Health vs. Culture: vegan sausage

I made some fake breakfast sausage links today and I have to say they are really good. Maybe not so good if you are expecting a greasy Bob Evans link but good for just sausage. I put slices on pizza with green chile (a local favorite pizza topping) and enjoyed it immensely. Ate all the leftover bits, too.

I'm not sure what to do when I go visit my Dad this fall, though. I don't think I can get him to understand this vegan/vegetarian thing.

He called a couple days ago with an urgent question. How was my supply of chorizo? Seems he found a local source that carried Spanish, as opposed to Mexican chorizo and wanted to know if I needed some. I said truthfully that my supply was fine. "Dad", I said, "I have several packages of chorizo in the freezer and we aren't eating much meat these days anyway". Well, maybe I soft pedaled it a bit but John is still eating a little meat occasionally so it was true.

The conversation ends with Dad saying he's going to go ahead and send me some anyway and me saying sure, I'll try it out and let him know what I think. Sigh. What a coward.

This would all be OK if I weren't going there for a week. If I try to eat now like he'll want to cook for me, I'll end up the last several days in the bathroom. I need to explain but he'll worry that I'm a) not getting the nutrition I need and b) rejecting my cultural foods. That equates to rejecting my whole culture since food is so intrinsic.

Well, I have a new plan after today's sausage success - vegan chorizo! Surely that's possible. I have a few months to work it out, then I can pack it with dry ice or frozen gel packs, send it ahead and tell Dad I'll do dinner one night. Vegan asopao! I don't have to use shrimp or eat it if I do.

OK, there's one problem potentially solved. Now I have to figure out how to deal with being treated like a twelve year old without getting hostile. 

Update 7/14/10: Well, I picked up vegan chorizo at the grocery store. Looks pretty awful but I'll try it.

Baby's got them whey powder blues

More about trying to eat healthy in the land of tamales.

I did not figure I would actually be "vegan" but I thought I would give it a shot under the premise that no matter where I start, I will eventually lose ground. Best to set the bar high. I  have developed a few concerns beyond the risk of B12 deficiency.

Concern #1. I was thinking food and health and "vegan" is a term specifically coined by those who embrace a whole life-style and philosophy. No leather shoes. No honey because it's cruel to the bees. PETA on speed dial, probably ahead of Mom. I would not have the choices and the information that I have were it not for them but it's not for me. I respect their claim to the label so, I will use the word as an adjective for recipes only.

Concern #2. There are animal products in everything! Whey powder, casein, egg white, buttermilk solids, anchovies in the Worcestershire sauce, milk in the wheat buns, cheese in the Boca Burgers. "Natural Flavor" can mean anything from vanilla to chicken fat and the label doesn't have to say if it's not on a certain list of allergens. Even table sugar is sometimes whitened using filters containing bone char. I doubt if much bone remains but if you really want to eliminate animal products, you can't buy anything that might contain refined sugar as it might contain bone char.

So much time is now spent cleaning greens and learning new recipes and new techniques that I'm not so down with making my own vegan Worcestershire sauce. I think I can live with the anchovies. The cost of organic sugar or alternative sweeteners is outrageous, especially when you also use it for wine-making. I need the store-brand 10 pound bags and to hell with how it was filtered.

So here is tonight's dinner: Mini (because that's the only bread I had) baked seitan sandwiches with almond mozzarella "cheese" which would be vegan were it not for the Worcestershire, dolmas made by nimble-fingered Greek women and a small glass of blackberry-honey wine.  The wine was made by me.

Vegan shopping in the land of Tamales

I have decided to try a more plant-based diet as the burgers just kill me these days. Our ever expanding waistlines are also cause for concern and sweetie has decided that he's lactose intolerant. I've already quit using so much cheese (and I love cheese! I got no problem with cheese!). 

My self-serving theory is that eating healthy most of the time means we need not feel guilty when we don't. So I do a little research on staple foods, download some promising recipes and thus armed, head to the groceries in Socorro. The little market in Magdalena, sweet as it is, is not much of a resource here. I can pick up canned beans, maybe some frozen spinach but they never have fresh cilantro let alone anything more exotic. They sell lard in really large buckets, though. It's an essential ingredient in tamales.

Tamales. Sigh. Pork, corn, red chile and lard. Fabulous! But I gave those up over a year ago and seem to have survived. The Mexican family that sells their home-made tamales in front of Smiths was there yesterday. We used to buy them by the dozen. Those were the days...

But back to tofu and what-not. We have Smith's and we have a John Brooks affiliate. Technically, we also have a Wally world but they rarely had what I wanted before. I didn't even look for vegan foods. So it seems possible to eat this way without regular trips to Albuquerque but only just barely. There are large, gaping holes only some of which can be filled by mail-order.

Smiths has some tofu but no tempeh. John Brooks has some nice tempeh but the soy milk is mostly flavored and only comes in half gallons. We use little milk now. Pints or quarts would be better. Safflower and coconut oils can be had (pricey, though) but not soy margarine. I find margarine to be an abomination (butter flavored plastic) but I was willing to try the soy to make the vegan bechamel sauce with cashews. Maybe I can make the roux with safflower oil instead. Butter may end up staying moderately in the diet, though. Shrimp and honey are staying (no such thing as a vegan mead!).

