Thunder Road Wine

 At an author signing in 2019, I bought a book called Wild Wine Making because I thought it sounded interesting. The author was a bit... well, odd, but very proud of his book. As usual, when I attend an author event, I end up spending more money on purchasing books than I make selling them. But, the book looked interesting and the author assured me it was incredibly easy, so I bought a book for myself and one for a friend.

Jay and I flipped through the book and decided to try one of the recipes for our Christmas Eve gifts. Each year, we make something different as family gifts for Christmas Eve. Last year was two different types of bacon salt; the year before that I canned homemade marinara; one year we made homemade ice cream, etc.

We discussed getting a batch started after we returned from SHOT Show, but we were slackers and didn't actually get around to buying the equipment until the shut-down in mid-March. Suddenly, it was the perfect time to get around to doing the projects we'd been putting off.

We ordered the equipment, and once it arrived we purchased the ingredients for a peach-blackberry wine. Almost immediately we realized that the "incredibly easy" wine recipes were anything but. If we had any experience at all with wine making prior to this, it might have been easy, but we were complete noobs. Luckily, the information we couldn't find in the book on how to make wine was easily found on YouTube. By cobbling the information together, we came up with a plan and turned our mudroom into a winery.

5/3/20 Day one

5/4/20 Day two

5/4/20 The yeast was definitely working

During the primary fermentation process, we stirred the nastiness (it's actually called "must") twice a day for a couple of weeks, adding sugar water as needed, until the yeast slowed down. After that, it was time to strain out the fruit and move the wine to the secondary fermentation vessel. In the book, the author says that a fermentation bag for the fruit is not necessary. Let me tell you, it might not be necessary, but it'll damn sure make your life easier. It took a very long time, and a lot of swearing to strain out the fruit. We made a huge mess, but finally got the wine moved to the secondary fermentation vessel.

Getting a large pot ready for the first straining

Removing the fruit and straining out the juice

Straining the juice again into the secondary fermentation vessel

Not having the right equipment will make the process tedious

5/14/20 Secondary fermentation started

Once it was all moved from the primary fermentation vessel (the 6-gallon bucket) into the secondary fermentation bottle (the glass bung (yes, that's its real name)), we fit it with an airlock that allowed the yeasts' gasses to escape, and covered with a cardboard box to keep it cool and dark. If we had a basement, that would have been a better option, but the cardboard box worked remarkably well.

The next day, we checked and saw the yeast were happily chugging along, doing their job.

A couple of days later we "racked" the wine, siphoned it to remove the sediment. At that stage, it was still pretty cloudy and we were still figuring out what the hell we were doing, but we got it racked.

After we racked it the first time, wine making got markedly easier. All we had to do was rack it every few weeks to remove the wine from the sediment. Racking the wine is the perfect time to taste it, and it was much better than I anticipated each time. The problem was, each time we racked it, we lost a bit of volume, so that by the second-to-last time we racked it, we'd lost a full gallon. There was nothing in the book about what to do, but we were under the impression the bung needed to be kept full to decrease the amount of oxygen the wine was exposed to. Not knowing what to do, we decided to add more sugar water to make up the volume.

The next time we racked the wine, it was much sweeter than previously. I complained that it was sweet. Jay looked at me and said, "it's a dessert wine" and thus the idea was born for a Grease-based theme for the wine.

By mid-September the wine was ready ready for bottling.

Jay put his graphic design talents to work and made us a great label. I think every year is our best Christmas Eve gift, but this one - the wine paired with Twinkies - was the best. So far.

We might not make wine as Christmas gifts again, but we'll definitely be trying again, now that we (sort of) know what we're going.

Christmas Gift Mis-Adventure

I tend to get hare-brained ideas for "fun" gifts come Christmas time.  Usually they work out.  Okay, they've always worked out, but some years go smoother than others.  I can't really remember the last time one went as awry as this one.

Somehow I got it stuck in my mind that it would be fun to make ice cream for everyone. The ice cream that Jay made for my book release party was a huge hit, so I thought, "why not?".  We have two ice cream makers, so of course I thought it would be a breeze.  Our Cuisinart is amazing, and while I had never used the KitchenAid ice cream maker attachment, I assumed it would be amazing as well. 

Once I settled on gourmet ice cream for everyone for Christmas, I started looking for containers to put them in.  Sweet Bliss Containers had what I was looking for and more! I happened to run across a sorbet recipe that I *had* to make.  So instead of one gourmet flavor, we were now up to two that we were going to make for everyone.  I made the list of people who were going to receive the ice cream and came up with ten families/couples.  Not bad.  Essentially twenty quarts of ice cream that Jay and I were going to have to crank out.

