DD Daughter - Christmas 1978


Word of the Day

Motate - To leave.

Sometimes I wish I had more than just one set of hands attached to arms...oh....and they'd have to be functioning and I should be able to tuck them away where I won't be providing anyone with their own personal freak show on a daily basis or get in the way when I don't need them but... I strained out the pulp from my pyracantha wine yesterday. First of all, I discovered that my strainer bags only fit on my 3 gallon buckets. Since all my 3 gallon buckets had pyracantha wine in them that needed straining, I had to make do with trying to juggle and pour the wine from one 3 gallon bucket into a straining bag that kept collapsing that was sitting in my 5 gallon bucket. Not an easy task. And then....the recipe called for letting the stuff drip for 45 minutes, which meant that I'd either have had to hold the bag up for 45 minutes as it dripped slowly into the 5 gallon bucket or find some other way of accomplishing the same thing without standing around for that length of time. You know...I really should buy some sort of tripod for this sort of thing but since I didn't have anything like that, I transferred the strainer bag of pulp into a large colander which I stuck over a stew pot because the colander wasn't big enough to rest on the lip of the 5 gallon bucket. So...I quickly washed out the 3 gallon bucket while the bag of pulp was sitting in the colander so I could rest the colander over the lip of the 3 gallon bucket where it did fit. Meanwhile, during all this transferring etc. you can imagine that I ended up with drips of wine all over my kitchen floor...and this was for just the first bucket that had to be strained. Oh well, I syphoned the strained wine (to which I had added additional sugar as per my recipe) into a large 5 gallon fermentation jug and started the straining process for the second 3 gallon bucket of pyracantha wine...and then 45 minutes later, the third 3 gallon bucket. After the initial bucket, the remaining buckets were easier to deal with because I had freed up one 3 gallon bucket so I didn't have to worry about the "straining bag that didn't fit into the 5 gallon bucket" issue. After all was said and done, sugar added and blended, I ended up with over 10 gallons of pyracantha wine (can you call it wine if it isn't done yet?)....pulp discarded. Thankfully, my one and only 5 gallon fermentation bucket holds closer to six gallons with a good 2" of head space remaining or I would have been in trouble. My 5 gallon fermentation jug (a Water 'n Ice water jug) only holds 5 gallons, max....no leeway, no head space. When Water 'n Ice sells you 5 gallons of water, that's all you get because they don't figure that water will create gases building up or that said water will start foaming all over your carpet. When you make wine, you need to worry about such things. Ask Sis. Ask Sis' son who called her at The Lake one year, frantically describing the disaster she had foaming all over her laundry room and asking her what he should do about it. From what I heard, the fruit flies were having a drunken orgy. She told him to break up the orgy and clean up the mess....but not to dump the wine. Sis tells me that the resultant wine did end up tasting pretty good. I'm sure she strained out any fruit flies that had expired during the orgy. I don't think I'll have to worry about fruit flies but...I did end up having to mop the kitchen floor even though Gypsy was busy trying to clean up any drips that she could find.

Murphyism of the Day

Thoms's Law of Marital Bliss

The length of a marriage is inversely proportional to the amount spent on the wedding.

Noteworthy Quote of the Day

Do give books - religious or otherwise - for Christmas. They're never fattening, seldom sinful, and permanently personal.

- Lenore Hershey