Pretty Empty Bottles
I’ve just finished bottling my home-made, Kahlua-esque, coffee liqueur.
Friends have given me pretty, empty bottles.
Surprise! My friends are good at emptying bottles too!
I’ve doctored the stove-top hooch beyond the original recipe that I was given………………………..well, of course I did.
I was supposed to filter it…………………..I never do…
I figure some circulating coffee grounds could count as dietary fiber and healthy/necessary roughage……………………plus I’m both lazy and impatient.
My recipe “doctoring” alterations assuredly require more sugar, more coffee, and of course———-more vodka.
I know I’ve done good, when the newly-made batch passes “the eye-tearing-test”. If your eyes don’t involuntarily well-up and smart…………………then you’ve done something wrong.
It’s the exact same test that originated with Grandma’s Rum Balls.
And I am here to say proudly—————this was a good batch.
I like something that I can make and put on a shelf or in the back of the closet. I don’t have enough refrigerator-shelf space to store all of these bottles in the fridge. It also means something is not pickled enough if it has to remain chilled. Otherwise—–Das dies nicht geht.
Remember those string beans I pickled a few months back?
Note to self: Throw them out.
They are just nasty.
They have no redeeming value other than re-using the jars that they are currently taking up space in.
You just might hurt people with them…
Yep————that recipe crashed and burned. It flew right into the side of a mountain. I don’t know where I failed.
I’ve since tried sneaking them into other recipes, as slight “flavor-enhancers”.
Ah, nope.
They just squat in the middle of any dish I’ve tried and scream out their culinary disaster until that is all you can taste through your puckering lips and swelling esophagus .
The Wolfhounds even run from them……………………….and they’ll eat anything.
The beans have got to go…………………………yesterday.
New Year’s Resolution #1: Trash the string beans. #2: Re-visit another pickling recipe. #3: Try one of Grandma’s—–not some strange recipe out of the computer.
Apparently I’m good at making recipes that pickle your liver, but I’ve failed at recipes that pickle vegetables………………………pity.
I’m good at glorifying spoiled milk (a.k.a. making goat cheese). Feta/ricotta/chevre/queso blanco—–no problem—–my attempt at parmesan crashed and burned (much like the pickled string beans), but I pulled off a really nice camembert once (white-mold rind and all)—–but that was just once…………….I haven’t succeeded since.
Did you know that when you are aging cheese (in hot/humid Florida it has to be done in a refrigerator—–not a cheese cellar—–plus the cheese cellar would probably fill with water from the water-table which is two inches under the surface of the ground at all times.) that you can not have beer in the same refrigerator? (Did you follow that run-on sentence?)
Because if you have beer in the same refrigerator as your nubile aging cheese, the yeast spores from an unopened bottle of beer can mess with the selected culture for the cheese and take over and ruin it.
Really nasty stuff…………………………I’ve discovered this, too.
I’m thinking it might be time to bleach out the garage refrigerator again, and consider a couple of goat milk cheese recipes.
*****(Here are just a couple of things in the above/last sentence that should cause flares to go off in your head)*****
#1 Who has to bleach out a refridgerator and why?
#2 And…………….Who has to do it “again”————-what happened between the first and the second bleaching?
Eeeeewwwwwww.
You know, I do have a home-made Galliano recipe floating around this house somewhere………………….I should go look it up.
I think I’ve still got some left-over, empty bottles to fill.
