My mate Mil

It's my best friend Mil's birthday today. Mil is the rarest of mates, the kind you find in fiction: the Franz to my Albert, more or less. Mil was the one who explained the birds and bees to me, clarifying all those little details that my parents had hurriedly glossed over in their embarrassment while delivering The Talk. Mil taught me that red wine is never chilled, that the mop top went out in 1967, and that boxer-briefs are the insignia of a superior breed of male (I'm not sure if I buy that, though).

When I had my first major household mishap (cut my finger open on a just-opened can of tomato soup), Mil was the one who had a minor panic attack on my behalf, and used up two (or seven) rolls of toilet paper to stanch the spouting blood. Mil got me drunk on my 21st birthday, put up with my hammering nails into the walls for the entirety of our roommate-ship, and always (even when it was my fault) apologised first, usually with a print-out of a Zoloft ad tacked to my door.

So this next recipe is for the Milweiser.