Mango Salsa

Sometimes you can find the yummiest things in the most unexpected places. I sing with the Legacy Chorale in Brainerd and if you live in the Brainerd Lakes area and have never heard us, you have to go to our next concert because you are missing out if you enjoy chorale music. Here is the website for the choir. http://www.legacychorale.org/ And there I am in the front row, second from the right.

What does this have to do with mango salsa or yummy things you ask? Well, every time we have choir practice someone brings a treat and last time we had choir practice, one of the guys in the choir brought the most addicting mango salsa I have ever had. And here is the amazing part... it is healthy! Ron was so kind as to send his recipe to everyone in the choir and I made it the other day and it was just as good as I remembered. Thank you, Ron!!

Time to show off another cool Chef and Company tool! This one takes the core right out of a mango. I discovered mangos about 3 years ago and I absolutely love their flavor. I love that they can add a sweet component to a salad; they can either be sweet or savory. But they can be a pain to dice and peel. This tool at least takes away the pain of trying to core it.

Here is Ron's recipe for mango salsa. I double-dog dare you to let it marinade overnight. You won't be able to. You will test it again...and again...and again... Oh wait, I just have to check one more time to see if I have the right amount of lime juice! Yeah, right! But it is even better if you don't eat the whole bowl and you actually let some of it marinade overnight. Wanna hear something scary? After eating this periodically for about three days, I was down to crumbs in the bag of chips and not very much salsa. So I dumped the crumbs into the rest of the salsa and ate the whole mess with a spoon. Pretty sad, huh?

Mango Salsa

• 1 can of drained black beans
• 1 can of drained corn
• 1 diced mango
• 1/4 cup lime juice
• 1/3 cup dice onion
• 1/3 diced red bell pepper
• 1 cup finely chopped cilantro
• 1 package "Good Seasons" dry Italian dressing mix

Mix the first 7 ingredients together in a large bowl. Then add the dry seasoning mix and stir well again. Cover and refrigerate for 6 hours before serving. Making this the night before is even better. The longer it marinates, the better it tastes! Serve with Tostitos "Hint of Lime" corn chips.

Brisket

I bought a smoker from Wal-Mart last year and I am so glad I did. I love to smoke ribs and brisket. I decided last weekend to smoke some brisket. Smoking is definitely a weekend activity because you need to be around the whole day. It also needs to be started fairly early because you need at least a good eight hours. You want to start out with some wood chips and soak them for a couple of hours in water. Then I put them at the bottom of my roasting pan. Next, I put the smaller pan on top of the wood chips and fill it with water and apple cider vinegar.The brisket had been rubbed the night before with a dry rub. I make the dry rub myself out of brown sugar, cayenne pepper, garlic and onion powder. I rub it on the brisket or ribs, put it in a plastic bag and refrigerate it overnight. The grate goes on top of the water and vinegar pan and meat goes on the grate. I put the brisket in fatty side up so that the fat soaks into the meat. If you put the fat side down, the fat will just drip into your pan and not do anyone any good. Embrace the fat! Fat is your friend! Fat is unfortunately what gives a lot of food its flavor.I brush the meat with barbaque sauce, turn the smoker on low and let it do it's thing. I have to periodically add water and vinegar. You can also add herbs to your water to infuse the meat with more flavor. I will occasionally use rosemary in the water.The smoke starts to come out of the top and every time you step outside, you are reminded by the smell that supper tonight will be wonderful!Don't let the weather keep you off your deck! Even though the thermometer said almost 20 below, the wind chill that day made it feel more like 40 below. You struggle on because you are a Minnesotan and no amount of cold is going to keep you from doing what you love! Here I am in the smoker's lounge.

Doesn't that look yummy? Happy smoking and I don't mean the cigarette kind!

