Cherry Liquor

Cherry Liquor

After years of gabbing about it, we finally decided to learn how to play mah jong. I mean, what is more grandma ish than getting together to play this game? It gained major popularity in the 30s, which is why I was drawn to it. I have to guess that Donovan was drawn to it for its complication and Noel was attracted by the booze that I offered to serve.

This "meeting" was actually a potluck dinner where we grannies did little work, which was a nice change from our normal grandma meetings. The whole excuse for getting together was that the sour cherry liquor I made (from our summer fruit picking excursion) was finally ready to drink and I wanted the grannies to get together for a tasting.

The cherry liquor turned out well, although it is definitely an acquired taste. Noel described it as cough medicine tasting, but not in a bad way. I decanted the liquor minutes before the grannies showed up and I think this was a mistake. I didn give the liquor time to breath and develop a richer flavor. A week after the liquor was in the decanter it gained a sweetness and deeper cherry flavor. It is definitely a nice after dinner drink to have on a cold night. Now I just need to try to make this liquor last until next cherry season, which may be difficult!

After we had a good dinner and a few drinks we decided to teach ourselves mah jong. We were lacking a forth player, but luckily we were able to convince my boyfriend to play with us (I think the big plate of food helped). Donovan got a mah jong set from Ebay that came with some poorly written rules, so she also purchase a "Lets Play Mah Jong" book. We based our game rules between those two sources and some rules found in internet searches.

There are many many different ways to play mah jong. We have stuck to our own little variation of the American game rules. Now, I not going to lie to you mah jong is a complicated game that

makes you go cross eyed when you are first reading all the rules, but

it is worth it. We found it was best to just understand the goal of the game and start playing to learn the rest of it. (We had a cheat sheet that spelled out what you needed to win mah jong, which was helpful for the first few rounds.)We definitely made some mistakes in our first few games

(as evidenced by the photos), but we kept learning little by little and

had so much fun in the process. We will all admit that this game is very addictive. So addictive that I ended up buying my own set to take home for the holidays and proceeded to get my entire family addicted to mah jong. Even my nine year old cousin is addicted to the game, and pretty damn good at it to boot!

All in all, this was a great way to spend a winter night. We are planning on a few more granny game nights where we shall teach ourselves new to us games. Donovan recently got me into Settlers of Catan. Any board/card games you are a fan of or want to suggest to us?

I just moved to Oak Park from Long Beach, CA, where I had a weekly game of Mah Jongg with some fabulous ladies. They sent me off earlier this month with my own mah jongg set to find and spread the the love in my new town. My deep obsession with paper led me to meet Kim yesterday at Paper Source (I pretty sure her name is Kim.), and my excitement over the game and 6th sense for kindred spirits led me to ask her if she plays and to invite her to learn on my new set. She was noncommittal but she did mention your blog and your grannying ways. So here I am.

If you ever need a fourth or are jonesing for a pick up game, I down and would love to join or have you at my table. Just post a reply here with how I could contact you or find me through my email. Hope to hear from you, and in the meantime, Granny On!