As another Lame Cherry exclusive in matter anti matter.
On this day, May 21st, in the year of the coof, TL and I revisited my Great Grandfather, and we had an adventure in we made Dandelion Wine.
I may have mentioned this previously, but my Grampa was a maker of moonshine, wines and beers. I come by it naturally, as I have an absolute fascination with the little bubbles. I marvel at millions of little yeast coming alive, eating sugar and letting off CO2 gas. People do it all the time in breathing out the same processes, but to have a jar of wine boiling away, just is so joyous to me in how that life will make something so nice to enjoy.
This year as TL was picking flowers with me, we had a gallon of flower heads, instead of the called for 1 quart. Dandelion syrup is hard to explain as it smells like sunshine, honey nectar and citrus. It is a yellow color in the jar and just is pleasant and serene in looks.
As we were picking the heads in the pasture which was full this year, being poor, not having enough pasture, the cows cropped the grass, and that is the recipe for dandelions in pastures and lawns, mown too close, I wondered at the idiot who wanted those greens from Europe, brought over a packet and America became a carpet of that plant.
It is a useful plant though, in I have dug the roots, toasted them in the oven, ground them, and it makes a nice coffee, smells like it too boot.
The greens I have tired, but they are bitter, and I do not see how people could get used to eating them, even when hungry.
This though is the recipe from my Grandma's cookbook, all filled with farm wife recipes of shit no one would ever eat a second time, but old Lutherans of all species just clung to those recipes and tortured the living who attended the dead at funerals with those foods.
1 quart to 1 gallon dandelion flower heads.
1 lemon
1 orange
1 gallon water
2.5 pounds of sugar
Pretty simple in you boil this up, roll the lemons and oranges on the table to bruise the pulp and release the oils from the pealing, boil it for 5 minutes, cover and let cool for a few hours, and put it into a glass gallon jar, add some yeast, like you do for bread, and loosely cover the syrup, probably put a pan under it, in case it boils, set in a warm place and it will tell you when it is ready when it stops bubbling.
At that point, bottle it if you like, but I usually let mine settle out the pollen, yeast and whatever dirt was on the flowers, and when that is done in a few months, I bottle it.
Wine is like people, as it has it's own time. Some wine will be ready in a month, some it takes 6 months. It just has to age and when it no longer tastes repulsive and touches you as smooth, it is ready.
I'm the only one who has adventures like this in my family, which is a shame, as this is an easy thing to do and I really enjoy the interaction with it. No great mystery, just like baking bread in a jar with the yeast doing all the work.
So the year of the coof wine, will be ready sometime around Thanksgiving I suppose. I seem to know I have a gallon of the stuff from before TL came here, which needs to be consumed as it's time has come. Nice thing about wine, is if you forget about it, you will remember it, and it will be ready for you, and you will enjoy the surprise. I probably should make up some gallons of grape again too, but I can't get white grape concentrate as the national distributors no longer ship it here....maybe with the coof in China it will come back.
Anyway that is the recipe, over 100 years old and my family tradition, if I am the only one doing the tradition. Guess I am the only one who is family as you can't have a link to the past unless you have the tradition you are carrying on.
PS My neighbor indicated she like rhubarb wine, which means she volunteered me to make some of that for Christmas. Oh well, I will probably forget about that, Jesus will return and we will sit down and have some wine, right on time.
Nuff Said
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