Thai foods are very scanty.  I found Thai coconut milk at Smiths but none of the other ingredients to make a Thai curry. No curry paste, no lemon grass, no kaffir lime. I really love green curry now so I'm seeing Albuquerque in the future. Wonder how long the lime leaves keep?

Quinoa flour is here but not the whole grain. I did pick up TVP at Smiths but if nutritional yeast is here, I don't know where they put it. I suspect they wouldn't really know where it should go. I should have checked the baking aisle!

I'm mostly looking for asian foods but I did order a cook book of vegan comfort foods (Quick and Easy Vegan Comfort Foods by Alicia C. Simpson) that has a lot of vegan versions of non-vegan foods. I'm figuring out now that those kinds of foods tend to be loaded with fat, salt or sugar. They're vegan but not healthy. Well, we all need a little comfort some time and maybe it'll help ease the transition.

I was drawn to Isa Chandra Moskowitz's book Vegan Cupcakes Take Over The World. Beautiful cupcakes, fabulous flavors! Not healthy, per se but such a fun treat. But I looked at some pages on Amazon plus I went to the author's blog and saw some more recipes. Until Socorro gets soy margarine and soy yogurt, it's not happening. Deleted that book from the wishlist.

Meanwhile, an online Asian grocer is sending me red and white miso, a couple different sesame oils, dried shitakes (which I could get but the price was actually better online) and a few other things that are escaping my memory right now. In fact, it just now occurs to me that they may have wakame, another thing I couldn't find here. Shipping was a mere $5 for fedex ground. Lovely!

Food Fight in Oregon is sending me nutritional yeast, some locally-made Thai curry paste, some low-salt organic vegetable bouillon cubes (no vegetable bouillon at Smiths, I didn't check Brooks) and Braggs Liquid Aminos. The Braggs is weird but it seems to be a staple and is a healthier substitute for soy sauce. I'll give it a try.

>Bob's Red Mill will get an order to get the quinoa for sure and they have so many other delightful things. They also are touting new, lower shipping costs. Shipping kept me from ordering very often so I'm really quite excited. I hope I don't over-spend.

Speaking of money, it sure isn't cheap to eat healthy. However, a lot of what I'm buying are staples that will last a while so I think it'll get pretty cost-effective so long as I stay away from the prepared foods - except for Boca portobello burgers. Those are just plain good! They have them at Smiths.

Schools out but not for me

10:30 Friday morning after spring semester is over and summer session hasn't started yet. Not a great deal to do here to earn my pay. I've been reading my favorite forums, updating my profiles, looking up Chuck Brodsky songs on YouTube and now I'm on my blog.

I'd feel guilty but I've also done a couple small financial reports, answered a real phone call, helped a student place a supply order for one of the research projects and - most important of all - I am here, all day, just in case.

Oh! Just remembered there's a retirement party to go to! Why, I'd be totally remiss if I didn't go over there. I should be back just in time for lunch.

Waiting for budbreak

We are more than halfway through April already. In the valley, everything has been green long enough to start losing that vivid spring color and is settling into the deeper summer green. Flowers and people in shorts are everywhere.

A couple thousand feet higher - where I live - it's much, much earlier. The weather gurus will not promise that it won't frost until May 21. I remember thinking that was an error the first time I read it. I also remember planting tiny mail-order perennials about this time a few years ago and it snowed that night.

Today we have rain and actual by-god fog. It's been raining since yesterday afternoon and the ground has gone squishy. I tried to check the leafbud progress in the vineyard but I was sinking into mud. I couldn't get near the blackberries and raspberries but there were no signs of life a day or two ago. Nothing has emerged where the hops rhizomes are planted either.

I fret. I fret a lot. When I planted the berries, I said it was a test to see what would grow here and whether fall planting would work. I said that if they didn't make it through the winter, I would just replant in the spring. I said I needed to know and I said it would be OK. I totally lied.

It is not OK. They must live! I have 12 brown and lifeless twigs planted in beautifully amended soil, carefully mulched and newly connected to the drip system. I've lost track of the money spent but the bigger cost was to this aging body. Digging out boulders with a pick is not something I can do much longer, I must admit. In fact, I don't think I could do it again. Little green leaves - is that so much to ask?

But then I have to remind myself that it's early here. The Russian sage and the New Mexico locust have just popped their first leaves out. The daffodils just started. The grass is still dormant and even the weeds are tiny. I think it's February that is known as the "cruelest month". Here, at 6500 feet, it's April.

Photo is the damp (good!) and dormant (sigh) vineyard, berries are beyond, marked with the blue flags.

Update: A few hours after I wrote this, the rain quit and I got out to pull damp mulch away from the berry canes. One of the Heritage raspberries has a little green shoot from the root! Woo-hoo! Also found what I think is an elderberry shoot under the mulch across the yard. At last.

Fun with Kit Wines

The long awaited WinExpert Limited Edition Trio Blanca arrived ("blanca" with an "a" on the end. That sounds wrong to this hispanic girl) and spent 6 days in primary before being racked to the secondary.

Now, I've been been kind of dismissive of the kit wines as in "I've made this! and that! and this other! Oh, and a Malbec but it was a kit." Husband points out that there are plenty of ways to screw up a kit and I shouldn't be so shy of taking pride. He's right.

Case in point: last night, I go to rack the Trio Blanca to the carboy after working all day and then having a glass and a half of wine. My carboy fills up - and there's still more wine. I grab a half gallon jug, fill that up - and there's still more wine. I finish off by filling a quart jar. Then I take the half gallon and the quart and combine them into a gallon jug with too much headspace.

