Signs of spring?

Alas, no--just an early February thaw. But running water, warm weather and bunny tracks were encouraging. And then it snowed again. Oh well, the end is near. Perhaps I'll finish tuning up the bikes tomorrow to keep occupied.

All that said, I did haul out the glass for the cold frames against the south side of the house. It will be another month or so until the ground in thawed enough to bother with spinach seeds, but a warm day will thaw the soil enough that I can get a good sniff of moist earth.

In the meantime, I'm working my way through the freezer and pantry. I put the last five jars of tomatoes in to the crockpot this afternoon to make pasta sauce. Wow, they smelled good--totally worth the hassle of canning them last summer.  We're also into the last flat of apple sauce and the last few jars of crab apple jelly. Now to spend an hour reading a book about urban foraging and dandelion pesto.

Bottling some winter wine

With Jennifer away on a business trip, Jess and I spent some of last night bottling a batch of malbec we started at Christmas. 

We experimented with some different approaches to bottling. This time we racked to a primary and then using the spigot and a funnel instead of a siphon to fill the bottles. This worked quite a lot better for Jess.

We also tried out the floor corker my friend Lorna gave us. Much better than the butterfly corker we had been using! These need to sit for a couple of days to ensure the corks seal and then we'll cap and label them. Should be ready to drink come late summer!

More cheese

The unseasonable melt continues outside and some of the front garden even made a brief appearance on Saturday. i imagine more snow is on the way so I haven't rushed to get the shovel sharpened, although two of the three bikes are in the basement and tuned up for spring.

The cooler temperatures on Sunday kept us indoors for a quiet day. I finally ran down some rennet and citric acid (and Barb's Kitchen Centre) so I decided to try my luck at mozzarella.

I hauled out the candy thermometer I got for Christmas, heated the milk, curdled it and voila, we had curds. I got some advice from one of the cheese places that I shouldn't try mozzarella right away as it was too hard. It was a tiny bit more work then paneer, but hardly difficult even for a newbie.

I decided to try the stretching using heated whey (instead of the microwave) since it was there and already hot. And after a couple of submersions and stretches, we had a large ball of mozzarella.

I put it in the fridge to cool and then froze two-thirds. The rest I put into a capresse salad for dinner.

I see the wine is about ready to bottle, perhaps later this week.

More wine making

The warm weather (+8C!) turns a young man's mind to gardening. Fortunately, the two feet of snow offers a corrective and we trundled down to the basement to continue making wine.

We're through the secondary ferment so racked the wine off to clarify for a couple of weeks before bottling. Some of the ingredients require stirring for a specific amount of time and, to my embarrassment, the only portable clock we could find was Darth Vader.

The finished carboy needs to sit some. I see Jessica managed to photobomb  this picture. Now onto cleaning up some of the tools. I wonder how difficult it would be to make mead once the wine is bottled?

Assuming the weather holds tomorrow, we may go out and putter a bit in the yard (ice chipping, bike maintenance, etc.). At some point, we need to decide what to plant in the spring. I have a more "more beets" sticky above the computer so that should factor in!

Lemon-whey pie and sauerkraut

Being too old to stay up to midnight... we celebrated New Year's eve with some skiing and then a slice of lemon-whey pie (since I had a bucket of whey left over from making paneer yesterday).

The pie received mixed reviews and I don't think I'd make it again. We also put up some more sauerkraut. I experimented with three different kinds this autumn and eventually settled on plain sauerkraut as my favourite so I made enough to last until spring.

Today looks like a morning of taking down the Christmas tree and perhaps taking stock of what is in the freezer and cupboards.

Paneer and more wine

On my 2013 to-do list was to learn how to make cheese. I kept putting it off this summer as the garden was pressing and then I had a bit of burn out this fall after processing the harvest. But, with the new year at hand, I decided to try making paneer last night. 

Paneer looks to be the easiest of the cheeses to make: mix very warm milk and lemon juice and voila--cheese forms!

A quick drain separates the curds and whey.

Some more draining, pressing and I ended up with 25 cubic includes of paneer from 4 litres of 2% milk. Tastes just like store bought but took less time to make than go buy. I'll be cubing and freezing half this morning. the rest I will chill until I make some veggie-friend butter "chicken" in the crockpot on  Friday. I've reserved some whey to try and make a lemon-whey pie today.

In the basement, we have another batch of wine (Malbec) on the go. We're almost through last year's wine and I'd like to have something to supplement the cider. This kit came with skins (fancy, fancy) so it should have a more complex flavour than last year's entry-level Pinot Noir kit.

Although the snow is deep, Jess and I have started mulling the spring planting. More onions and garlic and beets top the list. We're still eating primarily vegetables from the garden but I wonder if we can grow enough root vegetables to get throughout he whole winter next year. also we need to make more crab apple jelly.

Applejack

Cold temperatures allowed us to move the left-over apple cider outside to make applejack. We concentrated 8 litres down to about 2 litres. If the apple cider was 8 or 9% to begin with (a guess based on how it affected me), this will be in the 32-36% range.

It tastes fairly good--clearly apple-based and with a bit of a kick. An interesting sipping experience. I'm not sure what to do with 2 litres. I wonder if there are cocktail recipes? The apple cider vinegar continues to ferment. It certainly smells vinegary but I'm not getting much acidity in the taste and very little mother of vinegar has formed on the top. Maybe a shot of cider vinegar might kick things along?