Her Side Funnies

This post follows “Brandy swamp juice at day 60.”  To see that post, click here.

Wow, wow, and wow!  For the last 90 days, I have had two gallon jars of cheap vodka (the cheapest I could find) fermenting with fruit that was falling from the trees.  I have endured ridicule, taunting, threats of jail time if I poisoned anyone, and skepticism that the new “hobby” would be a disaster.  Now, the verdict is in.  I have had a chance to taste the wicked brew and, oh boy,  was I surprised!   Look who’s laughing now!

First, let me go back a little bit for those of you hitting this blog out of order from the first two.  I had two full trees full of fruit that were going to waste.  I had fed the family all the fruit products I could concoct, and needed another fresh usage.  I went online to get suggestions and found apricot leather (too much work with the risk of my kids hating it), cookies (didn’t use a tree full of fruit) and then I saw a homemade brandy site.  Hmph, I thought, I’m not much of a brandy drinker, but the labor looked easy – pick fruit, add sugar and cheap vodka, put in gallon jars and turn once a day for three months.  I could handle that – and the shelf-life was very good.  (more…)

This post follows “Brandy swamp juice at day 29.”  To see that post, click here.

On July 29, 2009, I forged ahead with an experiment, of sorts.  I had never tried to make brandy, but had a lot of fruit falling off the tree and decided to go online and get a recipe.  The recipe I found involved filling a glass gallon jar with fruit, adding three cups of sugar and approximately 26 ounces of cheap vodka.  The instructions said to turn the jar of brandy daily, from right side up to upside down for three months.  And so I have.

(more…)

Evidence of primordial life? Poison? Or incredible football beverage?

This post follows “Brandy, the new hobby.”  To view that post, click here.

Well, I do believe I’ll be feeding the first batch of brandy to Ken and his football buddies.  To call this batch “unappetizing” would be an understatement.  It is a murky blend of decomposing apricots,   The poor apricots look like aging women in there…losing their perky forms and digressing into blobs of soft pulp.  Yes, AARP is not hiring me as a marketing rep.  And the brandy institute is not interested in my skills, either.

For those of you interested in following the brandy experiment, I guess it is important to know that the fruit supposedly begins to ferment at 28 days.  Hmmm.  28 days sounds familiar.  Oh, yes, that’s coincidentally the same length of time it takes women to develop a “change in character,” too.  You can disregard that last statement as brandy consumption and PMS are rarely related, except in extreme cases.

As I spin the gallon jar around, the bodies of the apricots look like lifeless eyeballs in a high school science teachers lab.  Mind you, this is in direct contrast to the crabapple brandy.  The crabapple brandy looks great!  Clear liquid, still perky bodies at 28 days – very tasty looking indeed.  (That’s the one I’ll try…three days after Ken and his buddies try batch number one. )  If Ken is grabbing his stomach and moaning in pain, I’ll blame it on the nachos, but I may delay drinking my portion…indefinitely. (more…)

Ken fears it’s another addiction. We are having several conversations these days that center around addictive behaviors versus new hobby interest. The cheese making started as an innocent hobby – then drifted for six years into intensive “hobby” material.

I’ll admit, there were stretches of time (four-and-a-half years) when every stool in the house was being used to prop up bags of draining cheeses and the house smelled pretty milky, but the end result was magnificent. Fine French goat cheeses that were the envy of foodies everywhere. Of course, success came at a price. Every friend who happened by got a spoonful of goat cheese stuffed in their mouths for their honest appraisals. I list this as introducing my dear friends to…the trials of fine cuisine. Ken called it a testament to the depth of my friends’ good will. It’s an addiction, he said.

(more…)