No problem.

However, we're procrastinators who were really enjoying being off of work and we didn't get around to starting the ice cream until Monday evening about six o'clock.  No problem.  We had twenty-three, well, make that twenty-two hours before we actually needed the ice cream.  We were ahead of the game.  Right?  It only takes twenty minutes in the Cuisinart to make a batch of ice cream, so I assumed the KitchenAid would be about the same.

We started with our bases.  We thought we could made a base, set it to cool, start a second base, then put the first batch in the ice cream makers while the second batch cooled, and start our third batch.  It worked out perfectly.  In my mind.  In reality, it didn't work at all.

Cream cheese vanilla ice cream and Chocolate Aztec sorbet base

First batch in my beloved KitchenAid.  I was very, very disappointed to say the least.  The KitchenAid ice cream maker sucks.  I'd be really pissed about it if I'd spent any money on it, but it came as part of our rebate when we bought our mixer (which I love and can't believe I lived without it for so long).  If all we had was the KitchenAid one and I had never used the Cuisinart, I might like it.  But we have the Cuisinart and it's worth every penny.

Save your money.  Buy a Cuisinart instead.

Jay's batch went into the Cuisinart, which worked like a champ.  For the first batch.  After that, we were just asking too much from it.

I love this ice cream maker.

Once we realized that the bases weren't cooling fast enough to go into the makers, we tried to cool them faster.  It was 19*F outside and we still had some snow left, so out the bowls went.  We were hoping to cool both the bowls and the bases.  After an hour, we brought in the bowls and started them up again. It was a nice thought, but didn't work.

Our outdoor cooling area.

After spending hours trying to get our first batch cooled and packed, we gave up and spooned all of the base into the ice cream containers.  After all, the machine is not necessary for making ice cream; it just helps to cool everything to the right consistency.  With the decision made to not use the ice cream makers, we cranked out the rest of our bases and put them in the containers, then packed them into the freezer and crossed our fingers.

The worst part of my "let's make cool stuff for Christmas" ideas, by far, are the dishes.  Gah!  I hate doing dishes.

Man, I hate doing dishes.

We finally fell into bed about one a.m. and hoped that our freezer would be up to the job of hard-freezing twenty quarts of ice cream.  When we rolled out of bed the next morning, we had chilled soup.  We stirred the soup, recapped the containers, and crossed our fingers again.  We consulted the gift list and realized we only absolutely had to have four sets of ice cream for Christmas Eve.  Everyone else we would see on Christmas Day, so that bought us almost twenty-four additional hours of freezer time.

Finally!

We got lucky and managed to eek out our first four sets just in time for Christmas Eve.

Whew!

Making Christmas Gifts

And they're wonderful and fabulous and it's killing me not to post about them right now.  But if I posted what I was making, and how I was making it, then everyone would know and it wouldn't be a surprise.

I come from a large family. Two brothers and a sister doesn't seem that large, but you add in parents, aunts/uncles, cousins, nieces and nephews and it gets big fast.  So many, many years ago, I started making gifts.  I've made Irish Cream (yum) a couple of years running and bococcini (I think that's how it's spelled - I'm feeling too lazy to look it up right now) plus stuff I don't even remember.  This year, I came up with something different, thinking it would be fun.  However, Jay and I are procrastinators and we didn't even start the gifts until about six o'clock this evening.  We've got ten sets to make and things aren't moving as quickly as we'd like.  Yikes!  That's what we get for procrastinating.  (Also explains why I'm blogging about pretty much nothing right now.)

I do have faith we'll get it all done by tomorrow night and, by God, people better LOVE their gifts!

Once everyone's received their gifts that we're slaving over, I'll get a post up complete with pictures.  Until then, keep your fingers crossed.

Mother's Day is Coming!

And do you know what you're going to get for your mother?  Or the mother of your children?

What about one of these?

Yes, I know, shameless promotion.  But they're about the coolest things I've seen.  It might be that I have a "thing" for our designer (and the design).  Honestly, though, I can't describe how cool it is to see these in real life after looking at the mock up for what seemed like forever.

AnyshamelessGunDiva, if you want a cool gift for someone, just click here.

Ok, ok, I'm done pimping RCC's phenomenal work out.

Because I Love You...

...and because I got some cool stuff for free!

Megan from BuildASign contacted me a month or so ago about doing a review on their products.  I was really interested in participating, but didn't have time to breathe, much less play around with their cool stuff.  Megan was super patient with me and gave me all the time I needed.

Last weekend, I made time to sit down at the computer.  I played with bumper stickers, window clings, decals.  You name it, I played with it.  It was super easy, and though I'm not the graphic designer in the family, I pretended I was.  I ended up designing some window clings that I think are kind of cool.