Blueberry Wine

I started a batch of blueberry wine on New Years day and it has been bubbling along nicely. I like to have at least one batch of wine going all the time and I was trying to decide what kind of wine to start next. I remembered I had a container of Ely blueberries that we had picked this summer just sitting in the freezer. I pulled them out and the smell of them reminded me of a summer's day in Ely on the pontoon on the way over to Pajama Girl Island where we go to pick blueberries in the summer.Kevin's mom is a blueberry fanatic. She loves to pick blueberries about as much as I love to eat a gourmet dinner. Her friends from Florida were in Ely one year and they like to pick blueberries as much as she does. Between the three of them, they invented the blueberry s'more. They were pretty proud of themselves.Can you tell I am lusting after summer? These 20 below days are starting to get to me. So in honor of summer, I think I will go dip into my bottle of blueberry wine...

Super Bowl Sunday

We decided to invite Kevin's family over for Super Bowl Sunday this year. Kevin's sister and brother-in-law, Karla and Eric came over with their two kids along with Kevin's mom, Marian. Miss Chocoholic gets along well with her cousins so it is fun for all of the kids when they get together.

I love when there is a big table of munchies and you can graze all evening. Karla and Marian brought some great appetizers. Karla brought some fall-off-the-bone drummies that just melt in your mouth and Marian brought some taco dip and some shrimp cocktail dip. That dip is one of my favorite dips. You take a tray and put down a layer of cream cheese, a layer of cocktail sauce and a layer of baby shrimp on top. It is delicious!

I made some guacamole and some artichoke dip. Check out this cool tool I got at Chef and Company that slices your avacado for you.
Then I added a package of guacamole seasoning that you can get at Wal-Mart. Isn't that neat? It is so good and so easy!The artichoke dip that I make is also very easy and I always get a lot of comments and requests for the recipe when I take it to a potluck. You can make a low-fat version of it by just substituting the ingredients with fat-free or low-fat items.You need two little jars of marinaded artichokes, a nice healthy scoop of chopped garlic, (I like the pre-chopped stuff from Wal-Mart) a package of cream cheese, half a bag of grated cheese and about a cup of mayo. Mix it all together and microwave it for about ten minutes to get everything to melt. I will usually put this in a crock pot afterward if I am taking it to a potluck. I serve it with tortilla chips. It is a gross-looking dip but what it lacks in looks, it sure makes up for in flavor!Karla made a board for the game and I can't remember who won, I was so full of food and so sleepy by the time the game was over! The best part of Super Bowl Sunday, in my opinion, is the food!

Wine Night

At least once a week (and if it is a bad week, twice) Kevin and I have what we call wine night. Wine night consists of drinking a bottle of wine (and if it is a bad week, maybe two) after we are done with supper and Miss Chocoholic has gone to bed. There are only a couple of rules for wine night. The first rule is that we have to sit at the table, not on the couch. If there is a good hockey game on, Kevin can sit in the spot where he can see the TV but no couch sitting is allowed. Now that I think about it, that is the only rule for wine night.

Either person can call a wine night. Sometimes they just happen on their own. We talk about things happening in our week and about things that may be bothering us. Wine night usually ends with a Greg Brown CD and slow dancing in the kitchen. I know, kind of corny but it helps us stay connected.

The last wine night, I had a bottle of this wine that was made at a winery in Door County, Wisconsin. I have wanted to go to Door County every since I went to a fish boil in Bayfield, Wisconsin. Door County is famous for their fish boils and for their cherrys.

This wine was very fruity. I mixed some of it with some diet Sprite and it was refreshing, almost like a light cocktail. The flavor really expands in your mouth and the raspberry smell is strong and reminds me of summer. I would recommend this wine for a summer picnic the next time you are out in a boat on the lake. I will definitely be buying this again for our trips to Ely. Here is their website if you want to check it out. http://www.dcwine.com/

