Sunday, February 01, 2009

Eclipse Review

Don't you hate it when you grab a beer and a package of pretzels and turn on your TV, expecting to sit down and watch the Eclipse Awards, only to find Super Bowl XLIII is on? That's when it dawns on you, "Oh man, the Eclipse Awards was last week."

Fear not, horse racing fans. Ray Paulick and the E Street Band did an outstanding job covering the spectacle with professionalism and enthusiasm. Unlike many live blogs, which can result in lengthy and pointless run-on sentences, Mr. Paulick used his covert Palm Treo to provide quick bullet points of important occurring events.

For example:
7:20RP…Dinner is served! Ceremonies starting soon.

7:37RP…Kenny Rice don’t give up your day job to become a stand up comic

8:18RP…Dessert was outstanding…my first roast hazelnut praline, chocolate terrine, coconut bavaroise

8:32RP…Love the lecture from the handicapper of the year. He’s really good.

8:35RP…I think Steven Crist wishes he had a hook to yank the handicapper off stage

8:37RP…Now I wish I had a hook for this guy. I take my earlier comments back.


Exceptionally informative live blog. And it got me to wonder, "What the heck is coconut bavaroise? And do they serve it at Lone Star Park?"

My in-depth research (read: WikiAnswers) provided the answer to what is bavaroise.

1. A hot drink made from eggs, milk, and tea, sweetened and flavoured with a liqueur; seventeenth-century Bavarian.

2. French; (crème bavarois) a cold dessert made from egg custard with gelatine and cream.

3. Hollandaise sauce with crayfish garnish.


Thus, one can extrapolate from the information gleaned that coconut bavaroise is cold gelatin with eggs, cream, and crawdads with lots of liqueur for taste served in a coconut shell with one of those cute little umbrellas. Yum.

Well, if they serve coconut bavaroise at Lone Star Park I won't be ordering it any time soon. But you have to admit that Coconut Bavaroise is a pretty good name for a racehorse. Or a Pittsburgh Steeler.

Query: Has there ever been a horse named Coconut Bavaroise? This required additional investigation. So, being the industrious fact-finding blogger that I am, I sent an email to our resident librarian, Turf Luck's Quinella Queen. She knows everything.

"No luck finding Coconut Bavaroise, but, for some reason, I find this precious: How to Make a Horse Sound with a Coconut."

It's actually a very complex procedure: Clap two halves of a coconut together to produce a sound effect of horses hooves. I believe Monty Python and the Holy Grail received an Eclipse Award for sound effects.



Our favorite librarian continued, "However, if there was a horse named Coconut Bavaroise, and if that horse happened to be of the chestnut color, there's a recipe for that from Tartelette."

Chestnut Bavaroise. Not exactly a staple at a Super Bowl party, but it's not a bad name for a racehorse.

6 comments:

G. Rarick said...

Closest we have to that name in Europe is Coconut Cookie. Looks like it's all yours.

ljk said...

BRIS does show three horses named Bavaroise. Two of them french bred...of course.

SaratogaSpa said...

I would love to hear his review of the Bruce halftime show. Bruce killed -awesome show

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