Booniverse

In which the boo house finds itself unexpectedly on its fourth batch of wine.

Remember yesterday’s plans? Laundry, dishes, a nap, vacuuming? How much of that did I do? Nada! HOWEVER, both TheMan and I got a heck of a lot of stuff done anyhow and a good deal of it was parTAY related too.

Hmm, thinking back on yesterday it seems that the whole night sort of accidentally happened starting out with my brain burp about where exactly Hillers was. I headed out to North Campus thinking Hillers was right out that direction (when in reality it’s about three miles south but on a parallel road. That’s my only defense) but alas, poor brain. There is a Kroger out that way (one of the big super stores of doom) so we decided to get our parTAY supplies there instead since it may be cheaper anyway. Plus, they have blueberries on sale (mad props to Mr. Paul for leaking the info) which we wanted to check out for a possible next batch of wine.

They did. Lots of them. Lots and lots and a good price too ($7+ for 5 pounds) so we got seven boxes. TheMan happened to remember that the blueberry wine recipe called for 30 pounds of berries (because…? I guess he was curious after talking blueberries with the ‘rents this weekend) so along with our seven cases of blueberries, we bought two cases of beer, three 12 packs of pop, two bags of chips, salsa, veggies and other assorted things we had run out of plus a 5 gallon carboy. And it all fit into the back of the bug…after a bit of grocery Tetris. That’s the nice thing about having a truck, we could have gotten 17 cases of beer and not have had to worry about where to put it (provided we could get back home on just a tank of gas).

Once we got home and unloaded everything I set out to mow the lawn while TheMan set up for the wine. I spent two hours chopping through the jungle that is our far back yard (well, maybe only an hour and a half, I did the front yard and the near back first) and got it down to a carpet of four inch grass. Seriously, the stuff was about two feet high in some places and a lot of it just lay right the heck over flat instead of standing up nicely so I could cut it all pretty like. Still, it looks a fine sight better with a rough mow than it did all wild. I did not get to the last quarter (I cut the lawn in weird patterns so I have one quadrant left to hack down. Hey, you don’t like it you are perfectly welcome to come and mow my yard the way it “should” be done. Yeah, right, I thought so. Moving on) because it was about nine at night, the sun had gone down and it was getting tough to see, the lightning bugs were out and I had a blister on my thumb. My working outdoor rule is to quit when the lightning bugs (or hordes of mosquitoes) come out, whichever is the most prevalent.

Ah, I also filled the bird feeder. Damn piggy birds. After that, I went inside to find that TheMan had negotiated a total surrender of the Horde and for once there was counter space. I think I might have had a small stroke. I can’t seem to keep the dishes from gaining a counter space foothold and after that it is hopeless. TheMan was also blending blueberries and raisins and pouring the mix into the carboy. We found that blending and Camden (?) tablets are a lot easier than squishing. Don’t know yet if that really works but for now, that is our modus operandi for small or no seeded fruits. We shall see Sunday when we bottle the blood orange wine.

I showered, TheMan blended, I made cup cakes for Paul the Other’s birthday, TheMan blended, I got bored and poked about the wine book looking for an elderberry wine recipe, TheMan blended. There was no elderberry wine, but there was a blueberry wine recipe and the recipe did not call for raisins. I asked TheMan (who was blending still) where he got his recipe because this one did not have raisins as an ingredient. He said he looked in the book and raisins were right under the 30 pounds of blueberries. Well, the blueberry recipe had no raisins and on further investigation only called for 15 pounds of berries. Hmmm. Then I noticed that the blackberry recipe on the previous page called for both 30 pounds of berries and raisins. Black, blue…who’s going to notice?

So I think we have set off into our own recipe territory with the 20 some pounds of berries and raisins but hey. Experimenting is fun! I want to make a small batch (we have a one gallon carboy) the way the book has just to see the difference. Then I’ll probably make a pie, or muffins, or both plus crisp with the leftovers. My lord we have leftovers. Still, it’ll be fun to see how our ‘oops’ batch turns out. I’m going to lobby for calling this batch “Bleuterberry Bliss” (bleuterberry being a thing from college that originated from a late night too little sleep screw up of menu planning) but the tough part will be convincing TheMan that it’s a great name. It is! Really!

Anyone want blueberry crisp? There are some leftovers on the stove. There’s some in the fridge. There’s more in the garage. The neighbors have some.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 30th, 2003 at 10:41 am and is filed under General Bloggery. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.