Apricots and Brandy

You didn’t think we were done with apricots, did you? I still have a box and a half on my kitchen floor, so I’m still experimenting.

I already mentioned Apricot Brandy experiment number one: a pretty generic three-ingredient Apricot Brandy Recipe from Food.com. It called for mixing apricots, sugar and vodka and letting them sit in a dark space for about eight days. I’m four days in, and a little concerned that the sugar isn’t mixing well even with daily bottle-tipping.

After four days, there's still a layer of sugar at the bottom.

For my second experiment, I stayed with vodka but searched for something with more of a twist. I found it in Alton Brown’s Orca Apricot Brandy. This recipe was a similar concoction to the first, but this time with a kind of simple syrup using apricot jam as a base. It went on the shelf Wednesday afternoon. I’ll know if it worked in about a week.

Finally, I felt like I really wanted to make apricot brandy with actual…brandy. For some reason, maybe because I felt like I was stepping up my game using real brandy, I also wanted to use honey as a sweetener. After some searching, I found this recipe for Sandsedge Brandy from the Fantasy Inn blog.

It’s from a fascinating little blog I’d never heard of before, a recipe designed to pair with a scene from a book I’d never heard of, but I was instantly enchanted.

The blog reviews fantasy titles. Blogger Wol developed this recipe to pair with Fool’s Errand by Robin Hobb. I’m not endorsing the book; I’ve never read it. It might be great; it might be terrible. However, the whole idea of creating a drink for a book charmed me, so I decided to give it a try.

It was a pretty-straightforward recipe. I had just enough of my own home-grown honey to use in the simple syrup, and the jar looks amazing sitting on the cupboard shelf next to the other two. (I kind of want to dive in now, it’s so pretty.)

Apricots, brandy, honey, sugar and time--hopefully a recipe for success.

The downside is that I will need to wait four to eight weeks to find out if it worked. That’s an upside, too, though. Some things just get better with time.

Apricots and Vodka

Who wants apricots? 

My dad called last week with an offer to lift me up in the tractor bucket if I wanted to try to strip the upper branches of their prolific tree. Of course, I can’t pass up the opportunity for free fruit. Within an hour or so, my 13-year-old son and I were sitting—uncomfortably—in the bucket of my dad’s small tractor in the 95-degree heat, trying to reach golden fruit that was just out of reach. Even the bucket of the small Kubota wouldn’t reach the loaded uppermost branches.

This is what a tractor bucket full of apricots looks like.

Still, it didn’t take long to fill six small boxes. The next question—what to do with them? While I expected to share the apricots, it turned out my parents didn’t want any of them.

As I mentioned in my last blog post, I really have been looking into traditional winemaking. While it seemed the perfect solution to some of that fruit, I’m nowhere near ready to dive in—no knowledge, no equipment. I posed the question of apricot wine to my husband, perhaps looking for tacit permission to dive into supply purchasing. He responded that he would prefer apricot brandy.

Well, I don’t know how to make brandy, either. I bet it’s more difficult than wine.

Still, I took to my ever handy Google and managed to pull up some ideas. It turns out, you can make a pretty good apricot brandy simply by soaking apricots in, well, brandy. Or sometimes vodka. I confess, I don’t understand why apricot brandy would call for vodka. Either way, though, it seemed simple enough.

It took me a couple of days to implement my plan. Saturday was taken up with a five-hour round trip to pick up my 12-year-old from ranch camp, and then by last-minute cooking for church fellowship on Sunday. I finally managed to get to a liquor store for some vodka and brandy. (Not being a regular in liquor stores, that felt like a whole adventure itself. Who knew there were so many kinds of vodka?)

I decided to experiment with several different recipes. The first one I tried was a generic Apricot Brandy Recipe from Food.com. With three ingredients--none of which was brandy--it seemed by far the simplest. It called for dried apricots but, rightly or wrongly, I figure fresh must be better, right? Okay, I get that the dried apricots must add to the depth and intensity, but the whole point of this is to use all my fresh apricots. Anyway, by Sunday afternoon, I had the mixture of apricots, sugar and vodka sitting on a dark shelf next to my homemade vinegar.

