasted like smirnoff). They didn't show the bottle so I had no idea what I was trying. I'm a vodka nerd, like a lot of people are beer or wine nerds, so I usually have 4-5 different handles of vodka on hand for different drinks. Taste is everything, and you'd be shocked how much different vodkas vary. Kru put itself ahead of that middle of the road occupied by names like Svedka and Grey Goose and Crystal Head (you said bottle means most; sorry, bottle ain't making up for that crap). It's just slightly more refined, more "I can happily drink this neat" than those middle-of-the-road names, and based upon its price the idea is to compete with them. What shocks me is that their marketing focuses on the bottle. Put it something else, not a gimmick, and I think it's the next Titos. If only the assholes who made Titos didn't pollute all of Austin. When my wife asks me whats for dinner, and there's nothing in the fridge or freezer, I'll happily go to nature with the gun and get some jackrabbit or squirrel or raccoon. I'll usually blacken season them in a pan and then serve them with bbq sauce. Nothing of it for us, but I know this is "unusual" for most. It's just normal for us. Like a delicacy, hidden right in front of you. Just like Kru vodka. Focus: What is "usual" for you that you think is about time people get turned onto? (For example, I've never had The Kraken rum, or most spiced rums for that matter; are they really all they're supposed to be?)
You missed my point... most people don't know a good vodka if it up and bit them in the face. For example, Grey Goose? Pure shit, but a killer marketing campaign. My point was that most cheap vodkas are more than adequate for what people use them for, and you have no reason to hang your head in shame for buying based on a cool bottle. Most expensive vodkas are shit and not at all worth the price people pay for them.
Game meat in general. I go to a wild game dinner every year the weekend before Thanksgiving with my dad, brother, my dad's friend, and his son. We make a whole day out of it and I've never missed a year my entire life. The menu includes venison, bear, wild boar, rabbit, pheasant, beaver, buffalo, caribou and usually some exotic meat like emu, fried alligator, or something else. The meat comes in all sorts of forms from sausages, to chili, to bacon. I tell my idiot yuppie friends about it and they recoil in horror. Those fucking philistines wouldn't know quality meat if it fucked them in the butt. Chicken? Farm raised pork? Forget it. Ive also made a point to tweet a picture of my meal to PETA over the past few years, which probably doesn't help my case, but fuck them anyway. Oh and the vodka debate is easy: All vodka tastes like rubbing alcohol. See? That wasn't difficult. Bump.
I wouldn't say Grey Goose is pure shit. Also depends on its price. $45 CAD? No thanks. When I was in LA, it was $20. Different story. But yes, a lot of vodkas do have a killer marketing campaign. What's that vodka that people used to "ball out" with? The one where the bottle is a skull? Yeah, that kind of shit kills me. But it also lets me know as soon as you walk in with it what to expect from meeting you.
Crystal Head vodka. It's co-owned by Dan Akroyd. Absolut, totally not-special Swedish vodka has the longest ever uninterrupted advertising campaign and launched the "vodka revolution" of the 80's. its the third top-selling spirit that there is. Just from a gimmicky bottle and magazine ad series. It's all smoke and mirrors.
Say what you will about their vodka, but their marketing was/is pure genius. So much so I gladly bought their coffee table book.
The irony is that those same yuppie friends that are all into healthy eating don't realize how lean and healthy alot of game is, and so much tastier too. There is a butcher shop by me that has a decent variety of game. Unfortunately its fairly pricey and since its not heavily in demand, alot of it is butchered and then frozen, but its still an amazing change of pace. Give me ground bison or venison any day over ground beef or turkey, and once you've had an Ostrich burger, shit, you'll never want a turkey burger again.
This is the biggest problem with game meat in general, its always sold at a premium. I bought my dad a pack of boar and a pack of venison sausage for Fathers Day and it ran $26, which is steep. Then again it was from a specialty butcher shop, so everything is sold at a premium. The dinner I go to is in the basement of some hick church in New Hampshire and its $25 a ticket and it goes to charity. All the meat is donated directly from the hunters. But you make a really good point, that the meat is always lean and you can rest assured that the animals are not eating some chemical-rich feed.
This is the main reason I hunt and fish. For me, it's not so much about the actual hunt. I mean, it's fun and all, but I'm not doing it to get a trophy, I'm not doing it to test my wits against other animals, and I'm not doing it for the thrill of the kill (Even though I AM a terrifying slayer of humungous deer. Honest). I hunt and fish because I love eating wild game and fish. Fortunately for me, my wife also comes from a family of hunters and loves eating wild game as well, so for the first time in my life I'm with a woman who encourages me to hunt anything I want. I eat what I kill and it's delicious.
I don't know exactly what it's supposed to be, but the Kraken is goddamn delicious. Mix it with some Dr. Pepper or A&W root beer and it's almost like drinking nothing at all. Until you try to stand up and almost face plant through your coffee table, which has never happened to me at all, no sir.
