Saturday, May 10, 2008

HELP!!

My mom was here for a few days, and we took her back home today. Usually the girls handle the 2 hour car ride quite well, with only a little bickering or the usual "Mom, she hit me! No, she hit me first!" Today however, was a miserable car ride and a half hour out, I was tempted to tell Hubby to turn around and drop us girls off, but I wanted to go, too!

We finally got into town and went to eat, and I hoped getting some food in their bellies would tone them down a little. We walked over to the Goodwill that conveniently sits right next door to the place we ate at and that was a bad idea. The thrift store, in the city, on a Saturday afternoon, with 3 little ones? I was ready to leave after 5 minutes. People just have no courtesy anymore and block the whole aisle with their carts or don't even move after repeatedly saying "excuse me". Plus, the prices seemed to have skyrocketed since the last time I was there (it's been a couple of months) and I saw a really neat vintage salt and pepper set except they marked them $5.99 EACH. Uh, no thank you. A lonely glass pyrex lid was marked $6.99. Hmm.. I'll have better luck at the yard sales and would probably score a bowl and a lid for a dollar.

One more stop at the used book store and then we dropped mom off, separated the girls and went on our not so merry way. Youngest has an ear-piercing scream that hurts even my deaf ears and the older girls provoke her at almost every chance they get. They dangle a doll out of her reach-- shriek! They take away her blanket-- shriek! Bop her on the head-- shriek, shriek!! Oh my bleedin' ears!! I suggested to Hubby maybe we need to take them somewhere and let them run their little legs off and then maybe they'll settle down?

After a quick search on my pager, we stopped at a local Pick-Your-Own Farm and their strawberries are now ripe for the picking! After getting each girl a basket, we went over to the strawberry fields and after a quick explanation of how strawberries are grown and which berries to pick, we got about 10 pounds of lovely, tasty strawberries. I thought for Mother's Day, the girls could help make some strawberry jam and I wanted to try my hand at homemade strawberry wine.

Here's where I could use your help-- a while back on someone's blog, they posted about making strawberry wine, an easy recipe that only used strawberries, water and sugar (and maybe lemon juice?). You put them all in a jar, mix it and let it ferment for a few months and then you have wine. I wrote down the recipe, but for the life of me, I cannot find either the paper I wrote the recipe on, or the blog I saw it on. I searched the internet in vain for several hours and no luck in finding a recipe that does not use yeast or some other wine-making contraption. All I want is a simple homemade recipe. Any of you have one or know of someone that made some and would be willing to share the recipe with me? I'd be so grateful! I would need the recipe soon, or I'll have to make several batches of jam or freeze them before they spoil. But I would also be willing to make another trip to the strawberry fields if I needed to. Thanks!

Pictures of our jam-making fun later!

4 comments:

Wendy said...

I've never made strawberry wine, but we have made apple cider - without adding yeast, and it turned out really good. The stuff to which we added the yeast and used all of the fancy-smancy equipment wasn't as good - in my opinion.

So, I can vouch for the fact that alcoholic beverages can be made by simply allowing the natural fermentation to take place.

I did find this recipe using the ingredients you mentioned.

It takes a year. I may try it this summer, too. I like strawberrry wine :).

jenny said...

Wendy-- I remember you posting about your apple cider and I was going to ask you if you had anything for strawberry wine. You beat me to it!

I like fruity wines, too, like sangria and adding fruits into the actual wine. I've never had strawberry wine, but I figure it's gotta be yummy!

I did see the same recipe you found, and that was going to be my "fall-back" recipe because the one I saw did something a little different, but of course I can't remember what. I wonder if I can use a large glass jar instead of stoneware? do you think I could use quart size canning jars instead of a wine bottle and cork? Or does the cork allow it to breathe?

Barbara said...

Strawberry picking sounds wonderful. What a good idea to help the children let off some steam. I like the sound of the strawberry wine too!

Wendy said...

When I posed the project to my husband and said I needed a crock, he said, "We have a zillion plastic buckets." So, instead of a crock, we'll use the plastic buckets for the strawberry pulp phase of the project. I think a big glass jar would work fine. As for the canning jars, I think I wouldn't use them, as the fermentation process produces a lot of gas, which needs to escape. A corked bottle would be much better, or else you'll risk a strawberry explosion - which sounds much cooler than it actually is :). If you can, look for some of those groslisch bottles with the rubber stoppers. Sometimes you can find them at yard sales or thrift stores. We bought a bunch on eBay. They're good, because they're reusable, but you could probably pick up a bunch of wine bottles at the same places and get some corks at the craft store for cheap.