Wine Making Again

Its been a brewing day today, and yes I know I dont drink but I enjoy making wine as it uses up some of the overproduction of crops and turns them into a useful commodity which is nice to trade with and to offer guests who like a tipple, and it is cheap to make yourself, and you control all the ingredients so no preservatives (anti-freeze) and only natural ingredients, and you always find you have more friends than you ever realised you had.

Rhubarb was pulled and a quantity was cooked for freezing for the winter months, the rest was cooked off for turning into rhubarb wine and the excellent rhubarb champagne which is a sweet, sparkling drink ideal for summer, and this years production will be kept for drinking next year as it needs standing in the bottles for at least 6 months, a year is much better and improves the quality of the wine and champagne, and it fits in with the rolling production of seasonal fruits and vegetables. Tops were cut off along with a piece of the stem and put into the compost heap.

Beetroot was next to be pulled and Grandson was sent off to pull some beetroot and came back with a lot of the young crop, my other half twisted off the tops (you always twist off and never cut the tops off as the beetroot bleeds) and they were put into the 6 galoon pan and cooked long and slow to retain the flavour, and as the water was changed it was put in the mashing tubs and allowed to cool, as the batch was cooked the remaining water was dumped into the mashing tub for turning into wine, why waste it.

Grandson phoned daughter and my mother and informed them we were pulling rhubarb and beetroot and they all appeared, lots of decent bread was buttered and as soon as the beetroot was pulled from the pan it was peeled and sliced straight onto the freshly buttered bread for beetroot sandwiches and the heat from the beetroot melts the butter into the bread and is delicious eaten as a hot sandwich; and as a number of villagers got wind of me pulling beetroot straight from the ground and cooking it, they appeared with buttered bread for some sandwiches themselves. Even the two swans who are resident on my property came up for a few slices of freshly cooked beetroot as they like it cooked.

Grandson whipped up a salad, he pulled some carrots and grated them and placed in the bottom of a large bowl, he saved the tops and chopped the carrot and beetroot tops finely, he sliced some lettuce finely, and diced a cucumber into fine chunks, he cooked and cooled some pasta and stirred the lot together and made a yogurt dressing by adding a little mustard to the yogurt and drizzled it over the leaf/pasta on the bowl and stirred it to dress the salad, he then added some finely chopped goats cheese for a lovely salad. He cut some beetroot into small chunks and topped the salad off with it.

Mother took a bag of rhubarb and some uncooked beetroot for storage, to store beetroot all you need is a plastic bucket or similar and dry sand; place a layer of and over the bottom of the bucket, place the uncooked beetroot onto the sand so they aren't touching each other or the side of the bucket, cover with more dry sand until they are well covered and add another layer and repeat until your bucket is full, place in a cool place and your beetroot will last around a year.