It's not until the next morning that I realize this cannot be. My primary fermenter is marked at 6 gallons. The mark was obtained by filling a 6 gallon Better Bottle carboy with water and pouring it into the primary. If the primary was filled to that mark, I cannot have leftover wine!

What I have done is filled a five gallon Better Bottle. They look an awful lot alike unless you have them side by side. And, I discover this morning, both have a big "6" on the bottom! Seems to be a recycling code. Dang! That 5 gallon carboy is getting a BIG sharpie 5 right on the top!

Fortunately, fermentation is still very vigorous and I probably did no harm by racking them both to the real 6 gallon carboy at 8 o'clock this morning. Bubbling, bubbling away right now.

The other thing I learned is that oak chips are a pain in the patoot. The malbec kit had oak powder. Not the greatest but at least it doesn't get sucked up into the racking cane or clog the sink when you go to dump it out of the primary. Those buggers really swell! The up-coming Luna Rossa kit has 4 packets of french oak chips. FOUR! I'm going to put them in a nylon straining bag and put that into the primary.

Back to potential errors: I have concern that the oak chips were not in the Trio Blanca long enough to impart their full intended flavor. I am using WinExpert guru Tim Vandergrift's extended kit prep schedule which calls for a fairly quick transfer from primary (where I had the oak) to secondary (where there are just a few random floating bits).  That alone could change the character of my wine.

I also have a pound of medium toast American oak chips I bought a while back. I have a plastic tube left over from a broken hydrometer which I intended to make into an oak chip infuser - drill a bunch of holes, string a nylon cord through it, loosely pack with oak chips and suspend in a carboy. I thought my first use of this gizmo would be to oak my traditional mead but I may decide to add extra oak to the Trio Blanca. That, too will change my wine. So, if it's good, I can take credit. If it's not - well, so it goes. All part of the learning process.

The photo is Stella whose attention was first caught by the exciting noises made by the airlock and kept by the fascinating bits of oak swimming up - then back down. Right of the carboy are the Luna Rossa kit (next up when the brew belt heater is free) and the Viognier kit. Behind the Trio Blanca is a gallon of hot red chile wine and 3 gallons of blackberry mead.

The beer bottles are homebrew stout which has disappointing carbonation. They'll get opened, dosed with some additional sugar and re-capped.

Currenty happening in the Nafiat "Winery"

It's snowed more than it oughta and it's been cold. Snowed in today, in fact and I would mind less if I weren't paid by the hour. Spring and gardening seem forever away and I am oh-so-antsy. Fussing with - or I should say obsessing about my various concoctions is the only thing keeping me from going nuts.

So because this is the only thing I want to think about whether or not anyone else cares, here's where things are:

Lemons

The Skeeter Pee lemon wine has been bottled. 18 were labeled but my labels were smudging. Spraying with claybord fixatif helped but I didn't get them sprayed evenly. Opened a bottle last night as no aging is required. The stuff grows on you. I'm working out a recipe for a kiwi-lime-grapefruit version.

Blackberries

The 3+ gallon batch of blackberry melomel has had the fruit removed and is now in a 3 gallon carboy plus a one gallon jug. The jug was short quite a bit and rather than dilute, or use a half gallon and scramble for some other small container, I added every one of my glass craft marbles. They're more like pellets so they settle tighter than round marbles. There must be 2 and a half inches of them in there. The brix measured at about 11 this morning so the alcohol is already over 10%. Taste wasn't bad - kind of sweet-tart with lots of berry flavor. It might end up better than the first batch I have going because I am now thinking sweeter balances the acid of the blackberries better. But we'll see.

Chiles 

The hot chile wine seems to have stalled at about 8.25 brix. I decided to splash rack it to a 1 gallon jug, removing the chiles and the swollen raisins and leaving behind whatever lees did not easily flow out. My high-tech method involved pouring it from the 4 liter to the gallon through a funnel with a mesh strainer sitting in it. The handle of the strainer had to sit on the above-countertop shelves to keep it all from tipping sideways. Very elegant.

Because of the very swollen raisins, I had to top off with over a cup of water. Good thing I didn't use the pound of raisins the jalapeno recipe called for. There would have been no room for wine!

So I realized I ought to give it a taste now. I was expecting gaggy sweet with a little heat. What I got was barely sweet at all and a LOT of heat. I think the heat was cutting the sweetness and it was actually sweeter than it seemed. If it decides to ferment no further, I'm OK with that. It's pretty good!

More Lemons

The Limoncello has been strained, blended and sweetened and it bulk-mellowing in 2 jugs. I probably have about one and a quarter gallons of it. It came in at about 35% alcohol which seems pretty good. My biggest problem is that it tastes very good right now AND there is no worry about too much headspace in the jugs. That makes it awfully easy to take a little taste. And another. I may have to give away the bottles I plan to very soon just to keep me out of it!

Stout

The first batch has been bottle conditioning for about 16 days. I knew it wouldn't be ready yet because that part of the room is staying in the low 60's. I warned John but he wanted to try a bottle anyway. I have to agree it's useful to check so we popped it. There was a slight bit of carbonation, but not much. I've been worried about how much priming sugar we used since I had to do a bunch of conversions from UK gallons. It also tastes a bit thin and I wish I had followed my first inclination to make it to 5 gallons instead of 6. Or at least 5.5. We're getting an American kit next time!