Sexy Vexy

Remember the vexlar Kevin bought in the last post? I'm surprised he isn't taking the thing to bed with him at night. I was joking with him this morning that he was having an affair with her and started calling her "Sexy Vexy." Regardless of an affair with the vexlar on not, he did pretty well in his fishing endeavors today and the hunter and gatherer brought home some nice crappies.Simple is always best with fresh fish and the fresher the fish, the less you have to do to it for it to taste amazing. The most popular way to cook fish around here seems to be coating it in Shorelunch and frying it. While I like fish this way, I like the healthier alternative better and I get a little lazy sometimes. Frying is a lot more work than popping something in the oven.All you need to do is to put your fillets in a dish and put some pats of margarine on top. Then I sprinkle lemon juice and lemon pepper seasoning on top and pop it in the oven for about 15 minutes. Fish cooks fast so watch that you don't overcook it. When the fish is opaque, it is done.Miss Chocoholic and Kevin had some for a snack. Miss Chocoholic was eating her portion while Kevin was filleting it's brother. You can't get any fresher than that. The fish is so sweet and doesn't have a speck of fishy taste at all. Delicious! Good job, Kevin and Sexy Vexy!

Ice Fishing Tournament

This post is about fish, but mostly about catching them. By this time you have probably figured out that we are a fishy family...we love to eat it and catch it. So when the oppportunity came along to fish in this year's Jaycee Ice Fishing Tournament, we said "sure!" Kevin's mom had gotten us tickets at the Relay for Life Cancer Walk this summer so we figured they had to be lucky tickets because the money had gone to charity. Kevin's mom even volunteered to watch Miss Chocoholic for us because it was going to be a long day and Miss Chocoholic is not much for wanting to spend the whole day on the ice.

We got up early and had a big breakfast of eggs, sausage, biscuits and gravy. Kevin's friend, Jim, came over with his son and had breakfast with us. Then we bundled up and took the four-wheelers across the lake. We went early so that we could get a good spot. Kevin and Jim own a fishhouse together and it is on the same lake the tournament was on so we thought we could just hang out in the fishhouse after we got our spots.Company showed up at the fishouse soon after in the form of Kevin's friend, Jerry, who found the thermos of glugg right away.After we got out to the fishing tournament, the gun went off to signal the beginning. We were in sixty feet of water and I was struggling to get my line down the hole.Kevin came over to help me and as soon as he was done helping me, he went back to his own hole and his bobber was gone. He pulled up his line and had a .65 pound walleye! He raced it over to the weighing station hoping he would place somewhere. They give out prizes to the first 150 places in this tournament and the lowest prize is a $250 gift certificate. I had a nibble once and my bobber started going down but once I pulled up my line, there was nothing there. The rest of the three hours I visited with people and drank some glugg. Jerry drank most of it, though.Here is a picture of Kevin and Jim and below that is Jim's son and me.It is always amazing to see 15,000 people on a lake. We were more toward the edge of the crowd. After the tournament, we found out that Kevin's fish came in at the 81st place and he won a $250 gift certificate to Mill Fleet Farm! He was kind of bummed because if he would have been 80th, he would have won a four-wheeler. But he was excited that he had placed. He said he has been fishing this tournament many years and only caught a fish one other time and he never placed with that one. I talked him into buying himself a vexlar the next morning. How can a woman compete with a vexlar? I know it will probably replace me someday. It was a super fun day. The weather was great, it was up in the twenties and the sun came out in the afternoon. And the icing on the cake was that Kevin's fish placed! We invited everyone we knew out on the lake back to our house where we downed many Tombstone pizzas. I can't wait to do it again next year!

Rainbow Trout

Every evening I get the same phone call as I am walking out of work. I call it the potato chip call.
"Mom." (She never states what she wants right away, I always have to say "yes?" Drives me nuts.)
"Yes?"
"Can I have some candy or chips as a snack?"
"No, have some grapes."
"Ok, what are we having for supper?"
"I'm not sure."
" The boys in class were bad again today. And you should stop at Morey's and get something there for supper."