Tito's Vodka is very good for the price it is a pretty good value, it is also gluten free which for some reason is a big deal to my Scottsdale skinny chick crowd. It is getting some market momentum as it should. Also just a side note, if you are drinking redbull and vodka, just get the well vodka and save yourself some money.
I've pimped it on this board before and I will continue to do so - Flor de Cana is some of the best tasting rum ever to be paired with coke. It must be gaining in popularity, when I bought a bottle last week the cashier remarked that it was the fourth one she sold that day. On a related note, for those of you that ever use lime or lemon juice in mixed drinks or anything else - do not bother with the bottled stuff. I do not know what they do to make the bottle stuff so terrible, but nothing can beat the actual juice from the lemon or lime. And it is so easy to keep one in the fridge, they last a couple of weeks with no problem. If it goes bad before you use it up, throw it out and buy a new one next time you want the juice - it's cheap.
Tito's is fucking excellent. Fat kid pro tip- DO NOT mix Three Olives Cake Vodka with the Cranberry Red Bull. It's delicious but it also triggers you into thinking you're burying your face in a tub of pink strawberry icing and slugging it down. The guilt is real.
I don't get the hype of Redbull/Vodka. I tried it once and fell asleep in the bar. Apparently Redbull has no effect on me? I'll throw out a nod for Forty Creek Whisky. This stuff is incredibly smooth and so much better than Crown Royal. Plus it's cheaper. Also, are we limiting this to food and drink? Because if not, I'll also throw a nod to Steinway. In a concert setting, I'll play nothing less. These hands don't touch Yamaha.
Kid's menu's. Sometimes if you're looking for something tasty, not too unhealthy, a decent portion but nothing that will throw off your diet, and you're not in the mood for a salad or a grilled-chicken-something-with-lettuce - fucking kids menu. It may not be whole grains and paleo but it's not going to destroy a diet or anything. Fucking mini corn dogs are the shit.
Fixed that for you... Focus: Like others, I'm a big fan of wild game and getting it myself, but in the bigger picture it's accepting meat (and food in general) that is unfamiliar and/or wasn't packaged in nice, sterile plastic and Styrofoam. You know you could wrap a venison steak up in butcher paper and tell everyone it is beef and they'd love it, but the second some people hear you actually butchered it, or it came out of the woods and not from a cooler at Wal-Mart, and suddenly it is detestable and disgusting. Their loss. Sorta related, I'm into using basic box cutter knives for dressing out small game like rabbits and squirrels. Cheap, easy, and oh so sharp. Try it. On booze, there's a vodka made in Nebraska that I stumbled across a few years ago called Cooper's Chase and it is worth snagging a bottle. We'll call it the Tito's of the Midwest. Great stuff. I also don't get why people pay $20 for a case of Bud Light when a 30-pack of Hamm's is there for $15. I'm not saying Hamm's is a good beer by any means, but the other yellow beer brands are no better to me and definitely not worth the additional cost.
These same people probably have no problem picking out the lobster that's going to be pitched into boiling water for their dining pleasure. For all the press the locavore movement gets - and it's a movement I support - people still don't want their meat to be anything less than cellophaned and injected with red dye. God forbid one of them had to take a free range chicken to a chopping block.
It's kinda like when people found out some horse meat was mixed in with beef at Aldi and other vendors. Horse meat is not that different from beef as far as its nutritional profile, and actually has more iron, but everyone lost their ever loving minds. You would've thought they actually packaged in super AIDS tainted meat the way some people reacted.
That's my exact point there, minus the product misrepresentation part (that isn't good), it's the stigma surrounding anything that isn't beef, pork, or chicken, etc. Getting out of your comfort zone a bit. Speaking of comfort zones, another focus subject is "ethnic" restaurants.... you know, where the server doesn't speak English as a first language and little to nothing is familiar on the menu. Get over whatever is different and get on with enjoying some unique and delicious meals that you'd have otherwise passed by on.
I absolutely don't mind picking a chicken and having someone else kill it so I can eat it. However - For all the fact that I will cheerfully get down on scrubbing in on a case where I have to be arm deep in someone's abdomen, or help retract a vagina for hours on end - I want absolutely nothing to do with animal body parts. I don't know why. I have no idea. But I can't. I vomit. Projectile vomit. It's awful. I can't even do more than clean a scrape on an animal before I start retching. I don't know why. Show me a dead human and I'm like Oh that must've suuuuucked. Show me a dismembered animal? I'm out. Ugh. And I love eating meat. Bison, beef, chicken, pork, I don't like duck because it was super oily when I ate it, kangaroo, whatever. I'll at least try it. Just don't SHOW it to me til it's in the raw prep form.