Bubbles in the airlock and a valance in the window

One means cutie-tootie and one means there's beer brewing in the basement.

So if any of James' grip friends read this blog - he was in no way involved in the hanging of this beauteus yellow and white striped valance. He tried to stop me but I maced him and hung it by myself. There is electric current running through it so if he touches it he'll go down. We still have to paint the other window and then I will hang the second one.

Rosemary designed them and sowed them. We bought 1/4" x 1 1/2" boards that you stick in a pocket sowed at the top. Tack with finishing nails and fold it over. Then bang the nails in to the wall and it's cuteness complete. I think it sort of justifies the yellow counters and back splashes which I can kind of live with now. Very content. We may have nixed the blue even.

And NO - it's not a country kitchen. It's Chez Linda or The Blue Jay Café. 

Started the home brew last night. I'm mostly writing it down so that we can remember for next time. So many crazy steps. We made it easy for ourselves and bought the kit to make a pilsner, we'll start to supplement with other stuff in bulk as soon as we know what we are doing. 

So again, these are just the steps we went through and I know there are some seriously accomplished home brewers who may read this and we are so so so open to tips and suggestions! 

Sanitation 

Everything gets scrubbed and good riddance to all contaminents.  The big 20 quart (5 gallons, 19 liter) pot, the fermentation bucket and all the little gadgets and tools that will be used in the process.

Making the wort

We will end up with a total of 5 gallons of liquid, so to start pour 3 gallons in to the cleaned fermentation bucket. We boiled it first just cause I read that somewhere, the cleaner and more sterilized it is the better. After that boil 2 more gallons in the big pot. At the same time heat some water to loosen up the malt syrup in. Our number 1 ingredient. Exciting.

When the water boils take the pot off the heat and pour in the malt syrup. It is supposed to foam up like crazy but we had only minimal foaming. OMG have we failed already!? But what are you gonna do, Dirk's encouraging words ringing in our ears. You are gonna get beer. Like it's really hard to FK this up.

Next the hop pellets go in. And now it's starting to smell like  a brew. Boil for about 1/2 hour and then add the hop leaves. We now have wort, the soup that will become the beer.

All this talk about cleanliness and sanitation and you want us to dunk a dirty gym sock in the soup. OK. You guys make the rules. So - put the hop leaves in the hops bag and put it in the wort. The gym sock only stays in for 1 minute and then it's time to transfer the wort from the pot to the fermentation bucket. It mixes with the 3 gallons of cold water and will hopefully be around 90˚, yeast pitching temp.

We activated the yeast in a container on the side 15 minutes before the wort was done.

The yeast goes in the bucket, we left it alone for 10 minutes and then stirred just a little bit. Lid goes on tight and the airlock goes in the hole of the lid. Fill up the airlock halfway and put the lid on that.

Fermentation

We stuck the bucket in the basement cause a pilsner needs a cooler temp to ferment, around 50˚. We woke up this morning and I ran right down to see if we had bubbles.

We had em! Bubbbbbblesss!!! Which means the yeast is doing its job and the fermentation is a go. 

The bucket will hang out in the basement for the week and we should be ready to bottle by next weekend.

And more importantly, we should be able to crack the first bottle when my parents arrive April 16th.

Ostmacka

I'm sorry, but very few things are tastier than cheese and butter on home baked bread. This also just happens to be Swedish brännvins (schnaps) cheese from - where - you guessed it - IKEA's food store. Makes a complete  mellanmål (middle-meal) with hot chocolate. 


I'm having another one...

Who's that bird?

Had a new fella over for breakfast but can't identify him. Matte black  body and matte brown head. Looks like a mean SOB but very handsome. Definitely villain material or gentleman thief/spy. Any clues who he might be?

And this is Mr. Speckles. He's new too. 

I think he is a Vesper or Song Sparrow. We desperately need a new bird book.

Also saw a red winged blackbird but fumbled with the long lens and only got a lousy shot of him in the tree. He'll be back. Oh yes, he'll be back.


PS! He is brownheaded cowbird! Yes! A cow bird!!! Yous in the cooouuuntry now! And I was right about the villain part, they dump their babies in other bird's nests and leave. The cow bird babies eat all the food and grow faster than the babies who live their and sometimes end up pushing them out of the nest. Bad cow bird. Don't like.


PPS! I have it on good authority, my on-call bird expert Aunt RiRi that the latter guy is a song sparrow. 

Eye for details

I'm up here all week living the country dream. I baked a Toftis to sustain me and I am being disciplined about writing. I will take breaks to strip the living room door, show the cottage, sand the bathtub, clean Ebba and other general detailing around the house.

Like this... We received our shades from Country (Rock n Roll-far out-smokem if you gottem) Curtains. It's gettin oh so homey around here. 

In the same box was also the curtain rod for the bay window so we can finally take the thumb tacks out of the pretty sheers that Rosemary sent and hang them properly. 

Last weekend we shoveled a hole in the snow where the patio is because the weather was too nice to keep us inside. We decided to enjoy the first Micheladas of the year.