The site was fun to play around with and they got my order out to me faster than promised.  Megan told me to expect my order to arrive around February 16.  Imagine my delight when my order arrived on the 11th, just three days after I placed it.

Megan, in addition to being exceptionally patient with me, offered some really good suggestions to make sure that I was happy with the product.  I'm glad I listened to her suggestions.

I do have a problem, though.

I can't take a picture of the cling, because it's white writing on the white backing. So you'll have to trust me that it's pretty darn cool and Ripley's already sporting one (but RCC has Ripley at work, so I still can't take a picture).

I have ten to give away, but instead of using the Random Name Picker like I usually do, I'm going to give them to the first ten commenters. Family (Mom, Bill, Nebalee, Deejo) doesn't count because you're expected to put one on your vehicles and I've already got yours set aside.

I had such a good time with BuildASign that I've already got other projects in mind.

Did You Get What You Asked For? *Giveaway*

Well, if you didn't, here's your chance to win a $40 shopping spree at CSN stores.  Though I won't be getting any more modern dining room furniture until after ALL of the heathi are out of the house, CSN stores has some good stuff.  RockCrawlinChef moved some pretty cool furniture in when we got married, but I'm thinking that we might want stuff that we can entertain with.

I'm pretty sure that there's something that you want and had hoped you'd get it for Christmas, but it didn't show up under the tree.  'Cause, dang, I know that Santa did not drop off the consecutively numbered, semi-matching AR-15s under the tree that RCC and I were hoping for.

So...'fess up...what is it you wanted and didn't get this year?  And don't give me all that "I have my health/my happiness/a loving family and what more could you ask for" crap.  A book?  Jewelry?  A trip? The winning lottery numbers?

Leave me a comment with what you wanted by midnight CST on Wednesday, January 12th.  I'll plug your names in a random generator thingy and announce my winner on Friday, January 14th.  Entries limited to three (because I have some long-winded, smart-alec family and friends).

Cheesy Pictures

I normally wouldn't take up two days' worth of posts for one subject, but we got such cool pictures that I had to share them.  And I'm still completely amazed at how easy the whole project was.

We started off by breaking down two heads of garlic into individual cloves...

Then it was a family effort to peel all of the cloves...

Asset ended up chewing on her clove, so we left that one out of this beautiful bowl...

RockCrawlinChef put them in a pan of vegetable oil and set them on the stove to simmer and roast...

We opened our big block of curd...

Got our ice bath ready for the completed bococini (also very handy for cooling off burning hands - the gloves only protect from so much heat)...

We broke down the curd from the big block to little manageable curd and mixed in some coarse salt...

Added some hot water and began working the curds...

And if, say Nebalee GunDiva someone was to screw up, it was easy enough to pull the curd out of the hot water, pack it onto a plate, strain the water and have another go at it...

A quick check on the roasting garlic...

Finally, the curd begins to cook in the scalding water (along with our fingers) and becomes workable cheese...

Pulling the cheese is a lot like pulling taffy...

A small bit of cheese is squeezed and twisted off of the cheese to form the bococini...

And then it's immediately dumped in the ice bath to help firm it up...



Our not-so-perfectly-round bococinis all nestled in a zip-lock to await their final packaging...

The garlic's all roasted and ready to be strained...



We poured the oil, sans garlic, back into the jug with the other oil so the flavor could infuse throughout and let it sit for a few hours.  The cheese got packed in water in the fridge to chill and finish firming up.

To package them as gifts, I put three in each jar...



Added the roasted garlic and thyme...



And a pinch of red pepper flakes...

Added the garlic-infused oil...

Capped them and voila! Christmas gifts for my co-workers...

Bococini Day

Okay, apparently, I've been spelling bococini "the Mexican way" according to RCC (bocaccini) and the correct spelling is b-o-c-o-c-i-n-i, which really just means "little mouth" or small bite.

I got a wild hair (as I mentioned earlier) to make mozzarella as gifts for my co-workers.  RCC suggested we make bococinis instead of the mozzarella logs that I had intended to make.  He's a smart man.  It would have been easier and faster to make the logs than the bococinis, but it would have cost us a lot more, just because it would have required more ingredients.  So we settled on the bococinis that we'll pack in garlic flavored oil with thyme and red pepper flakes (yum!).  Mozzarella being the mild cheese it is will take on the flavor of the oil and be extra yummy.

The whole thing, from beginning to end took Nebalee, RCC and I about two hours including clean up (not including packaging for gifts).  While we were making the mozzarella, we had a pan full of garlic and vegetable oil simmering on the stove to roast the garlic (took just under an hour on low heat).  When the garlic was completely roasted, we just removed the pan from the heat and let it sit.

