Misc Industry

Most of the activity below happened before Labor Day and I am just now getting around to posting. We harvested the grapes before Labor Day as everything is early this year. This is the first year that we had enough wine grapes and after de-stemming them and washing them we froze them until Andrew can get everything ready. Let me tell you, I did not like de-stemming. It was tedious and OMG the spiders in these grapes. You can buy a small mechanical de-stemmer and I can tell you we'll be investing in one of those next year. Pictured below are the Vignole grapes that we had the most of all the varieties, about 6 bags.

But the real bumper crop this year was the Concords, the variety Andrew first planted. I love, love, love concord grapes. They are like candy and I don't mind the seeds. Here is the majority of what I picked, and the half gallon milk jug is for scale.

Andrew pressed the juice from all of these grapes while I de-stemmed the wine grapes and then we let the juice settle in cans. This picture is before we put them in the fridge for two days to let the sediment settle, restrain, them can. It really looked like we had canned Barney (you know, the dinosaur.)

My Grandma Perdue loved concord grapes too and I can remember her making juice, and jelly and grape "fry pies." No wonder too as there are too many to eat at once...even for me! Our sugar baby watermelons ripened up and I made some watermelon toner. I definitely like it better for the face than cucumber, but for hot days, the cucumber is better for an all around after bath splash. This recipe is basically watermelon juice, vodka and distilled water. Andrew came in as I was pouring the vodka in and pointed out that I was essentially making a cocktail. I invited him to taste and he admitted it was pretty good. I also mixed some with some white cosmetic clay for a mask and that left my skin feeling wonderful.

I haven't done much baking yet, and I'm thinking more about cookies and quick breads than frozen treats. I did make muffins a couple weeks ago. I took the blueberry muffin recipe from the Williams-Sonoma muffin book but I added cranberries and chocolate chips and made a double batch.

I'm finding that I am using a scale to weigh dry ingredients for baking (at least the flour and especially if I am doubling the recipe) I guess this is a subtle sign that I am turning a little more serious about baking, but with this scale it's so easy as the top is removable and so easy to wash.

The jar on the right is a "Triomphe" jar, a french canister jar. I found three of them that were my Grandma Perdue's and a couple of etsy purchases rounded out a set that I keep all my dry baking ingredients in. Remember that with muffins, you want the batter to rest a few minutes so it can rise a little. Another standard tip is using an ice cream scoop with the little lever to pop out nicely rounded balls of batter. It helps measure and cut down on mess.

Yum! I wouldn't add the chocolate chips again though, it just made it a little too busy. I'm behind on blogging. The next posts will have pictures of our trip to Brown County Indiana and (drumroll please) the Country Living Fair.