So the night before last we took the family to my parent's house for food and the opening presents tradition. The wife had been watching Barefoot Contessa on Food TV and saw a recipe for Pomegranate Cosmopolitains and decided to mix up a batch for the holidays.
The recipe only called for 4 cups of vodka, 1 cup of Cointreau, one cup of pomegranate juice and some lime juice. Drinking one of these is pretty much like shooting an entire glass of vodka. So when we arrived at the parental units house and served the cosmopolitains everyone of legal drinking age sipped on them slowly except for my 77 year old father who rarely drinks more than one beer in a month. He slurped down two pretty quickly and became very jolly and loud.
We were running out of pomegranate cosmos so since I had not consumed any I drove back to my house to gather more of the ingredients to make the rocket fuel. When I got back it was time to eat.
During the sloth-fest of dead cow flesh the patriarch downed another cosmom. So my brother and I had to help the old man get up from his chair and walk the fifteen feet to his recliner. Where he asked for another drink and was granted his wish.
We then preceeded to open presents with a 4 year old, 2 year old, two 19 month olds and an 8 month old screaming and ripping paper to shreds. It was an orgy of gift receiving activity. The discarded shreds of paper were thrown into the fireplace. By this time the old man was asleep in the chair (which is pretty normal for him) and completely oblivious to the ear splitting screams and cries.
After about 30 minutes of this the wife had to go to the truck to get a sucker for a screaming child claiming unfairness in receiving. A car pulls up screeching its tires a man hops our and screams that the chimney is on fire. The wife runs in and repeats the exciting news to me. I scramble to grab a ladder and a hose to check out the fire. Fortuntatly it was a very minor fire and it had completely extinguished itself by the time I got to the chimney.
So back in the house we all went well for about 3 minutes when the old man stood up and immediately collapsed hitting the corner of the brick hearth. I immediately shook him yelling "DAD". He was non responsive so with the knowledge of his past cardiac health I immediately thought he had a heart attack. fortunately my brother kept a cool head (EMT trained) and checked his breathing an pulse. Mother had already called 911. My brother quickly ascertained that he was berating and had a strong pulse and it became obviouis just how trashed the old man was. He simply blacked out when he stood up because he was wasted. He passed out!
After the EMT crew arrived and did their job they helped us get the drunken old man up to his bed. Fortunately he was able to communicate and help walk some.
In short, it was a lot of fun with the family and the drink but it scared the shit out of me. I thought I had lost my father.
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2 comments:
I know this is several years later, and you probably won't read this, but it's 2 CUPS of vodka, not 4. 1 cup of orange liqueur and 1 cup of pomegranate juice. Just went to her recipe and read it.
Ohhhh. So that explains it. I will have to see if my wife actually knows how to read recipes. Wow I feel kind of silly now!
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