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| Fill This |
Last year the ladies got really interested in squishing fruit. They combed the neighborhood and delivered letters to our especially fruity neighbors inviting them to some free labor. In exchange for cleaning up around their fruit trees, we'd bring home a few large buckets of apples, pears, persimmons and muscadines. Over the course of several weeks during harvest season we accumulated many "carboys" (large glass containers) full of squeezings. They're naturally doing their thing and now we have lots of bottles to fill. Pretty tasty pear wine, honey wine, cyser, mead, and more, I'm sure. I'm trying to stay at arm's length. (Yes, with a glass in hand, though.)
Identifying the plants while you're walking next to them is pretty impressive, but what really wowed me was driving around, even on the highway, hearing, "Pear! Apple! Persimmon!" Red2 identified a pear tree hiding in front of a grocery store. She's 9, kiddos.
Their mom and I did share. It wasn't all booze. We had persimmon cake, apple and pear butter, and pear preserves using as recipe from the tree owner who feels like she's all done making preserves herself. She was very happy to have some help.
The last thought here is about where this all leads. The natural ingredients that used to be found in things like Maraschino cherries and grenadine. Amy Stewart's book, The Drunken Botanist, is good read full of stories about what's really supposed to be in the bottles. Read the labels, folks. Red1 wants a field trip to a liquor store to find real grenadine made with pomegranates, not colored up corn syrups. I think she'll have to wait a bit for that. Do you think the shop keepers will let us in to read the labels?
What a great idea, to help out the fruity neighbors! We had a pear tree at one of our previous houses, but I didn't appreciate it at the time. Now I wish I had one again.
ReplyDeleteTaMara
Tales of a Pee Dee Mama
There are so many unnatural ingredients these days.
ReplyDeleteAnd I bet they would let her in to read the labels.
I used to love it as a kid when we went out to a restaurant for dinner and my mom would allow me to eat the Maraschino cherry from her Manhattan. Now that I know what's in them....
ReplyDeleteCarboys! just saw that in a game of Lexulous, nice to know what it actually means!
DMac
http://dmaccreativefog.wordpress.com/category/a-to-z/
One liquor store was very happy that we asked about the grenadine. They stocked it just for people like us. (They're are waiting for us to show up, let's all go!)
ReplyDeleteThat sounds like a very cool book! I'd love to make my own fruit wines. There was a prison wine recipe on twitter the other day but I'm sure it's not the same.
ReplyDeleteWe're not making it in the toilet! There IS a fruit kefir craze going on around here. The gang we meet up with for the weekly pot-luck love the water kafir juice we bring. It makes folks happy.
ReplyDeleteGreat stuff...I came over from your comment on my brewer's post on RPGs. I clearly owe you a beer/cider if you're ever in Atlanta.
ReplyDeleteBrewers, in general, tend to be great people. My roommate when I lived in Texas is an SCA brewer. I remember a cider he bottled too early and coming home every night with a new bottle burst, denting the ceiling (they were on the top of an 8' TV cabinet) and spewing sticky liquid.
I'm putting the book that shares this post's title on my Christmas list for him.
Amy Stewart has a bunch of other really fine books! Also it is important to note that home brews are actually a health food item, full of vitamin b and other good stuff. Love you sci if daddy and the minks called the beer came in so keep drinking up those flip tops for me!
ReplyDeleteAmy Stewart has a bunch of other really fine books! Also it is important to note that home brews are actually a health food item, full of vitamin b and other good stuff. Love you sci if daddy and the minks called the beer came in so keep drinking up those flip tops for me!
ReplyDelete