A few statistics:
Usually, I shovel out the chickens, come in and warm up, shovel a path to the woodpile, come in and warm up, and know it will all melt away in another week or so. But this morning, I was working a group arrival on five different flights into the Reno-Tahoe Airport.
A drive that normally takes about 45 minutes took me twice that, but I left early so made it right on time. And then spent more than five hours in the airport. First flight canceled, next two delayed, another one canceled, the last one finally came in an hour late and then sat on the runway for another hour waiting for an open gate. Had to do some shuffling around to get everyone onto their transportation up to the Lake, and then I could head home. Still snowing, my drive back took just as long.
Aries got to play with a new toy all day. He'd been given a big old broken-down snowblower earlier this year. He cleaned it up and got it running again. This was the first time he got to use it, so by the time I got home there were all kinds of paths and all of the driveway cleared, all the way back to the garage. And twenty-four hours later, it's still snowing. Wheeee!
Our night temps have been falling into the teens(F) but it's been warming up daytimes into the low 50's. With the draft dodger at the kitchen door, the styrofoam panel on the glass sliding door, inside the house has been dropping to around 60F by morning. But the sun coming in the east window warms it up enough that I usually don't bother to start a fire until afternoon. 
Not today! Last night's low was 6F, and the house was down in the mid-50's by morning. Good thing I switched our bedding over to the down comforter last week. The barometer is falling and there's a miserable cold wind kicking up horrible sandstorms. Clouds moving in mean no solar warming today, and the first snowflakes are zipping by sideways. I've had a fire going for hours, and it's now warmed up to the mid-60's inside - that's a comfortable temperature for me. The house pets have stretched out from their tight little curls, bellies towards the stove. I had to take fresh water out to the birds at noon - what Aries took out in the morning before leaving for work had already iced over. Forecasts say its gonna get a lot colder in the next few days. Hello, Winter!
In a small house, a unified color scheme keeps things looking serene and coordinated. The flow is just better from room to room. My base decor is lots of golden-toned wood, beige backgrounds in the wallpapers, with dark green and maroon the unifying tones, present in every room. Then, by changing pillow and table covers, towels and napkins, I economically bring in a fresh look seasonally.
But now it's time to say good-bye to my fall decor; time to get out the Christmas things for their brief, five-week reign. And, you know, once I get everything switched over, I know I'll love that too.
This is Baldy. No mites here - the photo is from earlier this fall when she was molting. When the days get shorter, most of our flock lose their feathers, stop laying eggs in order to grow new ones, and then are all nice and newly fluffy when the cold weather gets here. Then, when the days start getting longer after New Year's, they start laying eggs once again.
I tried something different this year, that really ended up being a hit. Wednesday before Thanksgiving, my sister's family is on the road from California, and I'm trying to decide what to do for dinner when they get here. I need something quick, easy, that everybody will like. The refrigerator is full of food for the next day, including the brined turkey air-chilling, so there's no room for leftovers either. So, how do I feed a vegetarian, two hard-core meat-loving men, two picky but hungry teenage boys, and an omnivore (me). How about make-your-own pizza? My pizza dough recipe makes enough for two 12" pizzas. Figuring half-a-pie per person, I increased amounts by half again to feed six people. That evening, the dough divided into six equal balls, we set up a dough-rolling station, opened up a jar of tomato sauce, shredded a mountain of cheese, and sliced up a variety of topping choices. We could cook two pizzas at one time, so everyone was in the kitchen. It turned mealtime into a fun event, everybody happy and well-fed, and no leftovers. Everyone agreed that ideas's definitely a keeper.
As long as I had the grinder out, I figured I might as well get a start on my Thanksgiving dinner preparations. I made up a batch of my favorite uncooked cranberry relish - grinding together a bag of cranberries, an orange, peel and all, and a handful of walnuts, then stirring in 3/4 cup of sugar.