I did stop at Morey's once again tonight to pick up some salmon and got tempted instead by the display of rainbow trout in the cooler. It was an easy choice since both Kevin and Miss Chocoholic love fish and they especially love trout. Kevin likes to pretend that in all his fishing and hunting trips he is actually the "hunter and gatherer" and providing for his family. Since bringing a piece of trout home would probably involve another mandatory fishing trip to Lake of the Woods, it is always cheaper to buy a couple of fillets from Morey's, regardless of what Kevin may try to tell you.
The trout was happy to come home with me because it knew it was going to get a nice mustard sauce and warm cedar plank bed. I soaked a cedar plank for about fifteen minutes. I know... it should have been longer but I was in a hurry. I turned the grill on and put the plank with the trout on the grill.

One time I cooked salmon the same way and the oils from the salmon ran down into the grill. The oil and the plank caught fire and wouldn't stop burning no matter how I tried beating it with the spatula. Luckily, the salmon was only singed on the edges and I managed to scoop the salmon onto a plate and then carried the flaming plank down to the fire pit balanced on my spatula. Thank God Kevin didn't see that happen! This time nothing caught fire. I sprinkled the trout with some Old Bay seasoning, lemon pepper and dill. It didn't take it long to cook, maybe fifteen minutes at the most.I made a mustard glaze by starting a saucepan with garlic and some Barefoot Chardonnay. I let that boil, then added some brown mustard, horseradish and dill. A little mayo helped dilute the salty taste.

I cooked a box of couscous in chicken broth to go with the trout. If you have never tried couscous before, it is a Middle Eastern grain that can be eaten like rice. It is nice to have a different starch once in awhile and we eat couscous frequently at our house. Both Kevin and Miss Chocoholic like it.

I served dinner with the rest of the bottle of Barefoot Chardonnay. This chardonnay is the best bang for your buck. It is only about seven dollars a bottle and has a smooth, lemony taste that goes well with fish. Kevin and Miss Chocoholic ate everything while making little moany sounds. Miss Chocoholic even asked for seconds.

Grilling on a cedar plank gives fish a smoky, silky taste that you don't get from seasoning. This was actually a healthy and delicious meal. Now my tummy is full, Kevin went out to the fish house on the ice to pretend to hunt and gather, Miss Chocoholic is doing homework and I will finish my wine and see who makes a fool of themselves on American Idol tonight. Happy cooking!

Chef and Company Chef Challenge

Last week I went to the chef challenge at Chef and Company. Chef and Company is a store over by Grizzlies in Brainerd that has any pot or pan you could possibly wish for. They also have a gorgeous kitchen in which they do cooking classes. Check out their website. It is http://www.chefcompany.com/

Once every two months they have a chef challenge. You can be one of the audience members who gets to drool over the creations for the single price of a non-perishable food item. I have been to several of their cooking classes and I had a can of unused pineapple slices in my cupboard to use as the fee so I decided to check out the competition.

I got there about five minutes before they started. If you are going, get there super early so you can get a seat at the table. They had folding chairs but you can't see and I wound up standing the whole time.

The two chefs were Tom Kavanaugh and Shelly Shields from the Quarterdeck. The competition was based off the "Iron Chef" competitions on Food Network. Right before the show starts, the "secret" ingredient is revealed. The chefs have an hour and a half to create three dishes. This time the secret ingrident was shrimp. Think of the wonderful things you can do with shrimp!

Tom made a shrimp risotto, trout stuffed with a shrimp mousse and mushroom ragout, and homemade pasta with shrimp wrapped in phyllo dough. Shelly made a shrimp bisque, cerviche with a fennel salad and an appetizer that consisted of cornbreaded shrimp layered with wanton wrappers that she had fried like chips.

One of the judges was Matty, a local restaurant owner and as I watched him shovel bites of the trout into his mouth, my eyes literally watered. That is the only bad thing about this competition...if you go, you may get a little taste with a tiny plastic fork, but you probably won't get a big bite so eat a large supper before you get there! For a foodie such as myself, it was hard to watch and not want to rip the plate out of the judge's hand.

