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Following up on my summer goals, I recently made another batch of home-brewed ginger beer. Sweet, spicy, with a wicked kick, ginger beer makes a refreshing drink on its own or mixed half-and-half with lemonade. For an evening highball, try a Dark & Stormy: ginger beer with a splash of black rum and a squeeze of lime. Mmm, you can feel that summer breeze drifting your way, can’t you?
This is an ersatz ginger beer; real ginger beer requires a ginger beer plant, a symbiotic colony of yeasts that carbonate the drink through fermentation. I decided not to buy or culture my own ginger beer plant. Instead, I followed Dr. Fankhauser’s instructions for fermented yeast carbonation, which gives a nice fizzy lift to a syrup-and-water base.
For my long-ago first batch of homemade ginger ale, I followed Dr. Fankhauser’s directions carefully. The resulting drink was tasty and fizzy and exactly what he promised, but not spicy and dark as ginger beer should be. For my recent batch, I brazenly modified the ingredients and the prep technique to produce a richer spicier drink, but the brewing directions remain the same.
A few improvements I made: cooking the ginger and spices with the sugar extracts more flavor and also eliminates the need to dissolve the sugar after it goes into the bottle. Adding the lemon zest, cinnamon, and clove results in a more complex flavor profile, and the peppers and peppercorns add bite and snap. Straining the syrup makes a cleaner, less cloudy ginger beer that’s far more pleasant on the tongue — no shreds or ginger to tickle your throat! I also added a bottle-sterilizing step for extra safety. Read the rest of this entry »
Though I’m not a big believer in New Year’s resolutions, I’ve arbitrarily chosen this month to reduce my caffeine intake. And for no good reason; I was, after all, restricting myself to a sub-lethal dose.
For about a week now, I’ve been having one enormous homemade cappuccino in the morning, not one in the morning and one in the afternoon. In real-world terms, this means I’ve gone from six-to-eight shots of espresso a day to about four shots. That’s a big change, and explains my recent silence here; without the nervous pounding energy of a near-toxic caffeine load, I don’t feel the urge to typetypetypeohmygodtype.
I’m sure it will return. I think.
After six weeks or more of nearly constant rain, even rainloving me finds it a bit wearying. The past few days, I’ve been kvetching about it.
But here’s where the complaining stops, for the moment at least.
Tonight, I’ll put on my comfiest, raggediest sweater and curl up with a book and a bowl of cream of tomato soup. Usually, July’s scorching heat means I can’t enjoy warm comfort foods. Mmm, tommmmmmatoes and cream.
Today, I got to wear boots! Honest-to-goodness boots, waterproof and warm and up to my knee! My back loves it when I wear boots, and normally by July, I’m resigned to less comfortable sandals.
Thunderstorms! We love thunderstorms.
It’s good weather for cooking, for breadbaking, for making six pounds of wedding cookies, for standing by the kitchen sink gazing dreamily out the window while washing up.
I resolved to stop romanticizing my sun-starved self as a puny tomato seedling struggling to grow without sun, and start thinking of myself as a hydroponic tomato sustained and nurtured by the life-giving water.
(We’ll see how long this lasts.)
Several of my friends undertake penitent post-holiday resolutions (jog every morning! fit into my high school jeans! abstain from all liquor! elimate all unnecessary spending immediately!) for the New Year. And for some of them, this draconian approach proves fruitful.
Others become so disheartened by their failure to adhere to the near-impossible constraints they’ve established that they give up entirely, dive headlong into a vat of premium ice cream and bitter invective (ew — invective is sticky!), and wallow there until March.
I fall in the second camp. Accordingly, when I plan to better myself or my life, I establish goals more gradually and incorporate them into my life, and when I remember to make New Year’s resolutions, I make certain that I can achieve them. This year’s resolutions:
- find more occasions to drink champagne.*
- sing more. (Sorry, everyone.)
- eat more eclairs.
*I’ve already fulfilled the first; we attended a marvelous New Year’s brunch where the hosts urged mimosas on us again and again. I accommodated their demands to drink. I am nothing if not gracious in these matters.
update, for those who yearn to know: The Fella and I spent New Year’s Eve nursing our colds by lounging sedately in bed, him at the head reading and me flopped toward the foot watching season 1, disc 1, of House, M.D.. Then he clambered over to kiss me in the middle of an episode. Only after my gratifying response of “huh?” did I glance at the clock: exactly midnight.
He’s the romantic in this home. I’m just the beneficiary of it.
Early September. Ahhhhh. New England starts to shift into fall. Leaves turn crisp and so does the wind. Classrooms fill up again. I put away sandals and tank tops and unpack sweaters. Time for tea and pumpkin bread, not lemonade and bitching about the heat.
This sliver of a season has always resonated more for me than the forced festivity of New Year’s Eve, that desperate exclamation point at the end of the winter holidays.
In fact, it feels like the beginning of a new year. And so I’m making my September Resolutions.
Carry the camera more. Some time ago, Elli sent me her carry-around camera. Though I love it, and though I’ve used it quite a bit, I haven’t developed the habit of carrying it around so I can snap anything that strikes my fancy. I’m still stuck in the 20th century mindset, where every shot costs an inch of film rather than a eensy sliver of memory.
Start uploading to Flickr. I have two photos. More would be better.
Write letters. Paper letters! Really!
This year, actually get the handmade Christmas presents made before December 20th.
Get fit. A bit. A bit fit. I’ve been vigilantly working my physical therapy routine, but I’m still too big for my britches, and that’s no good.
Spend less time online. (Sob. I know you’ll miss me.)
Get back into my breadbaking routine: twice a week every week.
Write more. I’m working on a cookbook, and I feel some other work burbling away in my brainpan, if only I would let it bubble out.
Throw a tea party, with fancy china cups and tiny teacakes and fruit and wafer-thin sandwiches. No, have one. It’s wafer-thin.
Happy New Year, and thanks to Elli and J-M for getting the blog up and running again!
I’m sitting in my toasty little bedroom, listening to the wind outside rise from a low moan to a keening howl, again and again. The local weather forecast warns of “dangerous lows” for the next few days. Brrrr. My thoughtful Mom called this morning to ask if I had any errands; she wanted to be sure that I wouldn’t be out at the bus stop, getting frostbite. How sweet — I did have errands, and was dreading the prospect.
Before Mom and I went to the library, the post office, and the grocery, Dad took us out for lunch. M & D had sandwiches; I ordered coffee and chocolate mousse. Oh, hush. It’s important to know what you want in life, and what I want is chocolate. The mousse was 86ed, so our server brought me chocolate decadence — in this case, a slab of pure ganache or possibly fancy fudge, topped with almonds. Yum. Fudge with French fries (filched from M & D’s surplus) turns out to be a nice lunch, once a year.
I have to admit that this lunch doesn’t conform perfectly to my New Year’s resolution, which is to eat more éclairs. (I do like a cheery goal.)
Elli
Elsa