Posted on 04/28/2008 7:58:13 AM PDT by mombyprofession
If you watch much television, you've probably heard of a product called Mike's Hard Lemonade.
And if you ask Christopher Ratte and his wife how they lost custody of their 7-year-old son, the short version is that nobody in the Ratte family watches much television.
The way police and child protection workers figure it, Ratte should have known that what a Comerica Park vendor handed over when Ratte ordered a lemonade for his boy three Saturdays ago contained alcohol, and Ratte's ignorance justified placing young Leo in foster care until his dad got up to speed on the commercial beverage industry.
Even if, in hindsight, that decision seems a bit, um, idiotic.
Ratte is a tenured professor of classical archaeology at the University of Michigan, which means that, on a given day, he's more likely to be excavating ancient burial sites in Turkey than watching "Dancing with the Stars" - or even the History Channel, for that matter.
(Excerpt) Read more at wzzm13.com ...
Never heard of it, lol.
My Mom also made lushalo (sp. it’s something we had on Easter morning. It had eggs, sugar (tons of sugar), cream and other ingredients I can’t recall - one of which was booze). She used to make mine without the booze and probably a couple other ingredients. Maybe someone here knows what I’m talking about even though I got the name/spelling wrong. It’s been a few years since I had it and haven’t been able to find her recipe in all her recipes I’ve poured over. My husband remembers it too but we haven’t been able to find the recipe.
LOL! My first college party, grain alcohol mixed with some kind of fruit punch I guess. Never had anything but beer, some wine (yuck), Vodka and OJ (yuck) and my Mom’s Irish Cream. Didn’t know the punch was grain alcohol, thought it was just punch, lol. Could barely walk back to my own dorm, it hit me while walking back to the dorm, and spent the rest of the night swearing I’d never drink again. My friends were laughing and teased me constantly about that night - I was a beer drinker and there wasn’t beer at this party so I drank the punch not knowing it wasn’t just punch.
I know what ‘hard’ is. I remember when I was about 12, reading a book that mentioned a dessert with ‘hard sauce’ and I wondered what it was so I looked it up. Found out it’s a sauce made with rum or brandy. Then I read books about hard cider during the Revolution and since they were drinking it in taverns and pubs, it stood to reason it was alcohol of some kind. The first time I heard about Mike’s, about 10 years ago, I knew right away it was alcohol, even though I’d never seen it and still have never had any to this day. (PS. I’m 41!)
ooh about this. When I was a kid, my Dad always took all us kids to the Greenhouse, a place in Margate NJ right off the beach. This is back in the late 60’s and 70’s. He and my uncle would have beer and most of the kids would have coke and food and the teen kids would have beer, too. As a teen, my friends and I would go to the Greenhouse and order food and beer, no problem really (early 80’s). Then, mid to late 80’s, everyone was carded but just barely. Guess it’s now illegal, or maybe it always was but never enforced, for me to let my kids have a beverage with alcohol content. For my 16th birthday party, my Dad bought me a case or two of my requested beer. It really wasn’t a big deal back then. At my high school grad party, one of my friends, a big guy, manned the keg at the request of my Dad, since things were changing then.
But really, I have to say that the drinking problems of the Brits are very much connected to the families over there.
Those people that I knew with Mom and Dad in the picture turned out great!
Yeah, I was into Manhattans. They were sweet and GOOD!
Geez, we would have spiked Egg Nog after church on Christmas.
I come from good Polish stock!
I'm about 2/3rds of the way to a Master's and I'd never heard of Hard Lemonade, Mike's or otherwise, before. I don't drink alcohol, and I don't spend much time wandering through liquor stores, either. Not to mention I spend less than 2 hours a week watching TV.
Oh yeah, we had the eggnog too but I never liked it. Just give a beer and I’m happy ;)
Good Irish and Italian stock here :)
My mom also used to make her own annisette (sp) and use it in her coffee.
Try again, FRiend.
Also cream soda, and black cherry soda, as you will see at the link above. That is a soda bottle.
I'll give you a hint: their annual sales are 0.009% of Pepsi's sales.”
Sam's Club and Panera Bread both sell Jones Sodas. They are fairly common, despite the small market share. AFAIK, Jones is the only company still selling soda made with cane sugar instead of high-fructose corn syrup. Their market share is probably increasing.
>>My mom also used to make her own annisette (sp) and use it in her coffee.<<
Really? That’s a new one! Licorice coffee? I’m not sure I’d like it but hey, yum-o for her!
Education or lack thereof has nothing to do with it - I have 2 Master degrees and didn’t hear of Mike’s lemonade until close to 3 yrs ago and I grew up around and partake in alcoholic beverages.
3 years ago, I was in SLC for a volleyball tournament/National Championships for junior olympic vb. My kid’s team was playing, and me and another mom with our two teens were at a grocery store picking up snacks, soda, booze for the rest of the team/parents so we could party in the pavillion at the hotel. The two teens were in one section of the store taking care of their list and the other mom was in another section while I was in charge of the beer and booze. She called me on my cell to tell me to get Mike’s lemonade since one of the mom’s called her and requested it, and I never heard of it before so I went to the aisle with soda, etc. It wasn’t until we met up and I told her I couldn’t find it that we went back to the beer section and there was Mike’s lemonade, lol.
I’m familiar with booze and tv and never heard of Mike’s lemonade before that night.
True, just a JD.
Yep. We had a whole lot of homemade stuff, some of it with alcohol. She had this certain decanter or bottle with tape on it that said “annisette” and once I tasted her coffee and was like, ewwww. Black coffee with this sweet taste. Ha! It did taste like licorice, black licorice which I don’t like. Most of the bottles in our house had tape on them, identifying what they were.
Spaghetti gravy, or red gravy, or sauce to some, also has red wine in it. At least a cup of it :)
I make my Mom’s Irish Cream (she was italian but made the irish cream and also candy irish potatoes) but don’t haven’t labeled the bottles.
My husband, we have lots of football and other parties, makes awesome jello shots (don’t get me started, you’d think we were obsessed with booze) in the colors of the teams and makes non-alcoholic ones for the kids. I don’t do shots normally but his jello shots are good. He’s also the Margarita King (another thing I don’t drink) and they’re frozen or not frozen, lol.
And get this. He also bought an Ice Luge for our last PS/ND party. It was fun :)
“Education or lack thereof has nothing to do with it...”
Yep. But tell that to some of the other folks here. I, also, grew up around alcohol, and I’ve made wine and beer, and even set up my own still, once. (in chem lab, actually.)I just never felt much like drinking booze, and with a family history of problems with it, mostly stayed away. Then, about 13 years ago, I became a Mormon. Giving up booze entirely was easy. Even though I was in Germany when it happened.
Do you actually AGREE with this complete and utter idiocy and breakdown of the normal social order??
What is an outlier is the lack of any thinking human being in charge, from the cop on the beat on up.
>>He also bought an Ice Luge for our last PS/ND party. It was fun :)<<
WoooHoooo. Sounds great!
Cool. My husband and I always say, we’d never become addicted to beer because it would be just too hard to give up/not have it again.
Good for you. I mean that even though I would never consider it.
LOL it was. The pics and vid are too funny ;) Of course, a couple people, one neighbor in particular was appalled.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.