Apricot brandy attempt number one, ready for the shelf.

The rest had to wait, though.

Monday and Tuesday were swallowed whole by work at the newspaper. Then it was Wednesday. The rest of the family was asleep, including the rescue kitten nestled in my lap.

I’d already skipped out on an AWANA breakfast meeting, I had a board of commissioners meeting to Zoom and an antique airshow to attend with my family (and cover for the newspaper), and I was looking around my house with the paralysis of someone who has a ton to do and no energy to do it. And all…those…apricots.

Get out the dehydrator; it's time to tackle those apricots!

Fermenting…Again

 

Nearly three years. Nearly three years. I can’t believe it’s been that long since I poked away at this blog. So much has happened—and yet not so much.

I always think I’m going to be so productive during the summer. After all, I’m down to one job instead of two, and homeschool has slacked off, if not stopped, for a couple of months. It doesn’t happen, though. Summer rushes by just as quickly as any other season, maybe more so.

It’s July, and I’m still trying to find my footing after an exhausting spring. My house is a mess. My garden is a mess. My flowerbeds are a mess. I’ve gained even more weight. I’m a full-fledged member of the sandwich generation. My two chickens are living in a dog kennel because I haven’t had time or energy to fix their coop.

Despite all that, though, I’ve been a fermenting powerhouse. It’s as if all my homesteading instincts that get bottled up during the winter months have come pouring out at once. Yes, I’m still making my own vinegar. (Did I ever mention the vinegar?)

I managed to make my most successful batch of kvass ever last week, along with a successful batch of old-fashioned ginger ale. My grandmothers never made ginger ale, as far as I know, but if they did, they would have made it just like this old-fashioned method.

It's already time to make some more ginger ale and kvass.

Now, I’ve got my own creation in the works, a strawberry-apple ale using the same method. I’ve made apple ale before with good success, so we’ll see how this goes.

My attempt at strawberry-apple ale and homemade sourdough, side by side.

On top of all that, I’m back at creating my own sourdough starter, this time with help from The Perfect Loaf blog.

I will admit that I haven’t always followed his directions perfectly.
Once or twice I’ve forgotten to tend it for a couple of days, and it has formed what one blogger colorfully called “hootch.” (Yeah, fermentation is a natural process that comes with certain side effects, some of them delicious.)

Recently fed, this sourdough starter is just beginning to bubble again.

No worries, though. As long as it hasn’t gotten too far, you can stir that liquid back into the batch and feed away without any negative side effects. My sourdough bread won’t get you drunk, I promise.

I haven’t made my first loaf yet, but I’ve used the discard in a couple of recipes and…so far, so sourdough. One of my favorites so far is this Sourdough Cinnamon Quick Bread from Farmhouse on Boone. No photos, I’m afraid. It was demolished far too quickly.

Now, heaven help me, I’m researching barley tea, apple presses and traditional wine-making methods. Somebody save me from myself.

Don’t Miss the Green Light

In my last blog post, I talked about how I don’t want to be a backseat driver with God’s plans in my life. Ready for another driving-related analogy?

I also don’t want to sit through any green lights.

I sit waiting for sixth-graders on a field trip.
How does driving a bus full of rowdy children fit into God's plan?

Okay, there’s absolutely a backstory to that. Nearly a year ago—or maybe it’s been a whole year—I approached our church’s interim pastor, “Doc,” with an idea. I wanted a new Bible study, I told him. I was hungry for Bible study and needed accountability. I couldn’t make it to our church’s Tuesday evening study because of ongoing commitments, and I didn’t feel it was welcoming toward younger women anyway. I wanted to start a Bible study that was open to any of the women of the church, but that would specifically draw moms and younger women.

That was a great idea, he told me. Go ahead and do it.

It wasn’t completely unexpected. When someone comes up with a new idea, a good leader will tell them to run with it. So I did. I researched and decided on Priscilla Shirer’s study, Gideon: Your Weakness. God’s Strength. I even went out and purchased the DVD and leader’s guide with my own money, because I did not want that Bible study to fall by the wayside. It had to happen.

