I tend to select my friends more for their entertainment value than their utility. When I filled out the "Meet the Will" questionnaire a couple months ago, the only question that stumped me was the one about which friend I rely on for restaurant recommendations. I had to invent a person, because I generally avoid counting on my friends for anything more taxing than drinking all my beer and over-hugging my fiancé. More

Since rhubarb is on the tart side, it's often paired with sweet, summery fruits like strawberry or raspberry, but one of my favorite rhubarb combos is rhubarb and ginger—especially in a light, refreshing cocktail. More

The language of vodka marketing tends to focus on purity: virgin wheat, quadruple-distilled-through-diamonds. (I'm not exaggerating about the diamonds, I promise.) Vodka companies usually want you to know that their vodka tastes like...well, nothing. Not so with the latest product from Karlsson's—they've just released their first commercially available vintage vodka, which is made entirely from the 2008 crop of 'Old Swedish Red' potatoes. More

I don't know much about you beautiful beasts, but I do know you read certain parts of the Internet because that's how we became friends in the first place. So I trust you've heard that "This American Life" had to apologize for faking parts of a story about how awful working conditions are at Apple-affiliated factories in China. More

As winter rolls on and we ease into March I find myself itching for a tropical getaway. It doesn't have to be super fancy, just warm weather, some water to dip my toe in and a place to set my cocktail. Unfortunately the closest I'm going to get to that is my imagination and a good drink. But rest assured, with the right ingredients, a tropical getaway is only a few sips away. More

It's finally turned winter in Boston, so I had to trade my bike in for a bus pass. This was initially devastating, but then I realized it was an excuse to get one of those superphones that prevent you from ever making accidental eye contact with a fellow human being. So that was good, until it led to more bad: You know all those people staring at their phones on the bus? I'd always assumed they were looking at porn or reading Serious Eats, but it turns out they're busy beating the hell out of me at Words with Friends, the fake Scrabble game that is disproving everything I thought I knew about the English language, things such as "Will has a firm command of it" and "Quok is not a word." More

The upside of ignorance is that it offers one the opportunity to constantly learn new things. I was recently reminded of this when I was engaged as an "expert" judge for the New York International Spirits Competition, an annual blind tasting where a bunch of people who buy booze (professionally) sit down and judge the quality of various spirits according to their category and price range. More

This week in Five Essentials, we'll talk about vodka. Yes, vodka. It may not be your favorite spirit, and it certainly isn't mine, but it's everywhere, and I can't ignore it. So quit yer bellyachin', belly up to my bar, and let's just have a drink already. More

If I could change anything about my past, I'd change everything about my past; I have a hard time trusting anyone who would do otherwise. It seems so natural to want to correct your mistakes, to undo your failures and uneat your baloney sandwiches. More

What you order at a bar—and how you order it—says a lot about you as a person. Those of us who serve these drinks have learned to crack the code a bit, and can form relatively sophisticated opinions about what you like and don't like before you've finished your first round. More