Vodka

My version of seafood cooked in a tomato-vodka sauce is quick, easy and festive. Any type of seafood can be used, but crab is particularly good in the sauce. Jumbo lump crab - large pieces of unbroken meat - is best, but backfin crab meat, which includes broken pieces, can be used. Both are usually sold in cans in the refrigerated section of the seafood department. Along with this colorful pasta dish, serve a crisp radicchio-and-romaine salad and your favorite bottled dressing. A crisp chianti would go well with the high-acid tomato sauce.

On a hot, humid day, Caron Dale, lead singer of Lox & Vodka, danced in a circle to klezmer music with residents who came to the Columbia Town Center lakefront by the hundreds to celebrate diverse cultures. After the band finished its performance, she noted that "the people who were here were diehards ... exactly the audience we were looking for." She described klezmer as "upbeat" and "happy" dance music typically sung in Yiddish. It was the band's first appearance at the Columbia Association's annual International Day festival.

Baltimore police have shot 123 people in the past four years, killing three dozen. But even when officers open fire when they shouldn't, they rarely get in trouble.A departmental crackdown on misconduct that has snared officers for offenses ranging from lying to sexual harassment has not included officers who misuse their weapons, the most potent form of force in an officer's arsenal.In almost every shooting over the past four years, especially when the suspect survived, a supervisor has ruled the gunfire justified and well within the department's rules, a review by The Sun of more than 100 internal files has found.

Neighbors and acquaintances of John R. Sierra all seem to remember him the same way, although few really talked to him: He was a quiet family man who seemed preoccupied.Sierra, 39, of the 9800 block of Old Annapolis Road in Ellicott City was fatally shot about 1: 30 p.m. Tuesday in front of a liquor store after wielding a knife at Howard County Police Sgt. A. J. Bellido de Luna and refusing to comply with the officer's repeated orders to drop it.Bellido de Luna shot Sierra once in the chest from about 10 feet away, police said.

MIKHAILOVSKOE, Russia -- Zhenya Ryabova, 11 years old and very end-of-20th-century in silvery wraparound sunglasses and red "101 Dalmatians" T-shirt, hops off a lumbering tourist bus here and happily answers a request to recite a 179-year-old poem.With speed, enthusiasm and inflection, Zhenya rattles off her favorite part of "Ruslan and Ludmila," a poem about an evil dwarf thwarted by a romantic hero that was written nearly two centuries ago by Alexander S. Pushkin, who once lived on an estate in this northwestern Russia village.

In Germany it is a katzenjammer, translated as "wailing of cats."In France they say guele de bois, meaning "wooden throat."In Norway it is called jeg har tommermen, which means literally "carpenters in my head."It is the pounding head, gurgling stomach and lack of energy known to Americans -- particularly after tonight -- as the hangover.In 1994, Skyy Vodka bragged in ads that it was a "no hangover" alcohol.The ad campaign was banned by government regulators who disputed the claim, but the ads underscore the fact that more drinkers are wary of hangovers.

An Allegany County grand jury has indicted eight people, including seven Frostburg State University students, in the alcohol-poisoning death of a freshman at the school last fall.The students were all upperclassmen and members of KBZ, an unaffiliated local fraternity; according to the indictments, they sold liquor to freshman John Eric Stinner and others during an off-campus party Nov. 8. The eighth person indicted was a resident of the house where the party occurred.Stinner, 20, of Glassport, Pa., had a blood-alcohol level of 0.34 -- more than three times the legal limit for intoxication -- when Stinner's roommate found his body the next night in his dormitory room.

What a man! What a life! What cool stuff!James Bond sips his Smirnoff vodka martini; the women draw near. He calls Moneypenny on his Ericsson mobile phone; he gets through no matter what. He drives his BMW motorcycle off the top of a building; his hair isn't even ruffled.You, too, can own this stuff!007: Super secret agent ... Super sales agent.When ever-debonair Bond returns after a two-year hiatus to movie theaters this week in United Artists' "Tomorrow Never Dies," he will do so with an unprecedented license to sell, sell, sell.

VODKA IS the Russian curse. President Mikhail S. Gorbachev was so appalled by the social costs of drunkenness he launched a hugely unpopular anti-alcohol drive. Some people may have sobered up a bit. But the ultimate loser was the Soviet state. Accustomed to receiving one-third of its overall income from vodka, the government saw its revenues plummet.Under President Boris N. Yeltsin, the state lost control over such revenues altogether after the vodka manufacturers were privatized and rival companies began distilling and importing liquor.

