Communion wine sangria
The Holy Spirit will refresh you
Welcome to Friday Mass, clowns.
[Now, I promised that this would be paid-subscriber only content last week, but since I’ve been overwhelmed with all the new Substack signups (hi, everyone, you have no idea what you did to yourselves), I figured I’d unleash this one as a freebie, sort of like a preview of what you would normally get when you sign up for the paid version.]
My last post was about making a version of Nachos Bell Grande using communion wafers, because I am a dirty, dirty, boy.
But you know, I can’t leave well enough alone, and I also purchased these funny one-time use “Fellowship Cups,” that are a two-in-one deal, packaging a wafer AND a shot of Jesus’ own liquid essence.
“Hey babe,” I shouted into the other room, where Davida is now. “You came up with the idea for this one, right?”
“Yeah,” she said.
“What was your thought process? I can’t remember.”
“Well, I was thinking about something we could do with wine. Then I thought of sangria, which has the Spanish word for blood in it, which I thought was extra clever.”
See, this is a deep view into the inner workings of the greatest food newsletter in all of history. I just have my fiancée do all the creative work. I use my great physical strength to tap loudly on a keyboard, like a real man.
This is what was inside the box.
Six tiny cups, filled with a hilariously tiny amount of non-alcoholic grape juice (a puny 1/6th of an ounce), paired with also very tiny communion wafers.
Harvey is very small, which is sometimes hard to tell from these pictures, but I’d say that these wafers are smaller than a quarter.
He is also a very demanding model, constantly staring at me silently with his beady eyes, piercing deep into my soul. It’s intense, but that’s why he commands such a high salary.
Now, in this state, as the cups are technically plain juice, they really don’t represent the blood of Christ. They need to be blessed by a priest in order for them to reach their full soul-saving potential. Neither Davida or I are ordained ministers, so who could we get to bless this juice?
I looked up at Heaven, towards God.
Then God wordlessly pointed at a round creature laying on the floor, on his back, meowing at absolutely nothing, next to us.
Nugget.
Harnessing the true, intended power of the Internet, I used the Universal Life Church website, to ordain our cat.
Nugget, whose full name I declared is Nugget Handsome Boy, was now an ordained minister. Of course, he had to look the part.
Since he was already wearing most of the priest outfit by being a black cat, all we needed to do was simulate the clerical collar by taping a small square of paper to a very big hair tie.
Nugget will officiate our future wedding, since he is an official minister. We’ll worry about the logistics of having a priest who is a cat when the date is closer.
First, we had Nugget bless the communion wafer by eating part of it.
It turns out Nugget is a communion wafer fiend, which means he is very good at being a Handsome Religious Boy. You should have seen him going to town on that thing.
Next, we had Nugget bless the communion grape juice by putting it between his paws while he communicated with the Holy Spirit.
While he didn’t verbalize at all, because he is generally a very quiet Handsome Boy, I knew deep inside, that the wine had transformed into the refreshing blood of Jesus Christ, perfect for a breezy summer day.
I poured all of the communion juice into the correct vessel, which is a glass Yoplait yogurt jar.
I cut some very tiny wedges from a lime and grabbed some frozen smoothie berry mix from the freezer, which includes the commonly used sangria ingredient, kale, and plopped it into the Yoplait jar.
This looked delicious, but sangria typically has alcohol in it, since it’s made with wine. Shit. This had to be more authentic.
Oh, I know. I had the perfect solution.
I would use Lemon White Claw, which is also commonly used in traditional sangria.
You should listen to me, I am an expert. You can clearly trust someone who recently ordained their cat to tell you all about traditional beverages in Spain.
Not only am I, Dannis Ree, the greatest food writer in all of history, I am also the greatest mixologist in all of history.
Whoever came up with the word mixologist probably also came up with the equally lazy word, gemologist.
Anyway.
I would like to tell you that Nugget Handsome Boy blessed communion wine sangria is extremely refreshing, delicious, sweet, and most likely poisonously blasphemous. Which means, we polished off that soul-saving glass in an instant.
Peace be with you, and you, clowns.
I hope I don’t get in too much trouble for this one.
But if I do, we’ve got Nugget, aka Handsome Boy, to spiritually bail me out. If you liked this issue of the newsletter, go ahead and share it on social media, like crazy. It gets the word out there, plus it guilts me into writing consistently every week:
And, like I mentioned, this one was supposed to be for paying subscribers, I figured I’d show all you new folks what you can expect down the road.
Consider a paid subscription today:
And please, for the love of all things holy, let’s vote for some change, goddammit (pun definitely intended).