Anyway, the rest of the bottles will keep. We'll maybe try another on the weekend.

Grapes, even

I think we've opened 3 of the Malbec kit so far. It keeps improving, though it'll never be great. It was dang cheap, though and an excellent learning experience. I think I'll mostly be sticking with midrange or better kits in the future.

My first WinExpert Limited Edition kit is in transit. It should arrive Friday just in time for the weekend (if it isn't delayed by this snow - Yikes!). That's the Lake County CA Trio Blanco. I'm very excited!

I finally claimed my "buy one get one free" voucher that I won in WinExpert's Limited Edition contest. Midwest Supplies said they'd take the voucher so long as I mailed it to them so I sent it with an order. I'm getting the highly touted Viognier. I was going to get the Italian Amarone but I decided to go for the Luna Rossa because it was $20 cheaper and would not need as much aging before it was drinkable. I'll still get the Amarone later, though. If I didn't have such a young "cellar", I would have gotten it now.

I'd like to have all three started bam-bam-bam but I want to do Tim Vandergrift's extended plan for kits meaning that carboys will be tied up for a few months for each one. And how many empty 6 gallon carboys do I have? One! Yup. Pretty poor planning on my part.

I have to order at least one as this will not stand, man, but I think I'll also bottle the Prickly Pear wine and free up that one. It's been bulk aging for 5 months. I just don't have the space to leave it for a year. Yet.

The other meads

Blackberry, Joe's Ancient Orange and the chai tead are all still fermenting but starting to clear. Well, the tead is pretty murky but I'm saving that one for next solstice anyway. I can wait. I am pondering oaking the 3 gallon batch of mesquite/wildflower mead. I have chips. Not the best, I understand but it'll do if I'm cautious. I think I can make an infuser out of the plastic tube from a hydrometer. I can pull it out when it tastes right without racking - being that I just used my last 3 gallon carboy for the blackberry melomel. Geez. More carboy woes.

And I have yet to figure out what I'm going to do with all the full bottles. I'd like a nice rack. I'd even build one if I could figure out where to put it but my best space is full of gardening and home-improvement stuff so where do I put that? Oh, such problems to have!

Made up recipe Approx. 724 - Creamy Garlic Shrimp & Mushrooms

My favorite way to cook is to have a lot of random raw materials and then, 30 to 60 minutes before I want to eat, I look through the pantry, the fridge and the freezer and put something together. Occasionally they are flops but most of the time it’s good to fantastic. This one was on the high end of good for flavor and texture though a little low visually (very important!) so just as well I didn’t take a photo. I have to give some thought to the presentation next time, if there is one. Sun-dried tomatoes, maybe.

John was on the phone to his boy so I gave him a five-minute warning and told him I would be in the mood for a movie, if he had anything worth seeing. John’s movie addiction and his near cold-turkey quitting is another subject. Suffice it to say, it was a big deal to ask him to put in a movie.

Curiously, he happened to pick Julie/Julia. That's a movie that'll make you want to a) cook and b) blog! At some point, he asked if I could cook like that. I said “Sure!” but smartly negotiated an exchange of French cooking for a Le Creuset pot – pumpkin-shaped maybe. If I have to get one myself, at least I know he won’t object if filled with Boeuf Bourguignon!

Here’s what I made:

1 container fresh, whole mushrooms, washed and sliced

2 Tablespoons olive oil

3 Tablespoons butter

2 very large garlic cloves, sliced thinly

1 teaspoon of my home-roasted Spanish garlic

Fresh ground pepper and salt (unmeasured, of course)

Splash of very hot chile wine made by a friend (and later another splash – not quite ¼ cup)

All this was sautéed until the mushroom and garlic slices were soft. (Just found out last night I have been crowding my mushrooms! Never again!)

Meanwhile, a fistful of whole wheat angel hair pasta was put in a kettle of boiling salted water to cook until al dente.

12 ounces of cooked frozen shrimp (on sale!) were thawed and their tails pulled off. The shrimp were dumped into the mushroom mixture with 2 hefty dollops of Greek yogurt (more like sour cream), adding a fair amount of moisture. I lowered the heat a bit and cooked it down but it still looked soupy and smelled too much of my childhood beef stroganoff. More hot chile wine!

Plus a fistful of fresh parsley, chopped up and ¼ cup or better of grated parmesan.

Stirred it up a bit and dished it out over the pasta with a garnish of more parmesan. Yum!

Hot Chile Wine Experiment

Chile wine didn't sound good to me until someone on the WinePress forum mentioned using it to marinate mushrooms. Then another WinePress friend, Wade, surprised me with a couple little bottles of his chile wines. His Hot Spot was a little hard to drink straight up but a splash in the cheap jug wine was fantastic. Plus, it did lovely things to pork and mushrooms.

I was going to wait until I could get fresh, ripe chiles this summer but Wade suggested making some with dried chiles. I didn't locate a recipe for dried chiles but a couple recipes for fresh jalapeno provided the start.

I suspect my small, plastic primary once used for hot pepper wine would have to be forever used for hot pepper wine so good thing I drink those jug wines and save the jugs! Later I  might need a dedicated primary but 4 liters is enough for now.