Just get your basic Mexican brew, i.e. Tecate, Sol, Carta Blanca. Pour it over ice, squeeze a load of limes in it it. Top it off with bloody mary mix and a few dashes of Worcestershire sauce. It's delish.

It's a tasty thing but right now we are also on a mission. James has somehow figured out how to save money by drinking beer. We are going to brew it at home. Inspired by our seasoned home brewer neighbor Jody we are taking on our first batch this weekend. Up the road a bit is Pantano's Wine Grapes, a home winemaking store that has recently expanded to also accommodate home brewing. We got ourselves a pilsner making kit from Jerry - a kit that contains the tools and the ingredients to get through a first batch. 


And back to the Michelada. So you make the beer in a big bucket, right, but there comes a time, a week or so later, when it has to go into it's final destination. No, strike that, final destination is James' gullet. It has to get into a vessel where the actual fermentation happens. We went to our local beer distributor and picked up a bunch of bottles. Still full of beer. So here we are, step one of the process - empty the bottles. Cheers! Don't be shy, come by for a Michelada cause we need to drink 5 gallons of Carta Blanca before next weekend. Thank you to Dirk who has offered to lend us a set of beer bottles to start us off for batch #2. You just saved us a lot of hang overs.


My herb garden is doing awesome by the way. 

Cilantro. Almost enough to make pico de gallo. Can 't wait!

Parsley. Some went in to a broth I made last night.

Itty bitty basil. Enough to make a mouse portion of pesto.

Dill!

You're gonna have to enlarge this picture to see the chives. But they're there. Hm... I know they're there.

Sick of my starling pictures? Well toooooo bad. The sunnier it gets outside the prettier he is so the snapping continues.

Sunset seen through exceptionally dirty kitchen window. 

Getting to know your furnace

Owning a house is sooooo hard. 

James went upstate after wrap on friday, I worked saturday and was planning on bussin up when I was done. We have made a habit of turning our thermostats down to 50˚ when we leave but when he showed up around 2 am the temperature was down to 46˚ in the whole house. Our friendly soon to be beer slinging neighbor Dirk suggested we get digital thermostats because they are much more precise and they can also be programmed so the heat goes down at night when we are sleeping etc... Our heating system has proven to be quite rock solid and it has been a cold winter so far. You turn up the heat and the furnace kicks right in and within minutes the radiators are hot. 

Until now... 

We are so used to hearing the beast in the basement roar the moment you turn the dial - or now - push the button. But this time - quiet. I sympathize with James and I can see his furrowed brow as he stands face to face with Furnace von Frankenstein just trying to extract some sense out of the situation. Why won't you work you stupid machine?!? 

Our fuel delivery service has an emegency line so James called them and they had someone over by 10 am. This guy apparently looked into the furnace and said: "Oh no wonder! You have a 70˚ valve where you SHOULD have an 80˚ valve and that has a casued carbon buildup which is blocking the fuel from going in to the furnace." He unclogged it and we had heat once again. I guess that was $150 well spent. Although I would  have figured it out myself eventually. Kids' stuff!

The irony of the situation is that I came home to the apartment Monday morning after dropping James off on set up in Riverdale finding NO HEAT and NO HOT WATER. But here you are up against a different beast. There's no furnace to plead to, just a landlord and a super who could. Not. Care. Less. So you wait. And wait. Eventually the pipes will start clanging and soon the apartment will be a sauna once again. And we'll start to complain that it's too hot.

Just another day at the office...

Very seldom do I ask to have my picture taken with the people I work with...

(Very special circumstances only, like Frank Booth special...)

(My assistant Zoe and I and the lovely Elijah)

...but today it had to be done. Mostly for my pops. 

When my parents come to visit I usually hand them a Time Out magazine and say go through it and see if you can find some things you would like to do. So my dad found a promotional Blondie concert in downtown Manhattan and asked if we could go. 

(That's Debbie back there in a fab furry hat!)

We all have great memories of listening to Heart of Glass back in the day, including pops so this was very special. Of course she waited until the encore to play it and the antecipation almost got the better of us so when she did - it was just perfect.

So when I found out I was working with Debbie Harry this week I knew I had to make a photo op happen. 

Mission accomplished!

The job is The John Roberts show and here he is playing his character Bunny, a hysterical impersonation of his New Jersey/Brooklyn mom. 

Here is a link to one of his youtube videos that I think is to DIIIIE FOR! ARE YOU KIDDIN ME! I CAN'T STAND IT!!!

Watch it a couple of times cause it gets more and more brilliant.

Who wants Baileys?

Kitchen closure

At least some kind of closure. 2/3 of if is done.

Doors ready to be put back on.

The yellow doesn't bother me so much now and the floor....eeeeeeehhhh.... it's fine.

Starting to wonder about blue walls though. Too many colors? 

Oups. Right, that's the side that isn't done... Och Kajsa det är där kylskåpet ska stå. We will get to it, one piece at a time. 

It's back to work time for both of these crazy kids so we'll see when the next break happens.