I'm so very proud of the people from which I descend. None of them were city dwellers, but all came to America and took to the wilderness and struggled and thrived.
There is a distinct difference between people who came to America in 1600, 1700 and 1800, not settling in a city, but instead came to homestead in clearing rocks, trees, brush and prairie, all to make an American Dream their own.
This is so different from the Barack Obama clan, sucking off of government handouts and Ford Foundation grants. It is so diverse that the two never meet as one is real Americans and the other are these leaches who fed off of the labors of others.
The reason I bring this up is today I made some dandelion wine, or started it. This was my Great Grandfather's recipe which I found in my Gram's cookbook, which was no cookbook at all, but was instead a little notebook which Lydia cut and pasted out recipes she "taut wud be goot".
Gram was 3rd grade educated and had a mouth for saying hurtful things, but she was my Gram and I still can see her in her brown hose, her pattern dresses and that big brown sweater she wore no matter if it was 100 degrees or 40 below.
She had a spider goiter which was cut out, and her heart stopped as the thing was grown around her heart when they cut it out. So she breathed through her throat and never spoke a word after she got news my sister died........but would instead write on a pad, or tinkle a spoon on a jar to get your attention.
Both of my Grams died of throat cancer, although they lived with it for years. Helena actually told everyone "goodbye" as she was going to die that night, and sure enough she did. They were both quite Spiritual in their experiences as Lidya saw the Angels when they operated on her as her heart stopped on the operating table.
On my dad's side, the Grampa's had a "taste" for a little nip, as most of the immigrants did. My Grandpa made the best moonshine which he handed the recipe down to me and the secrets of distilling one night as I pumped it out of him being sly as a 12 year old could be.
But I enjoy brewing beer, making wine and whatever else as it must be in my blood.
The recipe for dandelion wine is easy.
In a 4 quart sauce pan add, two quarts of water to boil
Add 1 quart dandelion flowers
1 lemon juiced and cut up
Boil 5 minutes
Strain in a jar carefully in which you have placed 2 and a half pound of sugar......if you are like me don't stew about measuring and just Roy Underhill half a four pound bag with a good pour for the extra half pound.
Be careful not to crack the jar with the hot liquid........the sugar should remedy that.
Top off with cool water so you get a tepid liquid in which you can put in a half teaspoon yeast.
Shake it up careful to dissolve the sugar......so you don't drop the jar, and when it is done bubbling, and you bottle it (I use those Jew win bottles in gallon size of Temple or Mogan David that Protestants use for communion as the glass is thicker.) you should have wine to sip on in a month and a half.
The longer you let it age the more mellow wine gets.
Sometime with wine you get something sweet and lovely from the start and other times you get radiator fluid....which takes a year to mellow out.
You don't want to use allot of yeast as it just settles into the sludge at the bottom of the jar and there is no sense in wasting your wine to dregs and sediments.
I think about all of the immigrants in America and how they never got into trouble, because they were too busy working before sunrise to after. If you lived up north, you really had to keep busy as you had wood to split, haul and gather daily. It was a tough life, but in those years America was managed for the people, because the financiers needed people to civilize the land so they could make money.
Now it is Bill Gates just gouging people or Warren Buffett stealing people's retirement funds all with the help of city kid B. Hussein Obama.
I will never get Obama, Muslims or whatever else comes out of the third world, as none of these folks have a nature to plant an apple tree or snare a rabbit just to keep your hand in something of the past which connects you to your past.
Of course, Obama's folks were slave traders and he sure is busy enslaving the world.......so maybe there is just something in the blood as Obama is just carrying out his feudal dreams while others struggle with the American Dream.
I become more proud of my agrarians as each day passes. I love the fishermen, hunters, trappers, traders, cowboys, farmers, ranchers which my people were.......and how the wives worked their lives away baking bread on those hot cook stoves in 100 degree summers.
I don't know how women didn't go nuts then and just start carving people up with those butcher knives they always had, as it was hell being a woman then...........no tampons, a bath once a week, one good dress, one for Sunday.........and work, work, work, work.
That probably is enough of this memory lane as I need to go check my wine to see if it is working. Perhaps I will have a nip on the 4th of July if it is ready to celebrate America I don't ever want to change.
agtG
