Belated Happy Turkey-Day!

Hey everyone! I just wanted to take a minute out of what I'm assuming is a busy Black Friday to share some pictures of our Thanksgiving meal! (pictures of food on the internet, what? Is that a thing?)

Let me give you a brief over-view of the menu:

• Two different kinds of salad
• Salmon patties 
• Two different kinds of wine (1 homemade)
• Split-pea soup
• Homemade bread
• Turkey (of course)
• Gravy
• Stuffing
• Sweet potato casserole
• Cranberry sauce
• Roasted white potatoes
• Honey cupcakes
• Ginger-apple cake
• Chocolate bumpy cake
• Pumpkin pie

A feast I tell you! We did it all kind-of pot-luck style, where everyone brought something. And by everything, I mean the woman. It's not a sexist thing, but the men in our family just don't cook for whatever reason, although my Father-in-Law did bring us homemade wine!

And now for some pictures:

Yours truly, putting the finishing touches on my bird.

And it was a beautiful bird, if I do say so myself.

My family and I usually head out to my aunt's house for Thanksgiving, so this was actually only the second time I've ever had to put the Thanksgiving meal together. I think the turkey came out pretty damned good! I was really proud of myself and what I was able to accomplish. Would I do it again? In a heart-beat. It was fun, and the turkey was actually easy (and tasty!).

And these are just the leftovers!

Okay, so I know that Thanksgiving isn't just about food, so I want to take a minute to talk about all of the things that I'm thankful for this year.

• I'm thankful for my job.
• I work in am amazing library, where they treat the staff like family. My coworkers are fun and amazing people, and my boss is one of the sweetest people I know.
• I'm thankful for my family.
• My parents and In-Laws both live about 15 minutes away from us (okay, 20 with traffic), and I love that we're close enough to pop over whenever we want and spend time with our families.
• I'm thankful for my education.
• I'm working on my Master's in Library and Information Science, and I'm just about done with my second semester. That's 1/3 of the way!
• I'm thankful for my health.
• While I'm not always the healthiest person (I could eat less and exercise more), I don't have any big health issues, and that's a blessing.
• I'm thankful for a great place to live.
• Our apartment might not be much (though we're slowly improving it), but it's ours, and I love it.

So that's it for right now. How did you guys celebrate Thanksgiving? And if you don't celebrate, did you do anything fun/cool on Thursday? What are you thankful for this year? 
Stay tuned for another post in the next few days, I'm going to be talking about the end of NaNoWriMo, and my plans for next year (yes, I plan ahead. no, I don't always stick to those plans), and of course, what I learned from NaNo this year and what I love about the event!
Also, look for a new Librarian's Corner next month (on-time, I hope), and some year-end recaps!

Happy Friday, and enjoy your leftovers, I know I will!

Adventures in Grape-Squishing

Hey, remember last time, when I mentioned that we'd been grape-squishing? Well, now I'm going to tell you guys all about it.

It all started a few Fridays ago, when my in-laws went to a pick-your-own-vineyard and came home with 165 lbs. of grapes. Yes, 1-6-5. That's... a lot of grapes. So what were we to do with all of those grapes? Make wine, of course.
My in-laws have been making wine longer than I've been a part of the family (which, admittedly isn't that long, but still, it's traditional at this point). Every fall they acquire grapes, squish the juice out, and let it ferment into something alcoholic and delicious.

For the last several years, this squishing has taken place in their basement. The set-up was... precarious at best. There was a car-jack involved, and a cross-beam named Roderick that butted up against the ceiling... and yeah, it wasn't good.
So last year, my husband and I built them a wine-press. A real wine-press. Based off of the design of a commercial wine-press that a friend of theirs had purchased for lots of $$.

okay... so we're still using a car-jack.

The basic design is simple. There's a wooden frame that supports a car-jack, that holds the actual press. Inside the big green bucket is another (Home Depot) bucket with lots of holes drilled into it. Grapes go in the inside bucket, pressure is applied and juice comes out the bottom. The big green bucket has a spigot installed in the side so that the juice can be moved to yet another bucket. You can't make wine without a lot of buckets, apparently.

Okay, so once you've got your press all set up, you add grapes. 165 lbs. of them if you've got!

All the classiest vintners use kitchen pots.

Then, like I said, it's time to squeeze. We made a set of inter-locking pegs that would fit between the car-jack and the grapes so that we could continue to add pressure even as the grapes got squished down. Once your pegs are in place, you squeeze.

Here you can see our peg system in action.

I wanted to cut dovetails on the pegs but... meh, you can't always get what you want. What comes next? Well, uh, more squeezing. And then? Even more squeezing. If you've got a lot of grapes (and we do), you're going to have to do a lot of squeezing. We did about 2 batches of white grapes, and another 2-3 batches of red grapes. If you've got a spigot installed into the side of your big green bucket (which I highly recommend), your grape-juice can pour right out into its permanent home. In our case, some fancy food-grade buckets which will house the grape-juice while it ferments.