So, here's what I did:

5 good sized, dark red HOT Hatch chiles - seeded and broken up to fit through the neck of the 4 liter jug. John would like to actually drink the stuff so I didn't want to go too hot.
2 lbs (5 cups) white sugar
5 ounces whole dark raisins - an arbitrary amount. I elected to not chop them this time. Also arbitrary.
1 teaspoon of ground coriander - just seemed like a good idea.
1 1/2 teaspoons acid blend.
1/4 teaspoon tannin.
3/4 teaspoon yeast nutrient.
No K-meta yet but I'll probably add some later.

I got all that in the jug and poured in a quart of hot water, screwed the cap on and shook it until the sugar was dissolved. Then I added cold tap water until it was about 3 inches from the neck. I am leaving some room for foaming but I'll top it off with water later.

I pitched in a dry packet of Pasteur Champagne yeast, swirled it in slightly and then remembered I hadn't checked specific gravity. Well, even though I snagged some with a turkey baster right away, avoiding solids, I suspect (hope) my reading wasn't accurate. It came in at 1.120. That 15.8% potential alcohol, according to a chart I have . I'm not sure that's really possible with only 2 pounds of sugar in just under a gallon of water. If it is right,  that's going to be one strong brew! Wonder if it's too late to use my schmancy refractometer? Nope. It says 33 brix. That's even worse! Oh well. We'll see what happens.

Anyway, the chiles are already tinting it a nice reddish color and I can smell the coriander. Whatever it ends up being, it's already fun.

Limoncello Redux

Well, I was unsatisfied with the quality of the ingredients for the batch I started a couple weeks ago. This is meant to be a birthday present for my Dad so it needs to be the best.

My friend Nicole sent me a facebook message the other day that a local grocery had gotten in some organic meyer lemons. I was there within an hour picking through the pile (and leaving no decent ones for Nicole!). I stopped by their liquor counter to see if they had the better 100 proof vodka and - lo and behold - 190 proof Everclear! Seems my info about not being able to get that in New Mexico was just plain wrong.

Yesterday, while waiting for my holiday carne adovada to cook, I started zesting the lemons. I didn't have another wide mouth jar big enough but it turned out to be fairly easy to poke the big pieces of zest through the mouth of a gallon jug.

Here's the thing, though. Meyer lemons, while quite nice, just don't smell as good to me as the regular lemons. I think I recall reading that they are a cross between a lemon and an orange. Sounds like a good thing but in practice, maybe not. I didn't like the juice as well either. I will say they were a lot easier to zest with the vegetable peeler. The skin isn't nearly as tough and the shape was also easier to handle.

Everclear is looking like it might just live up to it's rep for limoncello. After 24 hours, the color of the Everclear is as yellow as the vodka is after 2 weeks. Of course, it's twice as much volume of vodka so it may be illusion but I don't think so.

So the new plan is to eventually blend the two batches. Doing that, I can use the Everclear batch to boost the alcohol content of the vodka batch. I will keep them separate all the way through sweetening for comparison purposes. With a big disparity in alcohol content, I don't think a side-by-side taste test will work but a side-by-side aroma test ought to tell me something. Then, if I decide not to blend, I can just dilute the Everclear batch down to a more palatable level. I think I should shoot for an ABV of about 45%. That shouldn't go slushy in the freezer.

Boy, you'd think the only thing on my mind was alcoholic beverages. I'm sure my mind will turn to other things after I have a nip of this Bailey's a professor gave me.

Primitive Blackberry Melomel

The melomel may be in trouble and the Winepress forum is down. I could have a dozen good answers in an hour otherwise but I am just going to have to flail about on my own. I'm probably worrying too much but I thought I would document the process of worry, test, tinker, worry some more, tinker some more, etc. That's what makes wine making so dang fun!

I just got the first jug of Joe's Ancient Orange and Spice Mead bottled and it's really very good despite being quite sweet. Not enough spice, though. I decided to start two more jugs and up the spices, play with slightly reducing the honey.

After getting the first jug going, I recalled the pounds of Oregon blackberries in the freezer. Well, I know others have tinkered with Joe's recipe so I figured I'd try a blackberry melomel (mead with fruit) instead of the orange and spice. The forum was down then, too, but I figured I had a handle on things.

I thawed a pound of berries, put them in a nylon straining bag and mashed them up well in my small fermentor. I dissolved the honey in some warm water and poured it over the berries, adding a bit more than 3 pounds to get the specific gravity up to 1.114. That's a potential alcohol content of 16% but I'm using bread yeast and expecting it to finish lower than that and still sweet. That what makes it early-drinking. I left out Joe's raisins because I think they are meant as food for the yeast and the blackberries should fill that role. For some now unknown reason, I decide to wedge one quarter of a lemon and toss that in with the juice and zest of another quarter lemon. Well, lemon tastes nice. I think that's why. I don't think it'll need the acid because blackberries are acidic enough.

So I have this all in the fermentor. I whisk it up good to aerate, toss in a teaspoon of Fleishman's Rapid Rise and put the lid and airlock on. I left the bucket (that's the fermentor) in the kitchen next to the gas stove.

Next morning, the kitchen is maybe 60 degrees and of course, there's no activity. Too cold. I moved the bucket to the living room next to the electric heater where I can now get it up to 72 or even 75 degrees F. Pretty soon, we have bubbles through the airlock. Yay!

Next day - nothing. Well, that's not right! The jug of orange and spice right next to it is sputtering and gurgling constantly. I check the pH.: 3.67 - fine. I aerate some more and pitch in another teaspoon of yeast in the morning. 11 hours later - nothing.