But of course, it did. Fall by the wayside, I mean. First a scheduling conflict, then the holidays. Then more scheduling problems, then spring, followed by summer. I knew there was no way I could get a new Bible study up and going over the summer.

Then it was fall. Soccer. Drama club. Two new jobs. The Bible study was on the back burner, but I checked in with the church administrator occasionally to make sure it didn’t slide off the stove completely. She checked with me on scheduling. More recently, divisiveness and factions have reared their ugly heads. That only made me more convinced that this study needed to go forward. Finally, a date was set.

Today. It’s today. When the date was set, it felt like plenty of time. That was before our lives were turned completely upside down. This week, I’m coming off six straight days of work, four of them 12-hour days. I’ve attended two play performances to support my daughter and her friend. I’m exhausted. I’m distracted by the work I have to do over the weekend. That’s why I didn’t sit down to refresh myself on the first lesson of this study until this morning.

Such a good study. I’d recommend it (obviously). It hit me like a ton of bricks, though, when Shirer talked about a time she’d been so busy taking care of chaos in the back seat that she’s sat all the way through a green light. (As a mom, I related to that. As a bus driver…well, I’ve certainly blocked some traffic.) It was an illustration of how we get so caught up in our own lives that we miss the big green lights God sets in front of us. Like when we get so caught up in lost jobs and new jobs and daily routines and postponements, and we miss the opportunities that God is showing us—sometimes with big, flashing, neon signs.

She also mentioned her friend, Christine. I knew from the reference that she meant Christine Cain. I suddenly remembered that I had bought a book by Christine Cain weeks, maybe months, ago, and that it was still sitting on the shelf wrapped in cellophane. With the renewed energy and determination to dig deeper in my faith that the video had inspired, I pulled it off the shelf and dove into the forward of the book, Unexpected.

I can’t quote the whole forward here, both for space and legal reasons, but a few quotes jumped off the page.

“When God gave Abraham such an outlandish and unexpected promise, he simply believed God’s promise—he risked hope against all rational hope. He didn’t deny the facts of his circumstances, but he refused to believe they were the whole truth because they did not account for God’s promise” (page 13).

I almost dropped the book. Abraham answered God’s unexpected call because he recognized it as a green light. How many times do the green lights in our lives appear as unexpected circumstances? How many times are those circumstances unwelcome, uncomfortable, or outlandish?

I can’t pretend to know God’s plans for my future, for my family’s future. I don't know how bus driving and news reporting and dealing with rowdy children—and sometimes childish adults—plays into it. I’m only beginning to understand the unexpected green lights He’s giving me as I interact with people and circumstances I’ve never experienced before. I am, however, beginning to see how God is using the unexpected in our lives to grow us and prepare us to go full speed ahead.

“And, in our humanness, we will try to control everything—including God. Yet, we serve a God who refuses to be controlled by us. That’s because part of the mystery and the adventure of following Jesus is to trust him no matter what is going on around us. To keep our hearts completely open to him, so that when the unexpected happens, he can use it for our good. To free him to use the unexpected, a necessary catalyst, to grow us, sanctify us, and help us to see life with a whole new perspective, because nothing grows without disruption and interruption—without the unexpected” (Christine Cain, Unexpected, pg. 33).

“And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose” (Rom. 8:28, NIV).

Backseat Driver

I started this post several weeks ago. As you’ll see, though, I’ve been … busy.

There’s a line from a TobyMac song, “Backseat Driver,” that goes, “Thought I had it all right 'til the road went left….”

Boy, does that describe life. Three months ago, I thought I knew what the fall and winter would hold. I would continue to homeschool. I would blog, and experiment with homesteady things like making cheese and fermenting vegetables. I would…well, I would pretty much continue to do what I had been doing.

Oh, there were uncertainties, but I thought I even had a handle on them. These, not those, were the uncertainties I was facing. Would we find a new house and move? Would we stay in the general area or move across state lines? Would my children like soccer, and would public school teens accept my home-schooled daughter in their high school drama club?

