Honey-Wine
July 7, 2008 | permalink

Earlier in the year, I made a couple of small test batches of mead. Mead, if you are not familiar with it, is honey-wine, very old and very simple; in its base form, it consists of only honey, water, and yeast. I made a gallon of mead with clover honey, and another with orange blossom honey. They were delicious.

Both came out light and (unsurprisingly) a little sweet, but also crisp. There was a champagne-like quality about them, which was made more prevalent by the fact that both batches were slightly carbonated. Which was not certainly not a problem, but also not my intention; I bottled them both just a touch too soon, with the yeast still active. Oh, and did I mention that it's really strong? Stronger than wine, certainly. I neglected to take any measurements, so I can't know for sure exactly what proof it ended up, but it's strong enough to warm you as it goes down, and two glasses is enough to make me pretty tipsy. If I had to guess, I would put it at 18 or 20 percent.

This past week, having successfully done my trial runs, I started a big batch- 4 gallons. Which, for your reference, ought to yield me about 18 wine bottles worth of mead. I am quite excited.

I made it with buckwheat honey. I don't know if you have ever had it; it is very sweet, dark, and full of flavor. Imagine an equal mix of clover honey and dark molasses and you have it about right. It ought to end up giving me a very dark, rich, and seriously strong mead. Sort of the stout of meads, I would think.

I know what you are thinking, Gentle Readers. You are wondering how you can get your hands on some of this elixir. The truth is, at it's base, mead is really simple, and you probably have nearly everything you need in your house to make a gallon of mead right now. The batches I have made, including this last big batch, all follow the same basic recipe- combine 3 parts water to 1 part honey, add yeast, and let it sit and ferment for 6 weeks or so. It is a little more complicated in practice- everything needs to be sterile and handled right, so you don't end up growing a giant mold colony- but only a little, and certainly doable in your kitchen.

If anyone is interested, I will post detailed directions for making a batch yourself. And I will certainly let you know how this batch turns out. I should be able to taste it somewhere near the end of August....

Posted in Food and Drink & The Home Front
(0) Comments

Bear's Eggplant Parmesan
June 30, 2008 | permalink

The first time I had eggplant I had no idea I was eating a vegetable; I was sure it was some kind of exotic, delicious meat. I remember asking someone what animal it was I was eating, and being stunned and confused when I learned that it was, in fact, a vegetable. The taste and texture of it were completely outside of my experience as to what vegetables were like, and I have been fascinated by the eggplant ever since.

One of my favorite ways to eat eggplant (as you may have guessed by now) is Eggplant Parmesan; here is how I like to prepare it:

Eggplant Parmesan

  • 1 Large, Ripe Eggplant
  • 2 Large Eggs
  • Seasoned Breadcrumbs
  • Mozzarella Cheese
  • Parmesan Cheese
  • Tomato Sauce
  • Fresh Basil
  • Olive Oil, Salt, and Pepper

Peel the eggplant and cut it into 1/4" thick slices. In a bowl, beat the two eggs, two tablespoons of water, and salt & pepper to taste. Dip the eggplant in the egg mixture and coat with breadcrumbs. Set aside.

In a skillet, heat enough olive oil to cover the bottom of the pan until it shimmers. Once it's hot, add the breaded eggplant, frying for 2-3 minutes on each side. We are not trying to cook the eggplant through and through at this stage- our goal is merely to brown the breading and outer edges of the eggplant. Once browned, transfer the eggplant slices to a cookie sheet lined with aluminum foil, making a single layer.

Once all your eggplant slices are browned, set them aside to rest for a few minutes and set the oven to 350 degrees. Also at this stage, you should heat the tomato sauce in a covered saucepan on an extremely low flame- we just want to warm it up.

Thinly slice enough mozzarella (we don't want to overpower the flavor of the eggplant, so don't be too heavy handed here- and I say that as a cheese lover!) to cover each slice of eggplant. Bake the now cheese-draped eggplant slices for 20 minutes, or until the cheese starts to brown. This, by the way, is why we weren't concerned with cooking them all the way through in the frying stage; if we had, we would end up with eggplant mush by the time they come out of the oven.

To serve, fan the eggplant slices out on a plate, spoon some of the sauce over top, give them a dash of Parmesan cheese, and throw on a couple of leaves of fresh basil. Again, don't be too heavy handed with any of these things; we don't want to lose the taste of the eggplant underneath all its toppings. I would serve it with garlic bread, and maybe a tomato-cucumber salad, but that's just me...