Ok. Thinking. So maybe there isn't enough food for the yeast in the blackberries after all. I have yeast nutrient and yeast energizer. The little bottle of energizer specifically mentions stuck fermentations so I go for that one. Whisk it on in. This morning - nothing.

Hmm. Maybe I shouldn't have put in that lemon. Maybe it doesn't like being in the bucket. Maybe my pH meter needed calibrating and it's really below 3.00. Maybe it's just being a slow starter. Maybe any number of things, really.

I checked the SG this morning and it was at 1.099 but that doesn't tell me anything as it was fermenting for a little while. I'll check it again tonight. PH, too. If we still have nothing, I'll consider hydrating some Lalvin D47 and pitch it in. Most likely, that'll take it to full dry and I'll be looking at more than a year of aging time instead of three or four months but that's better than losing the batch. Rather not do it though. That takes it out of the realm of primitive.

It's such a pretty color and smells nice, too. One way or another, it's going to happen.

Update 6:30pm: The SG has dropped to 1.092. Though I thought the addition of fruit would cause vigorous foaming, this doesn't seem to be the case for me. It's fermenting just fine. I'm going to leave the fruit in there for a few days, then move everything else to a jug. The photo may not look pretty to some, but it's sure pretty to me!

Update 12/19: I just transferred everything but the fruit to a 4 liter jug and it's fizzing away with heavy bubble traffic through the airlock. My tentative conclusion is that the large headspace in the primary bucket combined with the quieter activity of bread yeast just made it hard to tell it was fermenting without the aid of my trusty hydrometer.

The berries had broken down to a mushy pulp. There's a lot of berry suspended in the mead so I imagine it'll take a while to fall clear. Or not. The experiment continues...

Making Limoncello

The one and only time I had Limoncello (an Italian lemon liqueur) was a year and a half ago at a friend's house. About 3 months ago, though, my Dad starts raving about some he had. I'd seen several posts about it on the Winepress forum but it's not wine, so I wasn't overly interested.

But, if Dad wants Limoncello, I am by God going to make him some! Dad's 80-something now and complains he no longer can have anything but he admits to an occasional careful nip of this or that. I wish I'd started it right then; it'd almost be ready now but at least it'll be ready when the warmer weather comes.

2 evenings ago I find myself at the liquor store looking for 100 proof vodka. Almost all the vodka was 80 proof including (and especially!) the cheap huge bottles. I left with 1.75 liters of what I believe to the same stuff I often find empty in the alley behind my house. Might be prudent to use better quality vodka next time!

What is recommended is Everclear - pure grain alcohol (ethanol) at 151 or 190 proof. I know you can't buy the 190 proof here without a license. The school has one because they use ethanol in the labs but I'm pretty sure they'd frown on me ordering a couple liters for personal use. Too bad. If I ever see any anywhere, I'm getting it.

The reason for the high proof is that it is best kept in and served straight from the freezer. The lemon peel that is steeped in alcohol will get sweetened by using a sugar syrup which dilutes it. If the alcohol goes too low, the limoncello will freeze. Not as nice. Rock bottom final alcohol content is 30 percent and I'm only starting at 40 so I'll need to dissolve the sugar in as little water as possible. 50 percent would really be better. They (them that knows) say the color and flavor extraction is better with ethanol, too.

I think the nectar I made for the hummingbird feeder was 4 parts sugar, 1 part water. That's what I intend to try.

Yesterday I got 4 pounds of nice looking lemons. More than I needed but the loose lemons didn't look as nice so I ended up with two 2 pound bags. Lemon juice in and on everything for a while! I used a brand-new sharp vegetable peeler to remove the zest of 14 lemons without cutting into the pith. It took almost 2 hours plus I had to finish up the last 2 this morning. I have a blister but I also have nice big pieces of zest, not fine little grindings. Zest and vodka are in a sun tea jar and will be there for about 40 days before I strain it and sweeten it. Then another 40 days until I can bottle. That gives me plenty of time to locate a nice stoppered bottle for Dad.

Umm. I'm keeping some of it.

The more things change...

...well, the more they change! I can't think of a time when things ever stayed the same for long and that's just fine. That's interesting. Sure, also "challenging" but so what?

So the little ole Mountain Mail newspaper went down, then rose back up again. Still locally owned and operated - a rare and beautiful thing. The new owners have brought back color pages - I've missed that! New editor, new salesperson - both trying to learn the town but getting better all the time.

And the two out of state subscriptions I bought are being honored. Yay! And my husband has a job he loves. Double yay!

I just decided for sure that I am not going back to real estate and told my Broker yesterday to send my license back to the Commission. I suspect she was not too surprised. There's just no arguing with the relief I felt when I drove by a newly listed house in the area and knew I did NOT have to deal with it. Now I'm just into giving out free advice which is always worth exactly what you pay for it. (Bear that in mind.)


Although I am not done, the NMT Biology department website is shaping up nicely and I'm pretty proud of it. Do go see it here! (that's one end of my building in the photo.)

I've been very lucky in the places I've been in that, even if I wasn't thrilled about the actual job, I have have really liked and respected the people I worked with. Of course, I did seem to have a flair for working at places that were about to go bankrupt, sell out, get hostilely taken over or relocate out of state. I'm pretty sure none of those thing will happen to New Mexico Tech. Pretty sure. But I absolutely love it here and the only guarantee is that things will change.