And then, I noticed Target had the same folding banquet table on sale this week. Hmmmm. I took another look at my work space, tape measure in hand. There was just enough room for a second table alongside the first (without mashing the bed pillows). Perfection! Plenty of room to lay out a sewing pattern or organize clippings, but still easily convertible. I have guests coming Thanksgiving, so I'll need the bed uncovered. No problem. Both tables lift off, fold up, and store behind the door; sewing machine into case, under sewing table turned luggage stand - instant guest room. I just love it!
The chickens are let out of their pen each day now, on pest patrol, but a couple of them have been flying over the garden fence. So when I finish up with something in the garden, I have to cover it with wire or they'll dig it up again. Every once in a while, I'll hear them all start squawking and really raising a ruckus outside. That usually means the hawk is back. This morning, he posed on the deck railing long enough for me to snap a photo through the kitchen window. I don't think he's big enough to take one of the chickens, but he sure makes everybody nervous when he's hanging around. They huddle under the lilacs, the picnic table, and the deck steps. I hope he's just looking for the mice and sparrows that come after the chicken feed.
It was my turn to post on the SGF Co-op blog today. I've been trying to make a few pillowcase aprons for National Tie One On Day, November 25th. I took photos while making this one, and posted a tutorial. Made from a thrifted pillowcase in an hour or two, it's a great project even for beginning sewers. Need an apron before Thanksgiving gets here? Check it out!
Following the directions from the tutorial, I poured three bottles of my hard cider into a glass gallon jar, added half again as much water (since my cider was made with added sugar, I'm sure it has a pretty high alcohol content), stirred in the mother (a rubbery, white goo), topped it off with some cheesecloth (mother needs air), and set it inside a top cupboard, where it would be warm and dark. And it's working! I haven't tasted it yet, but it smells really good. The mother multiplied in the bottom of the jar, and a fresh layer is now starting to form on the top, just like it should, converting the alcohol into vinegar. I'm so excited! I still have lots of apples, so I'm thinking I'll press out some more juice and let it ferment without adding sugar, just so I can keep my vinegar jar going. Maybe I'll start a second jar with leftover red wine too.
I grow paste tomatoes for canning, so I just cored them and piled them into a roasting pan to roast more or less whole. After slipping the skins, I had 16 cups of tomatoes, so I increased all the ingredients by half again. I like a chunky salsa, so I just snipped the tomatoes into pieces with kitchen shears right there in the measuring bowl. I thought roasting the peppers would be good too, so I took the last of my fresh green bell peppers and a bunch of the fresh green jalapenos out to the barbecue grill. After they were roasted, sweated, peeled, and chopped, I added a few frozen chile "packets" until I had enough. I used my cayenne pepper hot sauce instead of Tabasco, and added a teaspoon of lime juice to each pint before filling the jars (to make it a bit more acidic, just in case roasting the peppers made more of them fit into the measuring cup). I put up 12 pints, with just a little bit left over for the refrigerator. So now, I'll have to see what Aries thinks.
My mom was visiting, so she helped Aries bottle the cider. From the valve on the bucket, the cider flows through the tubing to the filler. It's a rigid tube with a spring-loaded valve on the end. When the bottom of the filler is pressed against the bottom of a bottle, the cider flows. When the cider reaches the top of the bottle, lifting up on the filler stops the flow. The filler displaces just enough space in the full bottle so that when it is removed, it lowers the level of the liquid inside just the right amount.
Aries hands clean bottles over to Mom, taking back the filled ones to seal. When making beer, we like to reuse 16-oz Grolsch-type beer bottles, the ones that seal with a gasket, porcelain top, and a metal bale. Since we added extra sugar before fermenting the cider, it has a higher alcohol content than our beer - quite a bit higher, so we want to use smaller bottles. A 12-oz bottle is enough for three, even four, servings (and then I often mix my portion with ice and club soda). We reuse regular beer bottles, sealing by crimping on new metal bottle caps. Domestic bottles with twist-off caps can't be resealed, but we (and our friends) save empty foreign beer bottles that still need a bottle opener for our home brewing endeavors.