I thought Shelly should have won the competition, she was very focused and her presentation was amazing. I had a little taste of her bisque and I can't even describe it, it was so good. As the judges critiqued each dish, I was disappointed that not one of the three judges knew what cerviche was and each one asked how it was pronounced. (Cerviche is shrimp that is cooked by marinading it in citrus. No heat is involved in the cooking, the citrus will cook the shrimp by itself.) I have to give them a little break though, it would have been tough to be a judge and criticize all that wonderful food. Both Shelly and Tom made some pretty mouthwatering dishes.

In the end, Tom won the competition. I tasted his leftover mushroom ragout and it was very good. Then I went over to Grizzlies and ordered the mushroom ravioli because I was starving. I will admit that his homemade pasta did inspired me to make my own pasta the next weekend. You can read about that in the article below this one. The competition is definitely worth your time if you like to get inspiration from different sources. I will go again in a heartbeat but I will make sure I eat first!

There was some dip and cake for everyone to eat while you browsed the store. The dip was very tasty and the recipe was on the table for everyone to take. From the recipe you wouldn't think this is a very sophisticated dip but the blend of the flavors was perfect. Here is Julie's dip recipe. I hope she won't mind that I shared it with you. Make sure you check out Chef and Companies website and see if any classes fit your schedule. You will be glad you did! Also, make sure you get over to the Boathouse at the Quarterdeck to check out Shelly's cooking for yourself!

Julie's Olive Dip

8 ounces softened cream cheese
1 cup diced green olives
1 cup diced black olives
1/2 cup chopped onion
dash of tabasco sauce

Pulse olives and onions in a food processor, then add cream cheese and tabasco. Serve with crackers or vegatables. All your friends will ask you for the recipe!

Homemade Pasta

My mom came to visit me this weekend and Saturday we spent a pleasant afternoon cooking and baking. We decided to make homemade shrimp alfredo pasta for supper, a dish my daughter affectionately calls "greasy noodles." It is her favorite meal in the whole world.

A little road trip was in order so we stopped at the grocery store and at Moreys for some seafood. If you have never been to Moreys in Brainerd, you need to drop what you are doing right this minute and take a little drive over there. They used to have a restaurant and a retail section but they have since moved over to the little strip mall by Famous Dave's and now they only do retail. They don't just sell seafood, there is something in there for everyone from fabulous dips to some of the harder things to find in this area, such as panko. (Japanese bread crumbs) If you are planning to buy some shrimp, go to Moreys and get a pound of the EZ peel shrimp. You will have to cook and peel them but as they are currently at $7.99 a pound, it is cheaper than the grocery stores and tastes better, too! In our little Saturday trip we bought a loaf of French bread, a pound of scallops, a pound and a half of shrimp, a pound of their "Ole" crab dip. All of it was absolutely wonderful. We got back home and started the pasta out with about a pound of flour on the counter. We made a well in the flour and broke three eggs into it. I added a drizzle of olive oil, fresh thyme and basil and started kneading it until it formed a ball. I had to add a little water during the process. We rolled the dough out and used a wooden spatula to cut it into strips. But the question was what do we to hang it on to let it dry? I found a sweater rack in my closet. I washed it off and put it between two chairs. It worked perfect.

I don't have pictures of the alfredo sauce but we created that by starting some chardonnay boiling in a saucepan and then adding garlic, chives, chicken broth, cream and cornstarch. Time to cook up the scallops and shrimp! I have found that if I start a pan out with garlic and olive oil, let it cook awhile, then add scallops, the scallops develop this delicious, garlicky glaze. After that, we added the shrimp. We let the pasta dry for about an hour, then I started a boiling pot of water for it and dropped the noodles in.
Once the pasta was cooked (about 5 minutes) we added it to the seafood and mixed it with mozerella cheese and sea salt. Each plate got a healthy splash of the alfredo sauce. We served it with a bottle of 2005 Piesporter Michelsberg Riesling Auslese (my mom recommended it and it is a great, fruity, zesty wine) and was it ever good! Kevin commented that it reminded him of the dumplings in chicken and dumpling soup only better and that this dish can't be extremely healthy!