A large eggplant ought to yield 16-20 1/4" slices, which translates into about 4 servings of Eggplant Parmesan.

Posted in Recipes
(4) Comments

Tiny Little Fractures
June 23, 2008 | permalink

You see the bear charm in that picture? It was the first external element of my bearish persona to come to me, and up until a couple of weeks ago, I had worn it around my neck nearly continuously since 1993. In fact, I can only recall two occasions on which I removed for a period of time longer than that which was required to put it on a new string.

It is no secret that I feel a great affinity for the bear, and it shouldn't surprise you that I hold the bear as my totem and spirit guide, and that I regarded the necklace as a token and symbol of that relationship. When I saw it for the first time, I was unaware of this facet of myself; yet (as corny as this may sound) when I saw it, it really spoke to me, resonating in a way that would take me years to properly understand and put into words. But even if I didn't understand it at first, it nonetheless had a powerful effect on me, and I have had it as a touchstone and reminder of things greater than myself throughout my adult life, through many joys and many trials.

I found it while randomly browsing the wares for offer at a sale some group or other was sponsoring in the Campus Center. They had brought in a bunch of vendors to raise money. You know the type well enough- army surplus, rainbow hackey-sacks, cheap jewelry, black lite posters- the mainstays of college life in the early 90s. I am sure you remember it well. I passed it by at first; I didn't understand or really want to acknowledge the incredibly strong pull I felt towards it. I drifted by the table two or three more times before moving on with my day. However, I just couldn't let it go. My thoughts kept drifting back to it, and at the end of the day I went back to get it.

Only to find it gone.

Let me tell you, Gentle Readers, I was crushed, and I cursed myself for being such an idiot as to pass it by in the first place. Luckily for me, I had been browsing with a friend, who not only noticed my fascination with the bear charm, but bought it for me after I left. It was presented to me the next day, after I relayed how much of an idiot I felt like for letting it go. (It was, I gathered, to have been a birthday present, but I was apparently so morose it was given to me on the spot...)

And, as I said, I have worn it ever since. Until I lost it a couple of weeks ago.

I noticed, in the middle of a load in, that the bit of wire that held the bear to the string had snapped sometime during the day. It was pretty much the perfect top off to what had been a supremely craptacular day, and while I tried to tell myself that I would find it, I knew the truth of it, and to say it bummed me out would be a very large understatement.

So, what is one to do, when one's totem goes missing? I thought about replacing it with as close a copy as possible, but that didn't sit right with me. I even have another bear necklace that was given to me as a gift. But, while I treasure it, it didn't seem like the right thing to do.

What I finally arrived at was that I could not try to replace the bear with another bear; instead, I decided to make myself a charm that would encompass a different aspect of the bear. Something that paid homage to my totem, but also reflected some of the ways that I have changed since that first bear charm came to me. So, I made myself a necklace with a bear claw as it's centerpoint.

It is very different from the last, and I am quite pleased with it.

Posted in Bad Luck & The Past
(3) Comments

The Busy Girl Buys Beauty
June 10, 2008 | permalink

When I was young, The Old Man took us ('us' being whatever collection of siblings, cousins, and relatives more removed that made up the family at any given time... it is strange to me, even now, how such a big and diverse group could have been so closed and insular... but that is another musing, for another time...) camping and hiking and boating quite often. These outdoor excursions are some of my favorite memories.

We had a couple of swimming holes that we liked to frequent; one had a wide, shallow stone shelf and a deep and fast moving center channel- it was good for really hot days, because the water was always so shockingly cold. There was another place we went often, a river medium wide and medium deep, with an old bridge that we would leap off of into the water. The river was probably too shallow, really, for the height of the bridge. It's a wonder we never cracked our skulls open.

There was another place we went a few times, a really wide, slow moving bend in a river. I learned to snorkel there, and once we found and cooked and ate river mollusks. I remember that there was the rusted out wreck of a car in one place, and I used to wonder how it had ended up on the bottom of the river.

I wonder what those places are like, now... I haven't been to any of them in over 20 years. Are they still as remote as I remember, as pristine? I doubt it. Likewise, the leap from the bridge that felt so death-defying would probably be revealed as only 10 or 12 feet, and the wide expanse of the river bend is likely nothing special to look at. I know where they are, and how to get there- I could go look, and see what has become of them.

But I think I prefer to keep them as they were.

Posted in Growing Up & Musings & The Old Man & The Past
(1) Comments