It's Easy Being Green

I’ve been told if you get bucked off a horse, you’re supposed to dust yourself off and jump right back on again. The idea I suppose is to help you conquer any initial fear about a repeat performance that might build up inside if you let any great amount of time slip by. When it comes to one of my favorite hobbies, homebrewing, I’ve let far too much time slip by before jumping back on the “brew horse”.

I knew nothing of the hobby until a friend and co-worker of mine introduced the idea. Of all places, I think the inspiration came from an episode of The Simpsons. Have you ever seen the one where Homer tries to make bathtub beer? Needless to say I wasn’t immediately sold on the idea but decided to give it a shot. What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, right?

At first it almost felt like we were wading into illegal territory. A run to a local brew shop just blocks from the Arizona State University campus made it seem even more lascivious. I undeniably enjoyed drinking alcohol so the prospect of creating it with my own two hands seemed pretty damn amazing. An hour or so later, the friendly brewer had helped us assemble a kit complete with everything we needed to brew our first batch of beer.

The process proved to be nothing short of great mystery and intrigue. Were we following the instructions right? Did we put the hops in at the right time? Did we aerate the wort enough? Was it the right temperature before we pitched the yeast? Was everything sanitized properly? We’d have to wait a long four weeks before getting it into bottles and then another couple weeks beyond that before we could relish our first taste of that liquid bread we’d toiled over what seemed like ages ago.

As it turns out, our first batch was a hit and then I guess you could say we had both been officially bitten by the brew bug. Like a religious ritual, every four to six weeks we gathered around a stainless steel brew pot and assembled the next beer of the month while sipping down a few cold ones from the previous batch. This tradition carried on for a handful of years until life took my brew buddy and me in two different directions. Since it was a 50/50 investment, we opted to split the brew setup down the middle. Half going with me and half going with my brew buddy made the split seem like an awkward breakup, deflating the sails of this once jovial pastime.

I packed my apartment with Homestead Hottie and made the long trek up the mountain to Flagstaff, Arizona where we planned to launch a new chapter of our lives together. Talina must have sensed my depression creeping in over the loss of my hobby because that Christmas she bought me everything I needed to complete the one half of the brew rig I painfully hauled up to the high country.

Flagstaff had a pretty exciting craft brew scene cooking along with a well-stocked homebrew shop, something I have now come to realize was pretty remarkable for a town of just 50,000 people (most of them crunchy in some sort of way). I brewed off and on and even found a new friend and co-worker that was also into homebrewing. Sometimes, having a brew buddy is just the perfect motivation to punching out some extra energy and getting a batch made. It also helps when several of your friends and coworkers really seem to enjoy chugging down the fruits of your labor. I was in a brewing groove for our 5 years in Flagstaff but when it came time to pack the brew rig up again, I was feeling defeated again.

Our nomadic lifestyle took Homestead Hottie and I to where we still are today: southwestern Indiana. The last three years has proved busy without a doubt and felt like we’ve been moving at warp speed ever since our vintage RV limped us on into town. A new job, the birth of our first child, a layoff, another new job and then the birth of our second child last August seemed to all happen in a flash. The powder keg of life just happens and then you get over it.

Needless to say I haven’t had much time to brew, let alone the toddler-free space to tuck a 5-gallon glass jug full of fermenting beer away for a few weeks. Thanks to the gift of another batch of brew ingredients from Talina, I’m finally jumping back on the brew horse again. I’m breaking myself in with an Irish Red Ale kit and am once again sweating the small stuff while I wait. Was my yeast alive when it pitched? Was the fermentation enough even though it seemed dead? Was the wort exposed to too much oxygen?

I just finished racking my Irish Red Ale over to the secondary fermenter and will bottle in another two weeks. Only then will I know for sure if I’m going to be able to fully get my brew mojo back and ferment some wicked ales. Time to sip a cold one and wait.

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Valentine’s Day is just a few days away and we have been busy making some minor preparations for the lovey day.  This year there isn’t much money to shower each other with nice gifts nor is it really needed.  We handmade some Valentine’s cards with Everly to send to our family.  They were simple and just involved finding little crafty knick-knacks, trinkets and cutouts to glue to simple cardstock hearts.  Everly had fun customizing and gluing each Valentine and will show up with tons of toddler love still attached to them.

I am recycling these wooden shipping palettes by dismantling them and turning them into something new

I’m working on a project for Homestead Hottie that recycles old shipping palettes and turns them into something new and useful.  I can’t tell you what it is going to be yet since it’s still a surprise.  Stay tuned for an update on that and yes, I really have to get cracking on it since there was little time left for me to build this past week.

Instead of the hassle of trying to find a babysitter, Homestead Hottie has elected to stay at home and have me cook our traditional Valentine’s meal: a 4 course fondue dinner.

We really got into fondue living in the Valley and used to go to The Melting Pot for all of our special occasions.  The setting is romantic, the process of eating is fun and keeps you busy, and best of all it’s really good.  The closest Melting Pot to us is in Nashville and after one awful experience there I don’t think we will ever go back.  It just wasn’t the same and the management there didn’t seem to care about it.

In  a few days I’ll dust off the fondue pot, ready the sterno cans and begin slicing and dicing for our big meal.  A hot pot of cheese fondue will start us off, followed by a salad, then the main course of meats in an oil or burgundy based fondue, followed by dessert.  If you’re thinking about staying in this Valentine’s Day we highly recommend it as a way to save money and show your Valentine that you care even more.  If you are cooking a Valentine’s meal in your own kitchen this year, here is a great little dessert recipe to try out if you’re looking for something different.  Espresso Granita would make a great after dinner treat or you could use it as a palette cleanser in between courses.  It’s super easy, can be made in advance of the big meal and seems so sophisticated.  Enjoy!

Espresso Granita

Ingredients:

- 2 cups warm espresso (I prefer Lavazza’s Super Crema for its delicious caramel notes and sweet finish)

- 1/4 cup sugar

Combine 2 cups warm espresso with a 1/4 cup sugar.  Pour the mix into a shallow baking pan and place it in the freezer.  For the next hour, take the pan out every 15 minutes and use a fork to scrape the developing ice crystals.  This will give you a light, delicate granita.  Serve a scoop in a glass topped with whipped cream and dark chocolate shavings.

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If you’re looking to become more self-sustaining, growing and preserving your own food is an excellent way to achieve that goal.  Not only is it probably one of the easiest ways to achieve your sustainability, it is also one of the cheapest.  For some reason, I had always imagined home canning to be a bygone era but reaching back I could vividly remember one of my Mom’s old high school friends canning her own jams and jellies frequently when I visited.  Maybe I thought, it’s not that far out of vogue.

As Homestead Hottie and I looked for more and more ways to make our life more green and self-sustaining, food preservation seemed to be a logical next step following our entry into growing some of our own food.  Home food preservation does take time but the end results are so worth it and will save you a ton of money in the long run.  You won’t have to rely on a run to the grocery store for a canned good but simply walk into your kitchen pantry.  Check out this video as I show you how we turned a bumper crop of green tomatoes into a half-dozen quart jars of our own, homemade pasta sauce.

If you didn’t catch my post on how to ripen or use all those end of season green tomatoes,  click here.