Bayfield Winery

One of my favorite places in the world is Bayfield, WI. Not only do they have the most unique restaurants, campgrounds, bars and scenery, they also have some of the best wine at an apple orchard called Hauser's Superior View Farm. The winery is called Bayfield Winery. Check out their website: http://www.bayfieldwinery.com/. Isn't that view of Lake Superior amazing?

I went there with my mom a couple of years ago during Bayfields annual Apple Festival. The orchard was having a winetasting and I tasted all the wines. Their raspberry is my favorite and the sweet apple is my second favorite. I had to buy a case of wine when we were there. When my mom and I ate out that night, the restaurant we were at carried the Bayfield Winery wine. My mom and I split a bottle of the raspberry while we forked huge amounts of flaky, buttery whitefish in our mouths. It was heaven.

Of course, a case of wine doesn't last long in this house! My sister-in-law was in Bayfield over the summer and gave me a bottle of wine for my birthday in October. I finally had to break into the bottle the other day. I made Kevin sip his glass slowly.

It is definitely a sweet wine but the sweetness isn't overpowering. I would still classify it as a dessert wine. The color is such a beautiful gold and the wine is fruity and not dry.

How sweet would it be to own your own orchard and winery?? My dream job!

Perfect Popovers

I love Gordan Ramsey and his "Kitchen Nightmares" show. Recently I saw one of the episodes where he turned around a failing restaurant with "real" gravy and Yorkshire pudding. Since then, I have been obsessed with popovers. The fact that steam is what makes them rise amazes me every time I make them, or shall I say...attempt to make them!

The only difference that I can see between Yorkshire pudding and popovers are that popovers are individual and Yorkshire pudding is cooked in the pan with the roast beef drippings (or roast beast, as I like to call it) in one big pudding. Someone correct me if I am wrong but I think that is pretty much the only difference.

This is about my fifth time making popovers. They are a little tricky but I finally think I have it figured out. Here are the secrets that you always wanted to know about popovers!

1. Make sure the flour and milk are exactly a cup. Don't "eyeball" it on this one! You cannot think that because the liquid creates steam, then more liquid will make them rise even higher!(like I did, hee hee!)
2. Don't overgrease the pan! This was my mistake the first four and a half times. As you can see in the picture, on the right hand side I was more liberal (I poured it) with the oil than I should have been. Brush the cups with oil and don't overdo it.
3. The milk and eggs need to be room temperature before you add it to the flour mixture.
4. Don't overbeat! I mixed it lightly and there were flour clumps in the mixture. That's ok.
5. The eggs should be 1/4 of a cup. If they are a little less, add some milk until you get to 1/4 of a cup per egg.

So without further ado, here is the recipe for popovers. Don't worry, if they don't turn out, they are still yummy! We have never had a popover go to waste in our house!

1 cup flour
1/2 tsp salt
1 cup milk
2 large eggs

Preheat oven to 475 degrees. Brush your popover pan with oil. Put the pan in the oven while it is preheating. You want your pan to be hot! Mix flour and salt together in one bowl. Beat the eggs and milk together in another bowl. If the milk and eggs came right out of the frig, stick them in the microwave for about 10 seconds to make them room temperature. Mix the milk mixture with the flour mixture. Don't overbeat. There can be some lumps. Pull the hot pan out of the oven and fill the cups halfway. Put the popovers in the oven and bake for 15 minutes. Don't peek! If you need to see what is happening, turn your oven light on. After 15 minutes, turn your oven back down to 375 degrees and bake for another 20 minutes. Serve immediately.

Glogg

I have been on an ethnic kick lately and did a complete Finnish Christmas this year because Kevin is Finnish. So in keeping with this Scandanavian tradition, I have to tell you about a wonderful, warm, winter alchoholic drink: glogg. I was first introduced to this from a friend that worked at Moreys in Brainerd. They had a package of the dried fruit and you added port to it. Then I found this recipe and made it for Christmas this year. I changed a few things to make it my own. When you first put the cup up to your nose, the alchohol hits you with some pretty potent fumes. Then you take a sip and you think...awww! That was warming and good, all the way to my toes! This is great to put in a thermos and take out to the fishhouse in the winter. Nothing better than pulling a walleye through the ice with a cup of hot glogg in your other hand. So here is my recipe for glogg. Enjoy!