In a parody of a cliche, that was soooo three month ago.

So many changes. In some ways, I hardly recognize my life any more. As of a month ago, I’m now a school bus driver. No, the irony doesn’t escape me. (Or is that irony? That word confuses me.) Anyway, I hired on with a local bus company at the end of August. I jumped through a whole lot of twirling, spinning hoops to make it into the driver’s seat four weeks ago.

Life as a small-town bus driver is full of stories. I'll share some later.

I knew going in that I would need a CDL (Commercial Driver’s License). I did not realize that the DMV and Oregon Department of Education team up together to torture, I mean train, prospective drivers. They make sure drivers know not only how to drive a bus, but also details like how to inspect the slack adjuster and how much tread depth is required on the tires. (No less than 4/32 of an inch on the front and 2/32 of an inch on the back, if you’re interested. You’re probably not.)

If you don’t know what a slack adjuster is, I’m going to let you look that one up.

I wasn’t surprised that I needed a drug test. The young woman who administered it, though, could either tell that I’d never taken one before or thought I was actually on drugs. (Wait. I have to put all my belongings in that locker and you don’t want me to flush?)

I didn’t realize I would need a special Department of Transportation physical, or that my left eye would fail the eyesight portion and I would need a special note from my optometrist.

I didn’t realize my driver’s test would take three hours, or how many more hours I would spend waiting in the DMV.

I now get up at 5 a.m. four or five days a week to be at my bus by 5:45, to be on the road by 6:15. I return in the afternoon to be at the elementary school by 3:15. I finish my route by 5 p.m.-ish, depending on how many students are on the bus and how badly behaved they are after having to sit still most of the day. Believe me, stories from those drives are a whole post on their own.

In the midst of all this, my son's soccer team placed third in the league playoffs.

It’s a huge change, but only the tip of the iceberg. My husband has gone from a daily commute of nearly 150 miles to no commute at all. That changed the day before I passed my CDL test. Since then, he’s been busy applying for substitute teach jobs while looking for something more long-term. The need for house hunting has been removed, at least for the moment. (He also had to take a drug test. I warned him about the whole not flushing thing.)

That will also partly explain my apparent fit of insanity when I walked into the newspaper where I used to work and requested my old job back. So, yes, I now work two part-time jobs, one as a school bus driver and the other as a news editor.

Homeschooling has been turned on its head, with my hubby picking up much of my slack for the moment.

And I’m tired. So, so tired.

If anyone had told me three months ago that my life would look like this at the end of October, I wouldn’t have believed it. It’s certainly not the direction I would have set my own life GPS. I’ve had to hang on to everything I believe and tell myself, “Don’t be a backseat driver.” God is certainly in the driver’s seat here. I certainly am not. Okay, well, I am, literally, but I’m not. I have no illusions now that I know what tomorrow or the next day will bring. I can only hang on and know that there is a lesson in here somewhere—for me, for my husband, for my children. There are experiences God wants us to have that are unlike any of our experiences before.

It goes back to a saying I’ve heard several times. “I’ve learned two things in life: There is a God, and I’m not Him.”

And I’m certainly not going to be a backseat driver.

Beauty and Function: Foraging in the Flower Bed

My garden and flower beds are sadly neglected this year, but even a quick trip
yields a harvest of flowers and herbs for both food and medicine.
In this photo are rosemary, yarrow, thyme, sage, mint, and lavender, among others.

I love growing plants that are both beautiful and functional. That’s not to say I won’t grow plants for either function or beauty, but if they supply both, it’s definitely a plus. That’s why you’ll find my garden and flower beds filled with plants like yarrow, lavender, and mint. (Parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme are in there, too, but I think that’s a different blog post.) I can’t do more than touch on a few of them, but here are three of my favorites:

Peppermint uses go far beyond candy canes.