The curd was cold, so it cooled the water very quickly, despite being drawn from Mom and Bill's instant hot water tap from the coffee maker.  Thank goodness for Auto Bot, who ran her little legs off fetching hot water for the three of us.  The minute the water cooled, the cheese making went south quickly.  Luckily, mozzarella is a good beginner cheese, as it's almost impossible to ruin it.  If something doesn't work (photos tomorrow), strain the curd, add more hot water and start again.  It's very forgiving.

I ordered 10# mozzarella curd from Cheese Importers in Longmont, which ran me $65.00 and change.  We bought the jars from Bed, Bath and Beyond for about $58.00; the vegetable oil, coarse Kosher salt, thyme, garlic, and beautiful hand-saving dish gloves from King Soopers for $22.00.  I spent roughly $145.00 for everything needed and will have gifts for forty people, which works out to $3.63 per person.  If you're like me, and have a lot of co-workers to "buy" for, this is the way to go.  Really, it just takes "sweat equity" and very few ingredients to end up with something very yummy.

RCC and I figured that we'd put about three bococinis in each jar, so we'd need 120 bococinis and we ended up with 137 (more for us!).  We might have had 150 or so if we would have stopped "sampling" the cheese as we made it.

Say "Cheese"!

I got a wild hair a couple of months ago after watching Chefs vs. City and decided I wanted to make mozzarella as Christmas gifts.  Lucky for me, I married a chef who has made mozzarella more times than he can count when he was working at a hotel.

He won't let me make the curds, though.  Something about curds and whey don't appeal to him.

I had to order the curds instead. *pout*  But since RCC knows me so well, he's probably correct in thinking that I'll gross right out making my own cheese curds.


So, this afternoon, we'll be picking up 10# of mozzarella curds and hauling it up to the lodge for a cheese making day tomorrow.

Wish me luck!

Re-Gifting!

So, three of my give-away winners didn't claim their books.  Know what that means?
It means that I got to plug more names into the Random Name Picker and choose three more winners!
I chose from the 200th post commenters, not including family (sorry Mom and Bill), previous winners or those who didn't claim their books.  What that means is that even if you commented late, you were included the drawing this time around.

Crazy Sweet: T!nK

Cutting Loose: Sara

Loose and Easy: Shannon O'Donnell






I've got all of the other books packaged and ready to ship.  Y'all have no idea how hard that was to do, because I've loaned out my entire set and I just love these books.  It took all of my self control not to just sit down and read them all from start to finish before I mailed them out.

New Toys And A New Team Member

Getting new equipment (not new-to-us, which has been the standard) last week was like Christmas to me.  Corporate has been putting a lot of money into the Education Department recently and I have to say, I'm not at all upset about that, especially since in the past few weeks, we've received three new microscopes, a new autoclave (the one I've been drooling over for years) and a new EKG machine (which I haven't had a chance yet to play with, but will with my class next week).  Each new "present" from Corporate makes me happy, but the newest arrivals 'bout had me peeing my pants in joy.  The delivery guy laughed his ass off at me, because I was literally jumping up and down clapping my hands in delight.

This is what our old exam tables looked like:

They weren't horrible by any means.  They were "gently used" by a local family practice and were perfectly functional.  We have used them for the last three years and had nary a complaint.  I was happy to have them, as I think the students need to learn to use the equipment they're going to see in an office.

The new exam tables, however, are amazing!  They make my lab look so much more professional.  The lab now looks like how I'd envisioned it when I started piecing it together a few years ago.

We can do pretty much anything in this lab now.  Okay, we could before, I made sure of that, but it's like getting your first "grown up" furniture after living with your college cast-off furniture.  (You can see the new microscopes lined up proudly on the back counter.)

In addition to the new medical equiment, we have a new Education team member.  We've anxiously been awaiting his arrival.  His office has been arranged and waiting for him for two weeks. 

Finally, on Thursday afternoon, Prince Charming arrived at his new office in the Education Department.

On Friday, Prince Charming was a very naughty boy and got stuck in his resin tree stump.  Our IT God and I had to destroy his resin tree stump to get him out and he was *pissed*!  That's why I can't get a good picture of his cute little face.  Every time I tried to get into his office to take a picture, he'd turn his back on me.

When he's less pissed off at me, I'll see if I can't get a better picture.  He actually belongs to our Academic Advisor, Amanda, but we all love him to pieces.  He honestly has helped to bridge the distance between a few of the Education team members as we all pulled together to get his office built and ready for his arrival.  Who would have thought that a cute little tree frog could pull together a slightly fractured team?