Fucking Badass Sangria

Ingredients
1 standard size bottle of Merlot
Sweet and sour mix
Sugar
1 Mango
Lemons
Limes
1 Orange
Cherries (in a jar)
Can of crushed pineapple
Sprite

Sangria. It means bloody in Spanish. It's also incredibly fucking tasty. Every year I have a "cocktail of summer" (last year it was the mojito) and, while sangria isn't really a cocktail, it's the selection for this year. It's my fucking tradition, so I do what I want.
Sangria is pretty simple, actually: red wine (or white wine if you're making sangria blanco), fresh fruit, something to add a bit of sweetness, and either brandy or soda. So long as you stick with this simple formula, you can really do whatever you want. Want to use kiwis, grapefruit, and tangerines? Go for it. Honey to sweeten? Shine on you crazy fucking diamond. It's so simple that it must have been invented by drunk people. Like, legitimately drunk people. Just sitting around the hacienda one day, completely shit housed, and someone says, "Dude, let's take all the wine... mix it with all the fruit... some other shit from the cabinet... then, like, fuckin' let it sit there for a while." Drunk brilliance is really the best kind of brilliance.

Why not Just Buy a Bottle of Sangria?
Because fuck you, that's why. Also, homemade sangria tastes ten times better than sangria from a bottle. Not to say I haven't bought a bottle or two in my time, but when I can make it from scratch, I do. Here's my recipe.

Mango Curry Pork Chops

Ingredients
Boneless pork chops (4 or 5)
Mango nectar
Olive oil
Garlic powder
Curry
Basil


The holidays are over and it's time to get back in the thick of things. Right after Christmas, I sat down and said, "Man, it sure would be nice for some combination throat/nose sickness to drop by and fuck me in the face." Wouldn't you know it, that's just what I got. It's a goddamn Christmas miracle. My favorite part of being sick, aside from feeling like I swallowed broken glass and downing hot tea like an eighty-year-old British headmistress, is the inability to taste or smell anything. This called for a dish that had both a powerful flavor and a strong scent. Sounds like a job for curry powder.

Curry versus Curry Powder
What we're using here is curry powder, not curry. There is a huge difference in the two, which you should be aware of, lest you look like a fucking idiot in front of friends and family. The word curry basically means sauce in the Indian language Tamil (Slurpee Indian, not casino Indian). Many people think that curry has a specific taste... it doesn't. It's used much like we would use the word soup. Curries from different parts of the Indian subcontinent vary widely in taste. Curry powder has NOTHING to do with actual curry. Curry powder is a mix of vaguely Indian spices including coriander, tumeric, red pepper, and cumin. There's nothing inherently Indian about curry powder. Much like chutney, curry powder was invented by some (undoubtedly British) wiseass who took the name without really caring to understand what it was. So, once again, fuck you India.