Peppermint

Have you ever driven by a peppermint field? That scent! It can carry on the breeze for miles. Mint plants of all types love water, which can be a challenge in this area. I solve the problem by planting it near a constant water source. Currently, that means a spigot near the garden, where the mint frequently gets excess water dripped or splashed on it. Careful, though! In the right conditions, it can absolutely take over your garden or flower bed, so either plant it where you don’t mind the spread or be prepared to battle its progress every year. I don’t mind the spread of mine. I harvest vast quantities every year for drying. (For tea, of course, but my Italian husband has also shown me how to use it in meatballs, and I’m hooked.)

The dark-green leaves provide a cool touch in a dry landscape, and this well-known herb does sport beautiful purple flowers if you let it go to bloom. And, yes, we all know about peppermint candy canes and peppermint tea. But there’s far more to this plant than taste alone.

Peppermint is a soothing aromatic—a cup of peppermint tea is a delight to both the tastebuds and the nose. It’s not just the smell, though. Though it can increase heartburn in some people, Peppermint is generally an antacid, and it is effective against nausea and vomiting. It helps expel gas, though I'm sure you never have that problem. It’s diaphoretic, meaning it can induce perspiration, so is somewhat useful for colds and fevers. It can help soothe headaches, and I diffuse the essential oil either alone or with lavender oil to help with headaches. I also diffuse it, alone or with eucalyptus and Cyprus oils, to ease congestion. 

Lavender not only smells good, but it can also relieve pain.

Lavender

Of all the plants I could name on this list, lavender is probably the best known and most beloved. Its masses of small purple (or should I say, lavender) flowers always brighten my day, not to mention the smell! We’re all familiar with that relaxing scent. Drought-resistant varieties like French lavender grow well in this climate with minimal watering, and I have two huge plants that have made themselves the showpieces of my front flowerbed. I’ve used the flowers several times to add scent in soap making. I’ve even made lavender cookies and gelato! Its abilities go far beyond that, though.

Lavender is a mild analgesic, meaning it can be used to relieve pain, so it’s helpful for headaches and migraines. I often put the essential oil in a diffuser along with peppermint and Cyprus oils for just that purpose. Lavender essential oil is antifungal and can be used on burns. Finally, it’s an aromatic and relaxant, easing tension and anxiety, lifting mood, and even mildly antidepressant. 

Yarrow is a medicinal powerhouse.

Yarrow

Yarrow’s simple clusters of small white flowers are unassuming but lovely as they blanket the hills of Eastern Oregon in spring and early summer. It takes a rugged plant to grow wild around here—cold winters, hot summers, semi-arid and drought-ridden, shallow and rocky soil—but yarrow is a survivor. In fact, it’s pretty prolific and will take over given the right conditions. It’s certainly doing its best in my flower bed, but I don’t really mind. It also makes an excellent ground cover instead of grass when kept mown.

Moreover, yarrow is a powerhouse of medicinal remedies. It’s anti-inflammatory and anti-viral. It’s a fever reducer and induces perspiration. Finally, it can help heal wounds and stem bleeding.

I’ve personally made it into tinctures for internal use, but I find it more palatable to make the flowers into tea. The tea can be used for colds, fever, and even menstrual cramps**. My friend, Dorene, over at Faith-Family-Farm recently wrote an excellent post on using the leaves to make a healing salve. I haven’t tried it yet, but it’s on my extensive to-do list. I’d also like to try it in some homemade soap.

**Please note: Women who may be pregnant should be careful taking yarrow internally, as it can sometimes cause miscarriage. It’s always best to do your own research from reliable sources before using any herbal remedy!

One more benefit to these three plants? The bees love them! That’s a win-win for everybody.

My front flowerbed follows the riotous pattern of an English country garden,
with plants chosen for beauty, but also for function such as food, medicine,
and pollinator forage.

Feeling Feta

Not a perfect attempt, but pretty tasty, all the same.

In journalism school, we were taught rules for writing headlines. Among them were no alliterations and absolutely no puns. I obviously took the advice to heart.

I started this post a couple of weeks ago. On that mid-July morning, the air had a touch of fall, and there was a faint autumnal note from my front-porch windchime.