Hey lady! No sampling!The filled bottles are labeled with item and date (little dot stickers on the caps) and packed away into a couple of boxes (I kept a few out for experiments in vinegar-making). Aries put the cases on the floor of our bedroom for another week or so. The secondary fermentation, the carbonation inside the bottles, gets off to a good start in the warmer environment, and we can keep an eye on the bottles to make sure none break. He just moved the cases down to the cellar yesterday, putting one bottle in the refrigerator for tasting last night. The cider still has quite a sharp taste, but it's not bad, even this early. There was a bit of a hiss when he opened it, but no bubbles yet. By Christmas, it should be mellowed nicely; by next summer, make for some wonderful cocktail hours, out on the deck watching the sunset.
I love an excuse to play dress-up sometimes too. Starting with a blouse, skirt, and tights I already had, a few safety and bobby pins, a couple of feathers and a few silk flowers, I made a saloon girl costume to wear selling this year's sleeve garters. I had a great time - walking both sides of the street before and during the parade and through the downtown street parties afterwards, and got to see lots of old friends. Now, finally, November is here and I'm looking forward to some "me" time.
Start with ripe jalapeno peppers, ideally those that have turned completely red. This year, we had a late spring, reasonably cool summer, and snow the first week of October. Only a couple of my jalapeno peppers had just started to turn red when I had to pick everything (the golden ones on the left are habaneros - they too were picked green, but are faster to change color).
No problem. Peppers, like tomatoes, will continue to ripen after they're picked if left unrefrigerated. I let the peppers set out on the counter for a couple of weeks. They can set for quite a while, but try to process jalapenos before the stem starts to separate from the body of the chile. Some peppers with thinner walls will continue to ripen and then dry, but jalapenos are too fleshy - they tend to rot before they'll dry. Smoking them is one way to preserve your jalapenos - canning them as nacho slices, or freezing them whole, sliced, or stuffed with a cream cheese mixture to turn into poppers, or whipping up a batch of jalapeno hot sauce are other options (that link also has a recipe for my habanero-orange hot sauce - my absolute favorite, and why there are also habanero peppers ripening on my counter).
But I digress. We're supposed to be making a smoker to turn jalapenos into chipotles. Commercial smokers, that have been previously used for meat, can give a greasy, and later rancid, taste to the chiles, so it's best to use something just for the chipotles. Unless you're planning on going into the chipotle business, a temporary smoker made from easily acquired items is the way to go. The main thing to remember is that you don't want to cook the jalapenos, but rather let the smoke waft away the moisture in the chiles as it also infuses them with flavor. The best way to do that is to make a separate firebox, and then connect it to your smoking box with a piece of pipe. Of course, the firebox portion has to be able to withstand fire, so I've used some cinder blocks and a piece of steel pipe. I used some crumpled foil to fill in the areas between round pipe and square blocks, but it doesn't have to be perfectly airtight. The smoker section, on the other hand, only has to hold the chiles suspended in the smoke while it acts as an offset chimney, so a cardboard box works fine. In the past, I've found taller boxes (that held a windshield, or a washer) but this year I just picked up a couple of smaller ones. They were two different diameters though, and instead of trying to fit them together, I found a piece of roof vent flashing, set that on the bigger box, then the smaller box, and taped the flaps of the bottom box to the upper box, just in case the wind came up (and notice that there are bricks holding down the flaps of the bottom box for the same reason). For a more primitive option, depending on your soil type, you could dig a firepit and smoke trench, covering both with metal or even rocks, and then add your cardboard smoke box.
Next, you need some way to suspend the peppers in the rising smoke. A pan poked full of holes could work, but isn't ideal - the peppers would tend to steam in their juices more than dry. In the past, I've strung the peppers on lengths of string, and hung that draped across dowels poked through the box. That's not too bad, depending on how you want to use your chipotles. If you're just dropping them whole into a pot of soup, it's ok, but if you're planning on grinding some into powder or making some in adobo sauce the string can be difficult to deal with. A wire basket or a rack that won't allow the chiles to drop through is best. I bent a piece of hardware cloth into a tray, supporting it with the (cut-down) cardboard divider inside the box plus a couple pieces of coat hangers stuck through either end of the box.
