for relaxing times...

When you run out of money and you are still waiting for a replenishment of supply – you just have to learn to make do. I usually switch over to raman as my staple supply of food (called 2 minute noodles here, which of course is appropriate, but I still call them raman). And when it really gets down to the wire, I have a knack for making meals out of nothing. Last night I made pierogies from scratch (that’s right, mixing up the dough myself).

Usually, when we get this poor, Steve switches from cheap Castle beer in cans to 17 year aged Japanese whiskey. What??? Yep. For fiscally difficult times, make it Suntory time. It was a gift and there it sat on our shelf, used only for when we could not replenish the Castle supply. When not pregnant, I usually have wine or girly drinks or gin and tonic. (Don’t ask, I just haven’t developed a taste for beer here – not that there aren’t better beers than Castle – cause there are – I blame it on the altitude or something.)

Well sometime during our last broke spree, Steve finished the bottle of Suntory (so if it sat on the shelf for 3 years, does that make it 20-year-old whiskey?). So this time round, he was probably very concerned as our liquor shelf contained 1 x Malibu (and only I can enjoy that straight), 1 x Cranberry schnapps (again, mine) and 1 x Gordon’s gin (with only a little remaining). Imagine my surprise when a voice from the kitchen asked if I would like a G&T. Um, sure, but do we have any of the necessary T stuff? Really? Ok, I’m in.

As Steve got up to make another, I was standing in the kitchen (desperately trying to avoid my dwindling stash of graham crackers) and he stated that he would have to drink 5 litres of G&Ts to prevent malaria. What happened in my brain was something like this: I was told to drink 2 litres of water everyday when I was getting dehydrated during my pregnancy with Oscar and that was damn near impossible. But I don’t like water, so maybe G&T would be easier. Hold on, 5 litres is a fucking lot of G&T. I wonder how many gin & tonics, measured in litres it would take me to get drunk. And I bravely tried to do that sort of math in my head. Now look, this all happened in the space of about 3 seconds. Then it hit, sorry, did you say, "to prevent malaria"?

He mumbled something about quinine in tonic water and with the levels present in the 1 litre bottle, you’d need like 5 litres to do this. But he had already lost me on the word quinine. I become completely lost. Yeah, people across Africa have been drinking gin & tonic for centuries to prevent malaria. Didn’t you know that? Everyone knows that. But you don’t really need the gin, do you? No, just the tonic water. I was completely baffled, how had this escaped my attention? How did "everyone" else know. Well, I took momentary comfort in believing that it was probably not true. But it is, quinine has been used as a cure or a preventative for malaria for over 300 years. More, it is better than some medications developed in laboratories (please pronounce this as lab-ra-toe-rees, not lab-or-a-trees when reading this aloud – especially useful pronunciation tip for non-Americans) because certain strains of malaria have become mutated and are drug resistant.

Then I opened the fridge and noticed 3 cans of Castle lager just sitting on the shelf, waiting for Steve. I assumed he just didn’t want to mix his drinks. No, he says, Castles are the best, so I am saving them for last. One good thing, despite my lack of alcohol trivia knowledge, is that its nice to know that he doesn’t know everything either. I mean, everyone knows Sammy Smith’s Pure Brewed Lager is the best (unless Killians are going for $1 on draft).

www.straightdope.com/classics/a990813.html incase you are interested in how quinine prevents malaria...