The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:
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Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.
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Updates to let us know how you are doing. This provides valuable feedback on past advice / encouragement and will hopefully make people feel a little more motivated to follow through. If you want to be reminded to post your update, see the post titled 'update reminders', below.
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Advice. This can be in response to a request for advice or just something that you think could be generally useful for many people here.
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Encouragement. Probably best directed at specific users, but if you feel like just encouraging people in general I don't think anyone is going to object. I don't think I really need to say this, but just to be clear; encouragement should have a generally positive tone and not shame people (if people feel that shame might be an effective tool for motivating people, please discuss this so we can form a group consensus on how to use it rather than just trying it).
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Red wine with chicken parm, and white with piccata? Bourbon with Conecuh or steak? A beer before barbecue? Margaritas and burritos? We're talking about our individual palates at one level, but these are classic pairings.
For relationships, alcohol is an intimacy accelerator. When you only have one night to get someone's attention, it's incredibly valuable. Most people aren't capable of talking deeply about philosophy or what they need from a relationship within 5 minutes of meeting you, in fact, it's creepy unless you've had a drink or two.
I'm a huge fan of beer, wine, and particularly whiskey, but I'm with /u/SubstantialFrivolity personally on that alcohol doesn't enhance the experience of eating foods, except for the intrinsic quality of the drink itself. Like, it's nice to eat beer with a burger at a bbq or have Margaritas with burritos or even red wine with chicken parm, but I see those as more aesthetic preferences than anything about the way the tastes go together. Same reason why I prefer to have East Asian-looking servers when I go to a Korean restaurant.
I'd say being drunk can sometimes increase the sense of hunger I feel, which indirectly makes the experience of eating foods better, but in terms of the influence on the direct experience of the taste, it actually dulls it, if anything.
Everyone has a different palate, of course, but I am sort of blown away that the complexity of an aged whiskey and how it interacts with food is just.... lost for some people? I'd concede that a majority of the "to go with" properties of food + alcohol have more to do with how the latter changes your tastes than the drink itself. But I think the contrast of experiences between a red vs white before delicate fish would indicate the flavor itself factors in as well.
Alcohol isn't easy to enjoy. Neither is coffee. They both require some patience and development, and I enjoy the side effects of the drugs within them quite a bit.
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To each their own, but the tannins and acidity in a cabernet really do act as an effective palate cleanser for a rich, fatty ribeye. I wouldn't say that they directly enhance the steak, but each bite is tasted more fully with such an effective balance from the wine.
My subjective experience is something similar with bourbon and BBQ brisket, but that one really might be nothing more than an aesthetic preference.
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I mean... wine and beer both taste horrible imo, so those aren't going to work for me. But yeah even with drinks I actually like, I have never found that alcohol enhances food.
edit: forgot the other half of your comment
I don't personally find that anyone is incapable of having deep conversations about philosophy or whatever even if they don't know you well. If they found it creepy, as you said, then they obviously aren't someone I'm going to ever get along with. I fail to see why I would want to try to use alcohol to make us get along in that case. There are lots of other people to hang out with, if we don't click it's not a big deal.
Discarding people because they can't have deep conversations quickly is a mistake. You need to invest effort into relationships, as a rule. Alcohol allows you to be more effective per unit of time. Some of the "deepest" people are those who aren't comfortable dumping their trauma on you once you've met them, and frankly that shouldn't be a controversial statement.
That's just my opinion after knowing many of these people. If you don't have any issues with your breadth and depth of relationships, then you've done what you want. I do know I am less "picky" than average.
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