1 bottle of dry red wine
1 bottle of port
1 bottle of brandy
10 inches of stick cinnamon (about 4 sticks)
2 dozen whole cloves
peel of one orange
1/2 cup of raisins
1 package of dried apricots
2 cups sugar

Pour the red wine and port into a stainless steel or porcelain kettle. Add cinnamon, cloves, orange peel, raisins and apricots. Warm gently, but do not boil. Boiling will burn off the alcohol and that's not what we want!

Put the sugar in a separate pan and soak it with 1/2 the bottle of brandy. Warm the sugar and brandy over a low flame. The sugar will melt and bubble until it becomes a clear golden syrup of carmelized sugar.

Add the carmelized sugar to the spiced wine mix. Cover and let mull for an hour. Be careful not to let it boil. Add the other half of the bottle of brandy and strain the mixture into a bottle. You can serve it immediately or let it age for a month or two. If you age it, make sure the bottle is filled as high as possible and sealed tight.

To serve, warm it gently over a low flame or microwave for 1 minute in a mug. Remember, do not boil. Drink while seated and give your car keys to a friend.

Grandview Crabapple Wine

It all started last fall when I grabbed two five-gallon buckets and my daughter and picked enough crabapples to fill one and half buckets. It was a beautiful evening for picking and would have been even more beautiful if my daughter wouldn't have been whining the whole time about "Are we done yet?" Our friend's family owns Grandview Resort in Nisswa. He has been so kind as to let me pick the crabapples for the last couple of years because they would most likely go to waste. The first year I made jelly out of them. This year it was five gallons of wine.

This was my favorite batch of wine so far. Kevin loved it. For Christmas he asked for his very own bottle to do whatever he wanted with it. It was a huge hit at his office Christmas party this year. But because of all the drinking before it was ready to bottle, I only got a solid eight bottles out of five gallons and the rest went down the stomachs.

I started this wine on 8/30/07. I boiled all the crabapples down and squeezed them through a cheesecloth like you would for jelly. I poured everything in a five-gallon carboy (bottle) and added about four cups of sugar, one of brown sugar, four packets of wine yeast, a tablespoon of yeast nutrient and four tablespoons of tannin. Someone told me at a wine class once to just brew some very strong black tea and use that as tannin which I did in this case.

When I tasted the wine after a couple of weeks, it was very puckery from the crabapples. I bought an oak stick online through http://www.midwestsupplies.com/ (I love them, they have everything and they are so great to work with!!) I added the oak stick to the mixture and left it. Eventually the wine started to mellow. The more sugar I added to keep the yeast going, the more the taste mellowed. I didn't want to make a super sweet wine so I kept the sugar to a minimum. I racked it three times. Racking is when you syphon the wine into another jug so that the pulp, also called the lee, will sink to the bottom. I put a packet of clearing gel into it before I racked it the last time because it wasn't as clear as I wanted it. That made a huge difference and the final product was beautiful!

The taste of this wine is not real fruity. You can taste the oak and you can taste the crabapples but neither flavor is prominant. The finished product is mellow with a hint of sweetness and a slight smoky flavor.

I was so excited to get these bottles and some really pretty labels. I also bought some corks and a cheap corker. With the cheap corker, you definitely need two people to cork the bottles. Kevin and I got the hang of it after two bottles. I would recommend a corker that stands on the floor for any more than ten bottles. I would like to get one next year. I handwrote the labels as I was too lazy to set up a template in Microsoft Word. That will be my next project.

I feel very rich with twelve of my own bottles of wine. Along with my crabapple, I have two bottles of strawberry wine and two bottles of peach wine. I can't wait for the spring and summer next year, I will be a winemaking machine! I want to try dandilion, plum, strawberry, and blackberry wine. And you can bet next fall I will make about fifteen gallons of the crabapple!