Betty's Loft

Betty Clay is one of the founders, and is the life blood of our knitting group- Knitter's Etc, which meets the 2nd friday of each month (Sept-May) at The Red Rooster Cafe in Aberdeen, SD, 1-3 (everyone welcome!). She also has a lovely yarn shop in her house, where I've spent many hours and dollars.

Last month, she took pictures of our Christmas meeting and posted them on her blog, including a picture of me in the Dakota Earth and Sky sweater. Check it out:

http://bettysloft.blogspot.com/

It's January- you know what that means...

11 days and counting!

Yeast Poop and Bee Barf

And Blackberries.

We started a 6 gallon batch of Blackberry Melomel yesterday. Mead is a honey-based wine (hence bee barf) and alcohol is the by-product of the yeast eating the sugar (in this case, honey), therefore yeast poop. And blackberries, which makes it heaven.

Meadmaking is a bit fussier, and one helluva lot stickier, at the start, but otherwise like all other winemaking enterprises- ferment the sugar and fruit in an open container (primary fermentation, aerobic) until the Specific Gravity drops to the proper level, ferment in a closed container (secondary fermentation, anaerobic) until the specific gravity drops to the proper level, clear(allow the sediment to drop from the wine, either naturally, which is sllllooooowww, or with the help of clarification agents), bottle, age.

But the start is fiddly- the blackberries (10 packages) were placed in a mesh bag and put in the fermentation bucket, and a little sugar was added to the top to help the juices flow (thawed frozen berries are good for winemaking because the freeze/thaw cycle breaks down the cellular structure), strong tea (from 18 bags in 6 cups of water), lemon peel, tannin, are added.

The honey had to be prepared specifically for meadmaking because we used raw honey from a local producer. This honey was 3 years old and rock solid, so it had to be reheated, and all the little specks and pieces (bee poop?) had to be skimmed from the top. Then the honey was diluted and stirred, added to the blackberries in the bucket and stirred some more. After the liquid cooled, activated yeast was added, and from there it's the same process (except removing the bag of disintegrated fruit before it all goes into the carboy).

I used the recipe from Ken Schramm's The Complete Meadmaker (http://www.amazon.com/Compleat-Meadmaker-Production-Award-winning-Variations/dp/0937381802/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1230910471&sr=1-1 ), and our earlier batches came out perfectly.

If all goes well, we'll be toasting New Year 2011 with this wine.

Thursday Tab- 1983 Golden Butterscotch, #1984-44

Butterscotch is very Tatum O'Neal Channeling Nancy Drew... in a Harvest Gold '70s kitchen...

Zune Bug

If your 30gb zune locked up today, like mine did, you'll find this article very enlightening. I just wish it had a solution for the problem.

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2337748,00.asp


Added several hours later: here is Microsoft's explanation. We'll have to wait until tomorrow to see if they're right: http://forums.zune.net/412486/ShowPost.aspx

One Word Resolution

I am stealing this idea from my friend, Laura Lippman's Memory Project (http://www.journalscape.com/LauraLippman/2008-12-27-12:00). (Check out her main blog here: http://www.lauralippman.com/ )

Laura is continuing an annual tradition of forming One Word New Year's Resolutions. Can you sum up your resolutions in one word? I tried.

My word: Maintain

I've spent the last 15 months on a major life change. I like those changes, and I know how difficult maintaining a change can be (from my own past, and from the example of 95% of the human race who tried and failed to make major life changes stick). But it's not just weight loss and health that I'm thinking about- I am old enough to know how quickly life can change for the worse. I want to keep what I have- my wonderful family, my comfortable home, a career that is doing just fine lately, my good friends. It's selfish, but there it is.

I also want to maintain the friendships and connections I've made through posting on this blog almost every day. The fact that there are enough of you out there tuning in to tick the web counter over 190,000 times amazes me. I hope to keep your interest, and maybe amuse you all in 2009.


So, what's your One-Word Resolution? And why did you choose it?

Uncle Jay Explains 2008

do not drink while watching this...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TWiXy55OHyY