Life’s too short…

Here are some ways to ensure the cliché becomes reality.  In their latest issue, the fine folks at Esquire magazine have provided a list of 25 things worth shortening your life for.  In response here are the top 10 from their list I have tried (or want to).  Can you tell which is which?  Hey, maybe these would be on your list?  Maybe this will inspire you into living your dream?

 

Giving Someone a Kidney

You only need one. Hopefully.

 

Black Cat Espresso from Intelligentsia

 

A triple. Note the exceedingly heavy body, with chocolate, caramel, and dried-fruit notes. Also note that you’re vibrating. That means it’s working.

 

Butter 

Nuff said.

 Smoking Cubans (in Cuba)

Until night, it’s Guilt City, Havana. Especially from the top of the Parque Central hotel, rising high and new out of the near ruins, with its rooftop pool and bar and rich Germans browning in the last of the sun that’s been cooking the poor streetbounds since morning. After dark, it’s easier to forget what surrounds you, because you can’t see the poverty; only the hotels stand out, like stars against the night, foreign currency having trumped the day’s electricity rations. In the distance: the historic Hotel Nacional, where you wandered this afternoon on the lazy hunt for cigars. Not Cohibas — every turista down here smokes Cohibas — but a box of Sancho Panzas, cheap and creamy and drawing enough heady smoke to begin choking out the last strains of ill feeling. The rum assists — in mojitos, drunk through straws stuck in a pile of wet sugar at the bottom — as do the cheeseburgers, grind-house bloody, because there are no surgeons general to mind your store in Cuba. Nobody cares if you die down here. And at last, just now, spitting out the end of your night’s fourth cigar, ordering another rummy drink, your belly full and warm with still-kicking meat, you don’t care, either. – Rob Storey

  

Oysters Mosca at Mosca’s in Avondale, Louisiana

A baked casserole brimming with two dozen oysters in garlic and butter with a breaded topping. A night ender

  

Fugu (Poisonous Blowfish)

Specifically, the fugu tasting menu at Morimoto in New York and Philadelphia.

  

Playing Tackle Football…

…past the age of 25.

 

Duck-Fat Potatoes

• 1 pound small red new potatoes (about 16), with strip peeled around center
• 4 tablespoons duck fat ($3 for 7 ounces; specialty supermarket or dartagnan.com)

Over low heat, melt duck fat in deep skillet with tightly fitting lid. Raise temperature to get hot. Run potatoes under water, letting excess drain through colander. Transfer to skillet (water and hot fat create splatter but also cooking steam; potatoes must be in one layer with enough room to roll around) and quickly cover. Shake pan slightly to coat potatoes and cook until deep golden and tender, about 18 minutes. Season abundantly with coarse salt and ground black pepper and serve.  Paired with…

 

The Carpetbagger Steak

Topped with blue cheese, a fried oyster, Hollandaise, and caramelized onions , washed down with…

 

A “Three-Bagger” of Crown

Three strong rye-whiskey cocktails in a row at a bar with the perfect seedy charm.

My number is 8.  I have, in fact, tried or done 8 of the 10.  But which 8 are the 8?  How many have you tried/done?  What would your list look like?  What would inspire you enough to try even though you know it would shorten your life?  These are simply 10 from Esquires list.  There are a few more I would add but hey…additional blog fodder.