A fine evening.

Last night I finally got another opportunity to make my chicken Alfredo, and I must say, it was quite possibly the best batch of the stuff I've ever made.

The chicken was a little bit different this time. Usually I would go for fresh chicken, cut into chunks, and then sauteed. Once cooked through, in would go the butter, cream, cheese, and fettucine.

This time however, we'd gotten a killer deal on a rotisserie chicken from the nearby Costco. $5 for a whole chicken is rather tough to pass up. So I took the breasts of the chicken, pulled them apart, and then took the shredded chicken and tossed it in the saute pan with a whole stick of butter, a couple cloves of minced garlic, salt, pepper, garlic powder, and onion powder.

The chicken, by itself, was already incredibly delicious once it had been cooking in the butter for a while, and soaked up all kinds of wonderful fat and flavor. Once tossed together with the pasta, a pint of heavy cream, and about 5 oz of grated Asiago cheese, and then simmered for a while to thicken, it produced a rich pasta dish that felt like it was making love to your mouth.

Now, to cap the night with a cocktail, I continued my experimentation with cachaca. I havent' had the budget for my regular trips to Hola lately, and when I found that the East Bend Liquor Store stocks the stuff for about the price of two caipirinhas at Hola, I figured I would give a shot at making my own caipirinhas.

The first experiment was atrocious. For one, I couldn't find any decent limes at the shops we went to that day, so I wound up having to settle for lime juice. For two, I just plain fucked up the recipe. Not enough lime juice, too much brown sugar, too much cachaca. It was unpleasant to drink, and neither myself, nor my drinking buddy, were able to finish them. There were brief moments that almost tasted like the real thing, but mostly it was awful.

So last night, I basically gave up on trying to do a traditional caipirinha, with the intention of trying again at a later date with some real limes perhaps. Instead, I wound up doing something similar, only this time, I cut back a hair on the brown sugar, only used about a shot of cachaca, and finished it off with some 7-up.

The resulting mix was fantastic, the same kind of refreshing, mellow, "I-can-drink-this-all-day" feeling you get from a caipirinha, it just doesn't actually taste much of anything like one.