Happy Birthday Ms Julia!

Today would be Julia Child's 100th Birthday and hot damn! I love that woman. Her piercing voice, her cozy TV kitchen in fuzzy black and white (oh yeah. I watched reruns as a kid as an alternative to WWF after Saturday morning cartoons. Shhhh. Don't tell the Redneck!),  her novel notions of food, and best of all her underlying message (to me, at least): what happens in the kitchen, stays in the kitchen!

So today I will make omelets in her memory, and if one of them should slip and fall onto the floor as it did in that oh so memorable episode, than shhhhh! no one will know!

(almost) wordless.

DE + leafblower = treating under the barn for bugs...

Blueberry Wine - pt 1

Back when I lived in California, which seems like oh so many years ago, I used to make blackberry wine. I had a gazillion blackberry bushes at my disposal and I am such a hoarder when it comes to that sort of harvesty stuff that I couldn't resist.

Enter my current patch of blueberries... while we have picked maybe 5 of the available 30 or so gallons this year (no joke, but many are too high up to reach...), we have put up maybe 3. And I have decided to make a (small) batch of blueberry wine as well.

Unfortunately I lost the first several pictures due to my phone momentarily becoming an idiot, getting stuck in 'recovery' mode (like that's going to trick you out of thinking your phone is just half dead...) and losing everything on it. Mere hours after taking said photos. But that's a whole different story...

Crushed pureed blueberries, sugar, yeast & water in the primary fermenter.

I pushed this cap down and stirred every day for three days. (if you look closely you can tell it was bubbling)

Straining through a flour sack towel, my cloth of choice for these sorts of things.

It's important to let it drain with a proper weight on top. In this case, expired yogurt I brought home from the store.

Mmmmm... fruity.

Added to the secondary and topped off with our particle free, PH neutral well water.