The best woods to use for smoking the chiles are from fruits or nut trees. If that's not possible, hardwoods are the next best. You just don't want to use pine, mesquite, or other resinous woods. I lost a nectarine tree to borers this year, and always save the prunings from my fruit trees, so I had a nice supply of smoking wood. The night before, I soaked half the wood pieces so they'd burn slower and cooler. Be aware that once you start up with the smoke, you will be perfuming your entire neighborhood. But smoking chiles smell like food, not smoldering leaves, so the neighbors just might drop by with their mouths watering to see what's going on.
It's always best to be prepared when playing with fire, so I pulled the hose over, on at the faucet and closed off with a twist valve. Aries also brought the fire extinguisher out of the garage, just in case. I started a small fire in my firebox, and while I waited for it to get going, I pulled the stems off the jalapenos and loaded up the basket. I used all my red ones, those partially changed, and then some of the green ones with white corking (very desirable in chipotles - don't ask me why).
Once I had a nice little bed of hot coals in the firebox, I added a couple handfuls of soaked wood and then put a piece of metal over the top, held down with a couple smaller bricks. I sat out to watch for a while, just to make sure everything was holding together ok. Every hour or two, I'd add more wood, and turned the chiles a couple of times.
Low and slow is the way to go with chipotles - both for the best flavor and to ensure ones that will last in storage. It's better to stretch it out over a couple of days than to try and hurry up the process with more heat. Let the fire burn out overnight, and start it up again the next day. I smoked my chiles all day, but rain was forecast for tomorrow. I just pulled the cardboard boxes away from the pipe and set them in the garage for the next day and a half. The photo above is after another afternoon of smoking, and I have them going again this afternoon. If you're in a hurry, the jalapenos will dry faster if cut in half and seeds removed. You can also dry them in a dehydrator or your oven until wrinkled but not stiff, and then smoke them (doing it in reverse will also work, but your house will smell like smoke for days). Finished chipotles are hard, lightweight, and dark brown in color. Ones that are still leathery won't store as long. Once the chipotles are dried, store them in jars with a rubbery seal or in an airtight plastic bag.
Virginia Street is closed to cars from the Reno Arch to Circus Circus - a big, free street fair. The crowd is an easy-going, family-centered one - lots of dogs and kids, no one smoking outside (all the smokers are inside the casinos, I guess), everyone enjoying our beautiful fall weather.
There are a couple of live-music stages, with acts ranging from accordion bands to Italian crooners; booths selling gelato, wine and Bellini's, artichoke hearts and cheesy garlic bread; street entertainers that range from stilt walkers to living statues, jugglers and balloon-twisters.
New this year was a Farmers Market and Crafts area in the park where the train tracks used to be, before the covered train trench made the downtown much more pedestrian- and traffic-friendly.
We just missed the semi-finals of the boccie ball tournament, and didn't feel like waiting around to see the final round. So we wandered back through the crowd to the other end of the fair, arriving just in time for another round of the grape-stomping contest.
The grape-stompers compete as eight teams of two - a bare-footed stomper plus a mucker that scrapes the juice towards the drain spigot and into a jug. After three-minute rounds, the team with the most juice by weight wins that round (it looks like Topsy the Clown has been stomping grapes too).
A woman came up and asked Aries if he'd like to be her mucker in the next round. He said no - a good thing, because I really like the shirt he was wearing, and grape juice can leave such a nasty stain.
Something old: I had an antique linen handkerchief with crocheted edging that belonged to my grandma in my pocket. Something new: I wore brand-new white tennis shoes - they hadn't even been scuffed up yet. Something borrowed: my sister loaned me a beautiful pair of earrings to wear. Something blue: blue jeans (after the ceremony we went down the street to one of those old-timey dress-up photo places for our "official" wedding photo, so Mom did get a wedding picture of me in a wedding dress). And a 1953 silver dime in the heel of my left shoe.