James Bond looked carefully at the bar man. "A dry martini," he said, "One. In a deep champagne goblet.""Oui, monsieur.""Just a moment. Three measures of gin, one of vodka, half a measure of Kina Lillet. Shake it very well until it's ice cold, then add a large, thin slice of lemon-peel. Got it?"-- "Casino Royale" by Ian Fleming (1954).That was then. This is now:James Bond looks carefully at the martini menu in the martini bar. "Hmmm. So many different versions. How's the Oreo cookie martini?"

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince is less than a week away, and the bartenders at the Landmark Theater are quickly studying up on their film facts. Like the young wizards at Hogwarts, they will spend the coming days mixing various liquids until they discover the winning concoction. They'll analyze characters, major plot points, themes and colorful scenes from the movie's trailer to make the perfect cocktail. It has been this attention to detail that has wowed throngs of moviegoers at Landmark Theaters Harbor East for the past year.

On Thanksgiving, the pies are plural, and that reason alone makes the day the best holiday of the year. If we had any sense of restraint, or caloric guilt, we would defer dessert on this day. But on Thanksgiving, almost no one says no to pie. Instead, most of us - me included - profess to have "just a little sliver, of each." The all-hallowed pumpkin pie, whose mild flavor and bland spicing are welcome at the end of such a rich meal, almost qualifies, I would argue, as a vegetable. Moreover, children - the torch-carriers of tradition - insist on its presence.

Remembering April 28 ... or not Asked White Sox manager Ozzie Guillen before the resumption of the suspended game if he had any recollections of the April 28 game that was finished last night. He didn't. "The only thing I remember was Alexei Ramirez's hit to win [Sunday's] game," Guillen said. "That's a lot of vodka between that game [April 28] and [Sunday's] game." (For more, go to baltimoresun.com/schmuckblog)

Absinthe, legend has it, starred in the very first cocktail. Pale green, potent and deadly alluring, the drink in its day spawned a verb, a disease and, in Paris, its very own intoxicating time of day - L'heure Verte. To painters, poets and their imitators, absinthe became liquid muse, sipped, swirled and savored with passion until its ban a century ago. American importers and distillers, thirsty to revive a taste of the past, last year persuaded the government to end the 100-year prohibition.

grocerylists.org Who knew that, among countless other things, the Internet would become a vehicle for spying on shoppers' discarded grocery lists? This site has scanned about 1,800 of them, and the collector, Bill Keaggy, has even written a book (called Milk Eggs Vodka) about the project.

U.S. diplomat shot to death in Sudan NAIROBI, Kenya -- A U.S. diplomat and his driver were shot and killed early yesterday in Sudan as they were going home from a New Year's Eve party in Khartoum, the capital. In Washington, the Agency for International Development identified the diplomat as one of its officials, John Granville, 33. American officials said it was "too early to tell" whether the shooting had been random or planned, but Sudanese officials said the circumstances were suspicious, especially because gun crime is rare in Khartoum, considered one of the safer cities in Africa.

extratasty.com This is a recipe-sharing site for cocktail lovers, who swap directions for concoctions with vivid names like Prairie Dog (tequila, hot sauce, pickle juice) and Teddybear (vodka, root beer schnapps, whipped cream). You can type in the ingredients you have on hand, and the site will find recipes to match.

No, buying new 360 Vodka won't solve overpopulation issues or reverse the effects of global warming. But choosing what's being billed as the first "eco-friendly" vodka, instead of the one next to it, could make an itty-bitty contribution to environmental efforts. Here's why: 360 Vodka is produced in Missouri using locally grown grains, which reduces carbon emissions from transportation; the company also claims it uses a highly energy-efficient filtering and drying process and that nothing goes to waste.

I am about to fall into the Medicare Part D "doughnut hole" and would like to buy my drugs from Canada to save money for the remainder of this year. How do I know which online pharmacy to select? Many senior citizens who signed up for the prescription-drug benefit from Medicare are shocked when they hit the so-called doughnut hole. When drug expenses come to a total of $2,400, patients must pay 100 percent of their medication bill. If drug expenses eventually exceed $5,451, Part D kicks in again with catastrophic coverage until the end of the year.

On a hot, humid day, Caron Dale, lead singer of Lox & Vodka, danced in a circle to klezmer music with residents who came to the Columbia Town Center lakefront by the hundreds to celebrate diverse cultures. After the band finished its performance, she noted that "the people who were here were diehards ... exactly the audience we were looking for." She described klezmer as "upbeat" and "happy" dance music typically sung in Yiddish. It was the band's first appearance at the Columbia Association's annual International Day festival.