Jananas

This past Friday I was at my tattoo artist’s studio getting some work done (pictures will be forthcoming once everything is healed up). He has an awesome little private space filled with his own art work, fun flash, memorabilia, art work, and fun pieces.

My favorite was this taxidermied squirrel. It came with the miniature beer cans. Caitlin, I’m looking at you.

Its that time of year again – garden planted, green things growing, the promise of fresh local fruit and vegetables on the horizon. I decided to celebrate by breaking out some of the canning supplies I got for Christmas (two pots just for canning, one to boil jam and one to boil jars).

Earlier this week I picked lilac blossoms from a lilac bush/tree that used to be in my backyard when the fence was two feet over the property line. Now that we have a new and legit fence, the lilac is in the alley so I had to sneak around to steal some flowers. I used this recipe as the base for my lilac jelly.

Next I spent an hour picking the little flowers off the stems until I had four cups worth. After that I set some water to boil, poured it over the flowers and left it to sit for 24 hours. Even though the flowers are, well, lilac coloured the water ended up being green. I tried to get a picture, but it was difficult. The recipe calls for pectin and unfortunately my local hardware store didn’t have any so it took me an extra day to make them jelly. In the meantime, I strained the flowers out of the liquid and stored it in an old glass juice bottle in the fridge over night.

Today I came home and got started! First up was boiling the water to sterilize the little 125mL jars. After those were almost done I got the lilac water in the jam pot and started the heat. The neatest part was adding the lemon juice as the green water almost immediately turned bright pink. Vivid, vivid pink. Does anyone have any explanation? I’m sure there’s some fun chemistry involved.

After the  lilac and lemon juice mixture was boiling, I added the pectin and then stirred as I waited for it to boil again. Then I got to add the sugar. Lots and lots and lots of sugar. I’d feel worse about this, but I really don’t use a lot of jelly/jam when I do have any. Plus I don’t think jelly would be nearly as tasty if I used salt as a preservative. Once I added the sugar, I stirred and waited and stirred some more as the mixture came to a roiling boil. One more minute and I was able to turn the heat off and start filling jars. Note to self – paper towel really does help make this part of the process easier and less messy.

At this point, the mixture is a pale pink/lilac colour that is very pretty. I pour 11 x 125mL jars and one last random little jar we have in our collection of glass jars. This last one will go into the fridge and be the household tester (what a shame!). Everything went in the big pot to be processed in boiling water for 10 minutes.

This doesn’t look nearly as pretty in the photo as it does in real life. My camera is out of commission while I wait to get a new battery, so these were all camera phone pictures. Not terrible, but they don’t impact the true beauty.

I can’t wait to try it out. A friend had a wonderful idea – what until November and crack a jar open. The smell will remind you of Spring. What a cheerful thought!

We spent today playing with fibre (me) and computers (Jason) and decided that our hard work should be rewarded with some more root beer. Sprecher Root Beer is a micro-brewery founded in 1985 and located in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. I’m not sure when they ventured into the realm of sodas, but they do have a full line of gourmet sodas. Our friend had grabbed two bottles of Sprechers for us – one Root Beer Soda and one Lo-Cal Root Beer (sorry for the not great shot, my camera didn’t feel like cooperating).

Before we had even opened this bottles, they’d already stolen a little piece of my heart. They are big and sturdy and feel good in your hand. In fact, they are so big that they contain an entire pint! Even better, the labels say that they are “non-alcoholic”. That just made me laugh in the ‘really, who made that mistake?’ sort of way.

We opened our bottles up and they both had that amazing minty root beer aroma. The normal version is sweetened with high fructose corn syrup (gross!), but also has raw Wisconsin honey. Not entirely sure about how those two fit together, but… this root beer was good. It was full bodied (more on the minty side) without being overwhelmingly sweet. It had a subtle mint aftertaste without being overbearing.

The lo-cal version was good. It was tasty without being sweet. It had high fructose corn syrup, raw honey, and sodium saccharin as sweeteners. Thankfully there wasn’t that gross artificial sweetener taste or aftertaste. In fact, this diet root beer soda was so good that even Jason gave it two thumbs up – a first so far in our challenge!

We both liked this root beer. And although it isn’t our top choice overall, if you’re going to pick one sweetened with high fructose corn syrup I’d make it a Sprecher’s.

In fact, we enjoyed this root beer so much that we finished our taste testing off with root beer floats. Glad to say that this root beer passes that test as well!

I’ve learned a lot of new things over the last year. The more new things I try, the easier the learning process becomes. I still get frustrated when I don’t pick things up as quickly as I’d like (which is immediately in case you were wondering), but I now recognize that there’s a learning curve. I’ve become more patient. Instead of giving up when my initial attempts aren’t very good, I’m proud that I even tried. And I’m even more proud when my second try is better.

Which leads me to the question – what did you learn this weekend?

Me, I took my first spinning class at Lettuce Knit. Denny is an awesome teacher. I was using the Louet Victoria spinning wheel. Its so tiny. Its strange to think that you can carry a spinning wheel in a (large-ish) backpack. Seriously!

Our first class was really just about learning to pre-draft, treadle, and then spin using the inch worm technique. I had trouble with adding too much twist, which is why the yarn looks so kinky. And when it gets too kinky, it doesn’t feed in well so I had to keep winding by hand. But, but, but I tried my hand at some other spinning last night and there was definitely an improvement. Yay!

I’m excited. I’ve been wanting to learn to spin for a while. I finally committed to it and am now making it happen. Now I have to practice so that I get better. Because of my love for fiber, this really isn’t that big of a deal.

What have you always wanted to learn? What’s stopping you?

In our quest for good root beer, I started googling home made root beer in Toronto. Turns out that two of our local breweries make their own! First up was the Granite Brewery at Mount Pleasant and Eglinton. Reason it was contender #1? Its on the way home from my parent’s place. Yup, I’m all about efficiency.

We stopped by mid-afternoon to try some out. Ordered two root beers and some food so that we didn’t look like total weirdos.

Here’s Jason drinking his fancy glass mug of root beer. We asked if they sell it so that we could take some home and the answer‘s no. Apparently this is so home brew that it doesn’t last well when bottled (which is actually fairly common). Home brewed root beer is a class all on its own and doesn’t necessarily compare well to mass produced (even if its fancy bottled) root beer. Thankfully we had tried some before at Iron Hill Brewery in Delaware so we were better prepared to enjoy this one.

The root beer itself was well rounded and scrumptious. Ever eaten something that tasted so good that you didn’t want to eat/drink anything else afterward because it would ruin the taste? Yup, this root beer was that good. It was well rounded, managing to be creamy and smooth and slightly minty all at the same time (i.e. not flavours kicked in as an after taste). It wasn’t super carbonated (when compared to bottled root beer), but it had a nice creamy head to it. Overall, this was a big win. It was so good that I purposefully drank it slowly so that I could savor it, which is impressive because usually I’m a gulper.

And yes, this was so good that we might stop by again. Just for a root beer.