Happy little grape-juice

All there is left to do is ferment your grape-juice and make it into delicious delicious wine. But that, boys and girls, is another show.

What do you do with the left-over grape mash? It composts really really well, so go ahead and dump it into your compost heap... if that is, you don't mind a massive fruit-fly infestation. If you're not a fan of fruit flies, then you're probably going to want to throw the mash out. Sorry.
And speaking of flying pests, if you're squishing grapes outside over the summer (or even in the early fall), be prepared to entertain some of these guys:

Yes, that's a yellow-jacket, and yes, there were a lot of them.

I think that about wraps things up for today. We had a lot of fun grape-squishing, and in about a year (give or take a few months) we'll have some wine! Hey, I never said this was a quick process. Alright, stay tuned next time for our October installment of Librarian's Corner. What am I going to be reading/reviewing this month? Who knows! I sure don't! So come back on the 21st and find out!

Happy Squishing!

Pennsic 43 - Recap

Whew, what a week we've had. Or really, what an intense last 3 weeks it's been! I wanted to throw together a quick post to let you all know what I've been up to all this time, and well, here it is.

Let's start with the last week in July. It was the last week of my first semester of Graduate School, and I was finally seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. But with a final due on Wednesday and a final due on Thursday (both reflective papers), it was a busy week indeed. I finally got everything turned in on time, and I was done. Nothing left to do except wait for the grades to come in. Oh, and start packing for the week-long insance camping event that we were leaving for on Sunday. Finals = done, packing, not so much.

I went to a party that Thursday night that one of my co-workers threw at her (beautiful little) house, and we all played a rousing game of Cards Against Humanity. Let's just say I heard a few things I never thought I would hear coming our of my coworkers mouths! (It's a fun game, for terrible people)

Friday I worked, and then we took the day on Saturday to get ready for our week-long camping trip. I know, packing for a week's vacation in one day is really smart... Anyway, we got everything packed up and ready to go for an early departure on Sunday morning.

Okay so, before we continue, I should take a minute to tell you where we went. Remember like a million years ago, when I posted about going to some crazy event called Pennsic? Yup, we did it again! Actually, my husband's only missed 1 year in the last 10, but this was only my second time going. And we both had an absolute blast!

We got to spend time with old friends and (to me at least) new friends. I got to meet a lot of the people that I've been hearing my husband talk about for years, and they were all exactly as I had imagined them. Wonderful, fun, funny and charming people.

I could go through a day-by-day re-cap of everything that we did at Pennsic, but I don't want to bore you. I've already put my family and friends through that kind of torture, and I don't want you nice folks to have to suffer through it as well. So let me give you the condensed version.

Sunday: Un-packing, setting up the tent (which leaked the whole time, greeting people, then a night of amazing performances.

Monday: Field battle, then our first classes of the week (including one by a teacher who I remembered well from 5 years ago). Then we actually got up to the archery range to shoot our War-Points.

Tuesday: It was a fast day, so we planned ourselves a long schedule of classes, which we more or less stuck to.

Wednesday: We went to a bit of East Kingdom Court (it ended up lasting 4 hours) and then: two words, Midnight Madness! Shopping at all of the merchants! We had a blast wandering around all of the different stalls and buying way more stuff than we needed.

Thursday: More classes, then cooking all the things back in camp (including Creme Brulee on the open fire). We ended up staying up until 2 in the morning learning how to make a bow-string.

Friday: Our last day in camp. We went to a class, then packed up and helped take down the camp site. Drove home, and that was all she wrote.

We had an amazing time, hung out with friends, attended some very interesting classes (Like: Historical Uses of Poisons, for one), and made some cool things.

Not to mention got some cool things. Check it out:

A bunny fur and some beautiful hand-spun yarn

All these leather scraps for only $2!

And some lovely linen to make a few nice projects out of!

Pennsic was a blast (I think I've said that before!), and I honestly can't wait to go back next year. But in the mean time, life moves on. Back to the grind!



I'll be back next week with another Librarian's Corner, so stay tuned!

Project Sunday 4-27-14

Woah, it's been a busy few weeks. Passover is over (and I think I'm finally fully recovered), but it certainly was a whirlwind of family and food and activity.

Then immediately after Passover I go to go to my new campus for orientation. I mentioned that I'm getting a Master's in Library and Information Science (MLIS), didn't I? I'm doing my entire program on-line (to cut out a lengthy and inconvenient commute) so this was one of my only chances to meet my professors and advisers, not to mention my fellow students. I met some great people, got some good information and actually had a good time, so it was very much worth going to for me.