I was going to have to use the plug from the fermentation lock; I just needed some way to join it to the larger-diameter tubing. I went through the bag of beer-making supplies again. Eureka! When filling a bottle of beer, we use a hard plastic tube that fits into the bottle. It has a spring-loaded valve on the bottom to press against the bottom of the bottle - when the bottle is full, you lift up on the tube and the beer stops flowing. It's designed to fit inside the tubing; it looked like the perfect size to fit into the plug too.
Aries starts outside, cleaning and setting up our press on the edge of the deck. Basically, it's an open rectangular frame, a small rock underneath the back edge to tip it forward a bit. The bottom plate has ridges that allow the juice to flow beneath. To lessen leaking, he lines the bottom plate with plastic wrap, taped to hold it in place. He sets the plate into place within the frame, a catch bucket underneath the spout with a lid to cover it (to keep the yellowjackets out - they'll be here as soon as the juice starts flowing).
The first step in pressing cider is to grind the apples into little bits. The same old neighbor that gave me my 1970's-era dehydrator also gave me an equally ancient juicer. It weighs a ton, but the metal grinding teeth do an excellent job on the apples. It also has solid plate to use instead of the juice screen across the juice spout, so it will just push all the apple mush out the end spout (or maybe you'd prefer the "bucket & sledge hammer" option, here).
Once I've got the juicer/grinder all put together, I set a bucket on a stool under the spout to catch the ground apples. We also make beer, so I line the catch bucket with a nylon mesh bag normally used for boiling the grain in beer-making (we have two bags, making the process a bit faster). The solid plate leaks a bit, so I put a small bowl underneath that too. The less leaks, the better - apple juice is so sticky, and my kitchen floor is going to be a disaster zone soon enough anyway.
Everything in place, we're ready for the apples. The apples are dumped into the sink full of water for a quick wash, piled into a tub, and then roughly chopped into pieces small enough to fit through the small hopper of the grinder. Aries chops, I feed handfuls at a time into the hopper. A friend, Micah, stops by, so we give him a knife too, and he starts chopping on the other side of the counter.
Once there's quite a bit of crushed apples in the bag, Aries takes the bucket outside. He twists the mesh bag closed and puts it on the press. He dumps any extra juice out of my bucket and gives it back to me. This is where the second bag comes in handy. I can take that bucket back inside, line it with the other bag, and get right back to grinding apples.
Meanwhile, Aries puts the smooth-faced top plate over the bag, topping that with a small jack. As he starts jacking up the jack, it presses against the top of the frame, squeezing the mush between the top and bottom plates. The juice flows through the spout into the catch bucket. When the spout stops flowing, he covers the catch bucket, loosens the jack, and removes the top plate. The bag of almost dry apple mush, now called pomace, is emptied into a waiting wheelbarrow (and later given to the chickens). Aries comes back inside to continue chopping.
Just like when making beer, sanitation while fermenting hard cider is very important. You want only the things you purposely put into the fermenting bucket in there, and everything else kept out. Wild yeasts present in the air can ruin a batch, giving it a bad flavor, as can the bacteria on a dishcloth. Bleach is a good sanitizer, so we previously rinsed the fermenting bucket and lid with a weak bleach solution, then kept it closed up until we're ready to fill it from the catch bucket of cider.
From about two bushels of small, otherwise unusable apples, we get almost six gallons of cider - a little over five in the fermenter, almost a gallon for the refrigerator. For the hard cider, we decide to add only extra sugar and a packet of champagne yeast. I heat up some of the cider and add four pounds dark brown sugar, stirring until it's all dissolved, and then put that back into the fermenter. Stirring with a sterilized spoon to aerate it a bit, Aries adds the yeast then snaps the lid on tight and puts a fermentation lock, filled with a bit of vodka, into the top. By this morning, the escaping gases caused by the yeast turning the sugars into alcohol have started burbling up through the lock. Fermentation has begun.
