No, you didn't miss anything these past 2 weeks, except a bucket of juice fermenting.  Next step in this process:  Stabilizing and Clearing.

As per the wine kit instructions, I took a Specific Gravity reading.  Instructions say it should be at 0.998 or lower.   We are right at 0.998




Next is to siphon the wine from the primary fermenting bucket into a carboy.




Then comes the fun part of adding the stabilizers and other stuff that they give you.  Involves lots of stirring!  1) to mix up the ingredients, and 2) to drive the CO2 out of the wine.

Being the strong brute that I am, I pick up the six gallon glass carboy and place it up on a table.  Attach the rubber bung and airlock (to keep the air out, but let any gasses out).  Here's what it looks at this stage, then with a nice towel over it to keep out the light.  It's next to a cheap window which lets lots of cold air in, so it will be kept at a nice cool temp.







For those that are curious, here's what's left in the primary fermenting bucket.  I've tilted it slightly to show it better.  Hopefully, none of this got into my wine.  The directions say that I need to let this sit for another 4 weeks, but after day 10, I can do an optional "re-racking", which is probably what I'll do to ensure a clear wine and that none of that nasty expired yeasty stuff is in there.

      

Here is the next wine on the way, a Riesling Auslese.  Day one is pretty simple.  Clean and sanitize the equipment, add 4 litres of warm water and  mix in the packet of Bentonite that they give you, which is used to clarify the wine.  These kits have all you need to make wine, except the equipment and sanitizing agents.  Equipment consists of things like the primary fermenting bucket (seen here with wine), long spoons for stirring, hyrdrometer....etc.  I just bought a bundled kit that had most things I needed.

Next. in goes the grape juice, and enough cool water to bring everything up to the 6 gallon mark.  Sprinkle on the yeast provided, and put the lid on (with an airlock).  Time to let this sit for about 2 weeks, until it gets racked into the big glass carboy that I have.

      

Just an update!  Still cooking!    Been making wine, but didn't blog about it...yet!  We have a Chianti, and a Barolo working.  The Chianti was bottled last night.  Waiting at least a month to see how it comes out.  Learned a lot during the first two batches, so I'll document the next batch

Also, I bought two pounds of mustard seed, to do more mustard experiments.  This time documenting what I use and in what amounts.  I plan on being a mustard baron.

      

The apples weren't part of it.  Two pie pumpkins!  I hope that's enough for pie!  I think it is

Lots of leeks and beets.  MORE peppers.  omg so many peppers this year.  I've already dehydrated a bunch of them.  And I have enough onions to last till at least January!

      

YES!  It actually worked!

Once this idea was spawned, it had to be put into action.  We loved it!

Step 1: Make the noodles!

2 Tablespoons Melted Butter
1/3 cup (or so) Franks Red Hot
2 Cups Tipo 00 Flour.  Regular flour would do too.
2 eggs

Mix the Red Hot and the butter together, which is a basic Buffalo Wing Sauce.  For exact proportions, see the bottle of Franks.
Mound the flour onto your work surface (typical pasta making directions), and create a well.  Place the 2 eggs in and start to combine.  Here's where the tricky part came in.  Start adding some of the wing sauce.  I really don't know how much I used, but you don't want to go too far, as then the dough would get all sloppy.  If you've made homemade noodles before, it's easier as you know the texture that you're trying to obtain.



When mixed together, you should have a nice ball of dough resembling the following photo.  Cover this with plastic wrap, and let rest for about 1/2 hour.



For those truly in to detective work, you can look at the two photos and figure out how much sauce I used

I then ran this through my manual crank pasta maker and ended up with nice red "wing smelling" noodles!



On to the sauce!  Phase 2 of not knowing what to expect.  I am sure someone has made a blue cheese alfredo sauce before, but this was a first for me.

Again, I wish I measured how much blue cheese I used, but I think it was about 1/3 of this block.

Roth Käse Buttermilk Blue Cheese
However much grated Parmesan Cheese is shown here
1 Stick of glorious butter
1 cup of heavy cream
and a dash of ground pepper.  (No white pepper available in the house)
oh, and a small amount of a cornstarch slurry to thicken the sauce, once I realized it was too soupy)



I melted the butter in a medium sized saucepan, then added the rest of the ingredients in.  I let this go over low heat until (adding a bit more blue cheese to get the flavor right), until it was hot and all of the cheese was melted.  It was at this point that I added the cornstarch to thicken it up. 

I dropped the fettuccine noodles into a pot of boiling salted water, until done...and then SERVE and DEVOUR!!!

Wow, that was good.

      

Never attempt to make these unless you have lots of time and are willing to put up with a mess.  Yes, Alton Brown made it look sooooo easy on that talking picture box.

I, having a small kitchen (hence the name of this blog), was covered in flour and all sorts of goopy goodness.  As expected though (I think) they turned out looking just like on TV!  Faaaaaaantastic!  Yum.  Really.  Yum.  A little pickling salt on top and time to eat away!  Next time I won't use THREE WHOLE LEEKS!  I was worried I wouldn't have enough, and also had to use them up.

      

Some things taste much better than they photograph and this is definitely one of them.

For starters, just look how bland everything looks.  The purple peppers turn this translucent looking gray.  Yet they taste great.

This used:

Purple Peppers
Red Onion
Zucchini
Yellow Squash
Cherry Tomatoes
Canned Artichokes
Olive Oil
and Lemon Juice
salt & pepper too.
Maybe a few hot pepper flakes

      

Having added some cherry tomatoes to our salad (as well as a pepper and one of those funky looking yellow cucumbers), I decided to try to use a few to freshen up a sauce that I had stashed in the freezer.  Since these were small, I could do this on a small scale, aka in a microwave.  I cut an 'x' in the bottom of each one and threw them into a measuring cup which was boiling in the microwave.  I then kept it going for about a minute.  Removed the tomatoes, cooled them off , and slipped off the skins. 

Next, to crush the little fellows into the sauce.  Helpful hint #1, when crushing tomatoes, try to get most of them into the pot.  I think I got more on my stove than into the intended sauce.

      

This, as everything grew out of a basic idea of making chicken and snowballed from there.  The pic (as usual) doesn't do the dish justice.

I started off marinating the chicken in balsamic vinegar, olive oil, some hot peppers from my garden, basil, oregano, salt, pepper....maybe something else too.  Can't recall now!  That marinated for about 6 hours or so.

CSA Vegetables used:
Yellow Squash
Zucchini
Tomatoes
Red Onion
Cucumber (for the cucumber tomato salad)

Into the pan went some olive oil,  1 sliced red onion, sliced tomatoes, and garlic.  Then on top of that went the chicken. Cover and cook for a bit.    While that was going, I cut up the zucchini and yellow squash and tossed that in when the chicken was ready to flip.  That's basically it.  Cook till done!  I'd post more, but it's too hot to sit here with this laptop frying my legs!

      

Leeks!
2 heads lettuce
Those yellow cucumber things
Cucumbers
Zucchini
Yellow Squash
Bell Peppers
Cubanelle Peppers
Tomatoes