At least, I thought so.

Not so today. We’re in the middle of a heat wave, and the forecast for today is a balmy 106 degrees. Like every day this week, it’s a perfect day to stay inside. It’s not a perfect day to bake. I’m baking anyway, of course, because I need more biscotti for the farmers market this afternoon.

It’s been a rough few weeks. I had a busy week helping with Vacation Bible School, followed by a frustrating week of yet another bad summer cold. That was followed by a span of depression and apathy. To be honest, I haven’t quite snapped out of that last one. I know it’s compounded by the fact that we gave away four of our litter of kittens, only to have their mother disappear and the remaining kitten fall ill and die. In only a few days, we went from seven cats back down to one. Our faithful Jello remains, as does our dog, Teeny (aka “Mousebreath”).

Enough depressing news, though. I said I’ve been dabbling. While many of my dabbling plans were sidelined by recent events, I did carry one project through to something of a success.

Feta.

I’ve never attempted cheese before. The process has always intimidated the heck out of me. Rising prices have put me on self-suffiency kick, though, and cheese seems like one of those things a self-sufficient homesteader would know how to make. I looked up several completely from-scratch recipes, some of which I may be brave enough to try some day. In the end, I chickened out and bought a feta cheese starter from Cultures for Health.

Caveat here—I used cow’s milk. According to purists like the European Union, this apparently means I didn’t make feta at all, since real feta is made of sheep’s milk with no more than 30 percent goat milk. Whatever. I have no sheep or goats to milk, but I do have whole milk from Walmart. That seemed good enough for a trial that had no guarantee of producing something edible.

Milk, heated slowly to a low temperature, plus rennet and feta starter.

The starter definitely made the process easier, but I don’t think it made it idiot proof. I heated the milk and added the starter per the directions. After letting it sit overnight, it had developed what looked like a pretty good curd, at least to my untrained eye.

Somehow, I think the curd needed to set more.

It turns out you have to cut the curd. I did this, and the curd suddenly looked less defined. That didn’t seem good.

By the time I got the curds into the colander, I wasn't sure they were curds at all.

I let the cut curds sit for 20 minutes, stirring occasionally, before moving the curds to a colander to begin draining the whey. (I used a floursack towel as my cloth. Seemed to work.) The directions said to make a bag out of the cloth and hang it to drain. I couldn’t understand how I was supposed to do that until I found a picture online. It looked a lot like this:

It doesn't look fancy, but it did the job.

It took more than the prescribed four hours for the whey to drain off. I knew going in that I would get more whey than cheese, but I had no real concept of exactly how much whey I would be dealing with. I got nearly three quarts of whey from my gallon of milk.

The curds I had left were put in a sterilized jar with a brine solution and left in the fridge for several days. This was good, because I got that summer cold soon after putting the curds in to brine, so I had some breathing space before I needed to deal with the cheese again.

My Cultures for Health directions conveniently ended there. I used my common sense, such as it is, to pull the cheese from the brine and drain it again. It was pretty soggy, but after a bit of draining, it looked something like cheese. A soft cheese, granted, but cheese.

It never did get solid and crumbly like the feta I’m used to from the store. I don’t know if that means I made a mistake or if the cow’s milk changed the consistency. The starter package came with enough starter for four batches, so I will have the opportunity to try it again. Maybe I can get my hands on some sheep’s milk (I happen to know a gal…).

It worked where it mattered, though. It tastes like feta! Well, if feta were made from cow’s milk. While the consistency is similar to cream cheese, spreading rather than crumbling, it tastes divine spread on a slice of French bread. 

I managed to drain the cheese a little more after this photo, but it still spreads rather than crumbles.

All that remained was to find a use for all that whey. It turns out there are many, many ways to use whey. For me, the easiest and most obvious was to use it as the liquid base for a smoothie. (I did try drinking it straight. Tasted kind of like buttermilk.) As with the cheese itself, I have more research and more experimenting to do. I’m feeling good about the prospect.

Whey, a natural source of protein, makes a pretty good base for a smoothie.