I could go on and talk about other exciting things I did this past week (like attend the first meeting of a new writer's group), but I think I'm going to try to stick to the topic at hand, which is:
Project Sunday! And it was a good one this week, check it out:

Saturday was my grandfather's yartzeit which marks the anniversary of the day he passed away. In honor of his memory we had a breakfast at our synagog Sunday morning, which was a very pleasant way to start off our day. We went for morning services, and then stayed for breakfast, all the while taking the opportunity to remember my grandfather. 

After that it was off to our favorite park to go for a long walk with a friend. We picked her up and did 5 laps around our track, which is 5k. We've been trying to stay active and walk outside a lot now that the weather is more or less permitting. 

Then it was a quick lunch and back out to see a local production of Neil Simon's Rumors with my parents. It was uproariously funny and I had a fabulous time. My husband had a good time too, even though he claims that it wasn't quite his sense of humor (but I saw him laughing plenty, don't worry). And afterwards, my parents insisted on treating us to a dinner out, even though we had sort of just had lunch. Oh well, it was delicious anyway!

Back home for a quick rest and then it was off to my in-law's house for a meeting with a dear friend of theirs. Now it seems that at some point in the last year or so, my mother in-law and her friend B got it in their heads that they should build an outdoor clay oven. Which is, granted, a fabulous idea, and I can't wait to have a loaf of home-made bread straight out of the oven, but somehow we got recruited to help in this whole process.
Many ideas were tossed around, and the words "structural integrity" were used. Legos were gotten out and we all consulted a book called Build Your Own Earth Oven. I am beyond excited about this project. Even though I've got about a million other things going on, how often do you get the opportunity to build a clay oven? Some preliminary plans were drawn up, some numbers were crunched and we set a date for our next meeting.

I promise that I'll be blogging about this oven building process. I'm not sure if it's going to be one "OMG We Built a Clay Oven" post, or if I'll just blog about it as it happens, but it'll be here. Don't worry.

So that's it. I know right, that's it? What an amazingly busy yet productive Project Sunday! And there's always more to come, so stay tuned!



How did you guys spend your Project Sunday? Build anything interesting? Do you have any experience with clay ovens? I'd love to hear about it in the comments!

Project Sunday 4-13-14 *Passover Edition*

I hope ya'll aren't too sick of hearing about our Project Sundays, because we're having so much fun with them!
Here's one more, our Project Sunday: Passover Edition!

As you may or may not know (or may have guessed), Sunday was the last full day before the beginning of the Jewish holiday of Passover. Normally, this day is full of rushed, last-minute cleaning and cooking, but we didn't have to do any of that this year. Or at least, very little of it. But let me start at the beginning.

Our day actually started pretty early in the morning, when we went to the airport to pick up my brother-in-law, who's visiting from California. I'm so excited to see him, because we actually haven't seen each other since the wedding way back in August.

We then dropped him off at his parent's house, where we also got to see my new aunt & uncle in-laws, who are visiting from New York! It's so nice to get to spend time with family, especially family you get along with! (Am I right?) Then, since we were at my in-law's house we got roped into fixing a few little things. My father-in-law needed help fixing his new glasses, and then my husband had to instal one of those magnetic-snapping screen door thingies, which actually seems to work pretty well. I had a lot of fun walking through it, in any case.

After that it was back home to finish turning over the kitchen. (turning it from a rest of the year kitchen into a special Passover kitchen) Because we'd spent some time Saturday night prepping for this, it actually didn't take all that long. We cleaning and scrubbed and then put away all of our not-for-Passover pots, pans and dishes.

Guess which cabinets we won't be opening!

The whole ordeal took less than 4 hours, and only involved 1 trip to Meijers/Lowe's... And then, after we had scrubbed and toiled, it was time to move some furniture!
We enlisted the help of our uncle and my brother-in-law and our aunt came along for the ride. We took a empty cabinet from my in-law's basement, moved it into the borrowed Subaru and then dragged it up 2.5 flights of stairs to our apartment. I'm super excited, because it's going to house all of our 3D Printer paraphernalia (which means I can get that junk off of the floor!).

Not quite where it belongs, but we're getting there.

We then gave all of the relatives present a quick tour of our apartment, and they all got to meet our snake, Cecil. Then it was back to my in-law's house to help them with an emergency pizza situation. The situation was that instead of ordering 2 pre-Passover pizzas, they had some how ended up with three. We were happy to help them with this emergency.

After the airporting, and the cleaning and the furniture moving, we were pretty much done for the day. We did sit down with our aunt at some point and go over some financial records. She commented on what a productive day we'd all had, and we told that of course it had been productive, it was Project Sunday.

Well, that's about it for this post. I've still got a few more things left to do to get ready for Passover, so I'd better get to that. I'll see you all after Yontif!

What holidays are you guys celebrating this week? Did you have a productive Project Sunday? Tell me all about it in the coments!