I promised you apple cider, and by jo! you will have apple cider.
After my previous disheartening adventures with the apple cider press, it was back to the drawing board. So with renewed vigor, I recruited two things that I absolutely NEED in my life: 
Michelle and a Food Processor.

Michelle because she's pretty to look at, obviously.

...and the food processor because it's magical!


The food processor isn't mine. It's my sister's. She owns nice things.
Quite frankly, I didn't even realize I needed a food processor in my life until I used hers. Michelle and I pretty much spent the entire day cooing over the food processor and planning future lives in which we have babies and husbands and all the time in the world to make homemade baby food and peanut butter and save our families loads of money with our food processing thriftiness (just imagine the gourmet meals we could whip up) and increase our life expectancies while saving the environment with our food processing savviness (buying organic local foods to use in our food processor instead of processed goods) and all the while wearing cute aprons and 1950's style dresses and being perfect housewives. 
Gah! See what a food processor can do to you?!  That thing should come with a warning label: Use at the risk of becoming domestic. 


But I'm skipping ahead of myself a little here, before you can start using the magical dream-inducing food processor, you've got to have a plan. 
Hard Apple Cider making is a bit of a science. Which is good for me because I love science.  I sifted through TONS of information on making cider. I mean TONS.  There is an exhaustive amount of material on the internet. But lucky for you, I'm going to break it down.  

1. Picking and Washing the Apples
I picked 2 bushels (a bushel is about the size of a laundry basket), this will give you about 4-5 gallons of cider.  These should be washed in a solution of water and vinegar (I didn't measure this out, just filled the sink with water and dumped in what was probably about a cup of vinegar). The purpose of this is to remove any harmful residues on the apples (dirt, bugs, bacteria, pesticides). 

(Note: If you want to skip the whole cider making process because you don't have an awesome food processor, an awesome friend to help you out, or several free hours to play around with, simply buy cider from your local apple farm or grocery store. It can be pasteurized, but it should NOT include any chemical preservatives such as potassium sorbate. These will prevent the yeast from starting fermentation. No fermentation = No hard cider. )

2. Quarter your apples and cut off any bad spots. (Don't worry about the seeds or core, you don't need to cut it out, the magical food processor will take care of those for you.)

3. Stuff your apples into the food processor and process! (it should be the consistency of apple sauce when you are finished)

4. Now take a cheese cloth or bakers cloth and lay it over a bowl. Then dump in your freshly processed apple sauce. 

5. SQUEEZE!!

6. Toss your leftover apple pomace (ooo fancy word) into your compost pile. Reserve the apple cider to put in your glass carboy. 

7. Get yourself a glass (or plastic) carboy, an airlock, Sanitizer, Pectic Enzyme (optional), Campden Tablets (optional), 1 packet of ale yeast, and a syphon. These can all be found online or at your local brewing store, and sometimes even at large liquor stores. Or you can find yourself a very handy brother-in-law that doesn't mind letting you borrow all of his things.  
8. Sterilize your carboy and airlock. This is super simple if you just buy some Star san or Easy Clean Cleanser (which you can find wherever you bought your carboy from). Just follow the instructions and rinse everything in the solution. No boiling necessary. 
9. Pour all of the cider into your carboy. (NOTE: you can pasteurize your cider if you'd like, but I didn't bother with this step as it is really just an extra precaution to kill any harmful bacteria.Since all of our apples were fresh and we cut them up ourselves, I deemed it unnecessary since pasteurizing can also slightly alter the flavor of the cider)
10. Add sugar. Add in 1/4 cup of brown sugar or a 1/4 can of frozen apple juice concentrate per gallon to your apple cider. (I had about 4 gallons so I added a whole package of apple concentrate) If you omit this step, your finished cider will probably have somewhere between 3-4 percent alcohol. If you add extra sugar for your yeast to munch on, you finished cider will be around 5-6 percent alcohol. Yeast work by converting sugar to alcohol and carbon dioxide, so the more sugar you start with, the higher concentration of alcohol. However....that doesn't mean you can just go dumping in a ton of sugar and end up with an extremely high alcohol content. If the alcohol percentage gets too high in your cider, it will kill your yeast. (well, effectively the yeast will be killing themselves because they need the sugar to survive, but by consuming the sugar they raise the percentage of alcohol in the cider to the point at which they are creating a toxic environment for themselves. Poor little yeasties, they will either starve to death or die by alcohol poisoning. What a Catch 22) Different strains of yeast have different tolerances to alcohol, but ale yeast generally start biting the dust at around 11 percent alcohol by volume. 