So that's enough for the review. This week we go to Albuquerque where I finally get to visit the closest thing I have to a Local Home Brew Shop (LHBS) - Victor's Grape Arbor. Got my little list ready and we may come home with additional equipment and supplies to make our first batch of stout. I am crazy-excited!

The Sad End of Another Independent Newspaper

The last regular issue of the Mountain Mail newspaper was uploaded to the printer tonight and will be distributed tomorrow.

I always thought I would talk more about the paper in this blog but I never could do it. Too distressing. My husband has been the main reporter - sometimes the only reporter - for five years. It was a huge part of our lives even before I started helping out up front twice a week back in November of last year. Accounts Receivable. Scary.

In fact, I just now realize I still can't say much except that it's tragic that newspapers can't make it in these times. A whole lot of people relied on it for local news, legal ads (who's going to take care of Catron County now? The Journal? Not hardly!), classifieds, free obituaries and birth announcements, a different perspective from the Chieftain, a way different perspective from T.V. "news".

Dammit, it was important! It made a difference. My husband made a difference. Even I, in my small way, made a difference. Most people had no idea just how small a staff produced that paper every week. Couldn't be just a couple full-timers, a couple part-timers and a few, mostly unpaid columnists and contributors. That's because it was good.

It's going to be missed. The void will soon be filled but we all see the trend toward the shallow, impersonal and bureaucratic. The good old days ended today. Time to start being nostalgic.

Save the Wine!

The bucket of incipient home-brew blueberry wine, that is.

I'd heard blueberry was tricky primarily because of the acid content. There were better recommended yeasts and more elaborate recipes to compensate but I blew all that off. I blew off all testing and correcting too - not out of confidence but to save a few bucks. I figured I'd follow the basic recipe and if it didn't work, no big deal to pitch it out and start over.

Wrong! This is only my third batch and it turned out to be emotionally a huge deal to give up when it stopped fermenting. This meant frantic internet research and the urgent order to the home-brew supplier for a Ph meter and potassium carbonate. Unfortunately, the supplier only ships FedEx ground and our delivery person never delivers the same day things are put on her truck. (I don't know why.)

I wasn't wrong to be optimistic with the basic recipe but I was wrong to not prepare for problems. See, the thing about living in Magdalena is that everything is FAR. You can get to Albuquerque in an hour and 45 minutes but when you factor getting around in Albuquerque, the day is gone. No popping to the wine store for a fresh packet of yeast. If I don't get it before I start, I don't have it.

It's not just wine-making supplies, of course. You can get the basics of life in Magdalena - food, if you're not too picky, gas, basic hardware. You have a few more choices in nearby Socorro (but clothing is limited to a couple specialty stores and Wal-Mart). If you want anything the least bit "exotic", your choices are mail order or spend a day in Albuquerque.

I'm just saying. I'm not complaining because I love it here and I can't see living anywhere else. I'm not especially material but I always seem to desire odd things and on-line shopping and home delivery (even a day late) make it possible to live way out here and still have my "stuff". I'm just kicking myself for forgetting the reality of life here and worried about my bucket of wine.

Since I took the lid off the primary fermentor yesterday, it has started very slowly fizzing. Occasionally it makes more encouraging sounds like "glorp" and "splocket". Maybe it'll recover or at least survive till my order gets here but I won't be caught like this again. Better get working on the next order.

Update 8/14/09 Never say never. The Fedex order of the pH meter arrived on time. The pH turned out to be within the acceptable range. Good - but now what? So I tested the specific gravity which was really low. That means a whole lotta sugar has converted to alcohol. I would say all those glorps mattered and the wine has recovered. Yay!

New Dragonflies!

The dragonfly nymphs in the lotus pond have started to emerge. I'd read that some stay nymphs for years so I didn't know when to expect this but yesterday, on my morning tour of the gardens, this is what I found:

Brand-spankin new, still transparent and gorgeous! Well, in a scary sort of way. Of course, my attention drew the attention of the cats. I turned to check on some plants and when I turned back - dragonfly was gone and Stella, the orange cat was playing with something in the grass. Fortunately, I was able to rescue her (I think it's female) in time and relocate her to a safe spot. She was still changing colors, becoming tan with green bands, when I left for work and gone when I came home.


And another this morning! Look at those shining wings! They look healthy - probably all those spadefoot tadpoles they ate.

Stella is not allowed to play with this one.

Oh, hail!

The summer monsoons are here! Normally, that generates a "YAY!" but there is sure a notable exception. Hail.

It was bad enough last year when I just had my 8 foot stocktank water garden to worry about. Hail and lily pads do not mix! I recall shrieking for John to come help me fling a tarp over the tank. It was painful but we got the tank mostly covered and the damage wasn't too bad.

Earlier this spring, the very day after planting my new tomato plants, hail struck when I wasn't home shredding the poor tomatoes and puncturing all the lily pads. They've all pretty much recovered now.

Yesterday, I'm at the computer listening to the thunder get closer and wondering if I should shut down when I begin to hear hailstones plink off the attached greenhouse. A very distinct sound. I don't even wait for John. I'm shrieking "Hail!" as I run out the door to grab my tarps. One was flung over the stocktank. The second one - well, I found myself wandering around the garden in the driving hail with this blue, plastic tarp over my head. I'm panicked out of useful action because I can't decide where to put this thing. It was like choosing which child I was going to keep!

Should it be the lotus pond that also has the dwarf waterlily doing better than ever? What about my pretty little rock garden? And - oh no! The vineyard! 17 expensive vines just starting to climb onto the new trellis!

Finally, I realize the only thing this 12 foot square tarp has a chance of covering is the little rectangular bed of tomato plants. I drag the tarp over the horse-fence cages as fast as I can and dart back into the house to watch and wring my hands. (And take a picture.)

Almost immediately, the hail begins to slow and it's just a hard rain which also soon slows. The sun comes out, then another storm (no hail, this time), then one of the most gorgeous sunsets I've seen in a while. Oh, those monsoon sunsets can really make you forget the hail!

The vineyard and the lotus and the fame-flowers in the rock garden all survived pretty well. This time. Supposed to be storms again today. I'm going to need more tarps.

Bucket of Tadpoles

There are some things that, if you allow yourself to outgrow them - well, it's damn shame. Raising tadpoles is one of them.

So I have this sherbet tub on the back porch with 20 or 30 tadpoles in it.

My neighbor stopped me in the street to congratulate me for attracting frogs to my pond. I had no idea because they didn't start singing till about 10 pm and I couldn't hear them from the living room. I checked the lotus pond after work and there were thousands of eggs covering the leaf stalks. The next day they were starting to hatch. Two days later - not a tadpole to be found.

What I did find was A) baby minnows. What the...? I was keeping fish out of that pond! B) Lots of dragonfly nymphs. As I watched, I saw the nymphs lunging for the baby minnows. They missed then but dragonflies are serious predators. I don't think the tadpoles had a chance.

A couple days later the frogs laid eggs again. The next day the already wiggling eggs were being grazed on by my too many pond snails. Poor froggies! They weren't not going to be able to reproduce. I ran for the sherbet tub and good thing. No tadpoles in the pond again but I have them on the porch!

These are the Couch's Spadefoot frogs, I'm pretty sure. They bury themselves in the ground most of the year and come out to frantically breed only when the summer monsoons come. When it rained all night and into the morning, we were able to spot 3 adults in the pond still singing away with their pale throats bulging. Too cute!

The babies are clearly algae eaters and I've never been so glad for the wide assortment of algae in the ponds. I can't wait till they get legs but I'll be sad when they leave home. Nothing like a bucket of tadpoles!

My new website

I'd built what I think is a really nice real estate informational site, I wanted to put on all the gizmos that I wanted on the main Old Westland Realty website but I had no control over it. Well, I guess it's mostly about control. I like it!

Still, it was limited because it was a free site through the local ISP and through the business account. If something happened to either of those things, I could lose all my hard work. Oh no! So I bit the bullet and bought my own domain - can you believe LifeinMagdalena.com was available?

I just uploaded my website straight over but here's the plan:
My lovely and potentially profitable Real Estate site remains and gets better but I add a separate section for my artwork and perhaps another for the gardens and the adventures in winemaking. All of them linked but kind of separate. There's something about sub-domains I get to learn. Hoo-boy! I love to learn new stuff! Keeps you young, ya know.

Well, I'm excited. I haven't got a picture for this post so let's do some font colors!

Scammers targeting Rio Grande Estates?

I've gotten two calls in less than a month from out of state owners of lots at Rio Grande Estates. Granted, two isn't exactly a trend but I expect more.

First off, Rio Grande Estates (which I'll now call "RGE") is a development partly in Socorro County, partly in Valencia County that was platted and sold about 50 years ago. Hundreds of relatively tiny lots in the desert. Apparently, the developers sold their "New Mexico Ranches" mostly out of state, mostly sight unseen with promises of major infrastructure improvements and massive area growth that would make this the place to be. Didn't quite happen. I understand it still looks very much like it did 50 years ago. I've never been out there myself and don't plan to.

Back to my callers. Caller number one bought her acre or two with her husband when they got married 48 or 49 years ago. It was their first investment together. Last year, they had been contacted by a man who said he had a buyer for their lots. This buyer was going to give them many, many thousands for their little parcel. Man says buyer is out of the country and he just needs $300 or so to make the deal happen (Advertising? Mailing fees? My caller was unclear as to what this money was for.) They sent the money and sadly, the deal "fell through". The $300 is lost.

The man must have been a smooth talker because, months later he calls again. He has another buyer. Just needs that fee again. Ever-hopeful husband sends the check. Wife begins to worry and decides to see what she can find out. That's how I ended up talking to her. I don't know if she was able to stop-pay that check but if she didn't, that money is gone, too.

Caller number two hadn't gotten that far with the "deal" but he had been approached by a man who said he wanted to buy his couple acres for a similar price.

I can't say what these lots are worth because I am not a licensed appraiser. I'm also not comfortable saying what these people told me they were offered. I will say that anyone who owns lots at RGE or knows someone who does ought to read Fred Bernstein's article that was published in the New York Times in 2005. You can read it on Mr. Bernstein's website here . I believe someone is targeting owners of these lots who are out of state and have had them for decades and getting a few hundred bucks from each one they can hook. I don't believe there any buyers out there willing to pay what these people were "offered" when you can pick up lots at the county auction for minuscule back taxes.

I doubt if the owners will read this, mostly being of pre-internet age, but I do hope their concerned relatives will.