10. Optional: Throw in the campden tablets. These will kill any wild strains of yeast which could make your cider taste funny. You will need to put in one campden tablet per each gallon of yeast. Wait 12 hours for the campden tablets to take effect. 
11. Optional: Throw in the pectic enzyme. Follow the instructions on the bottle. Pectic enzyme helps to clarify the brew so it won't have a hazy appearance. If you don't mind a hazy cider, don't worry about this step. Wait another 12 hours. 
12. Rehydrate and proof your yeast. First put 1 cup of warm boiled water into a sanitized container and stir in the yeast. Cover with Saran Wrap and wait 15 minutes. "Proof" the yeast by adding one teaspoon of sugar. Why? because the yeast are hungry and want something to eat. Next cover the container and place it a warm area out of direct sunlight. After 30 minutes or so you should see foam or bubbles. Congratulations your hungry yeast are working and ready to be pitched. Into your apple cider that is! 
13. Pitch your yeast. Dump the yeast into the carboy full of cider and grab your airlock. The airlock is the funky shaped little tube. Fill it half full of sanitized water and then cap your carboy with it. That way the air produced by your yeast can escape, but no bugs or germs can get to your delicious cider. 

14. Waiting. Put your cider in the basement and sit back and wait. Your hungry little yeast are going to get to munching and multiplying. Yeast thrive on sugar, so they'll be eating up all the sugar in your apple cider and converting it into alcohol and carbon dioxide.  That's fermentation. You will see the airlock bubbling a lot in the first couple days as the carbon dioxide escapes. After about 2 weeks your yeast will start running out of sugar to eat and most will die. At the end of two weeks you will also notice a LOT of sediment has settled at the bottom of the carboy. We don't want to drink that stuff. So its time to transfer the cider into a new carboy. This is called racking.
15. Racking. A day before racking, set your cider on a countertop so that you won't stir up the sediment moving it around on the day you rack. Here's where you will need the syphon. Be sure to sanitize the carboy and the syphon. Put the syphon into your apple cider but make sure it never touches the sediment, you don't want to suck that stuff up. Then if you have an automatic syphon, make sure the other end of the hose is in your clean carboy on the floor, and give the syphon a couple pumps to get your cider flowing. Remember, try not to suck up the sediment! This should take all of about 5 minutes. Easy peasy.  

Sanitizing the equipment

16. Taste Test.You should probably save a little cider to try at this point. It will not be sweet. Remember the yeast ate all your sugar. If you like it dry, then this is perfect for you. If not, then you'll want to add a little bit of alcohol sugar. Alcohol sugar is a type of sugar that the yeast can't eat, so it will sweeten the cider without restarting fermentation. These include xylitol, stevia, truvia, and splenda. Sweeten the cider to taste, but remember, once you put it in, you can't take it out. You could also add a little apple flavoring at this point too if you wanted. Flavoring can be found online or at your local brew store. 
I like my cider not too sweet, so I only added two little sugar packets of stevia to my 4 gallons. I may add more at bottling time if I decide I'd like it a little sweeter. 
17. More waiting. Move your cider back to the basement and wait some more. 
This is officially "secondary fermentation," but you should see very little (if any) bubbling action. Most of the info I read agreed to let the cider sit for about 21 days, although you could actually let it  "mellow" for 2-3 months. Apparently it will develop some nice flavor and continue to clear the longer you let it sit. But I'm Miss Impatient, so I'll stick to the 21 days.

For more information about making hard cider, check out the two websites below. All of my information is from them since they had the best instructions and most complete explanations. 
http://makehardapplecider.com/
http://www.howtomakehardcider.com/rack-bottle.html

See you back here at bottling time!

P.S. Big hugs and thank yous to Michelle, Maggy, and Neal for lending me your time, your kitchen, and your equipment.

Hey you. 

Yes you. 
Come follow me.

It's harvest time in Illinois, and we're on the hunt for gold.
The trek could be dangerous. We'll be weaving our way through a maze of ten-foot tall cornfields...

...and we may encounter the abandoned building or two...

....and the treacherous milkweed may cross our path...

....but don't worry...we'll be armed with some heavy machinery ourselves....

....we've emptied the holding sheds....

....and our mechanics are arming the equipment...

And we have a brave and daring crew at our side (Fire for dramatic effect). 
(Left to right: Uncle Larry, Dad, Uncle Bill, Uncle Tim)

Man the stations! It't time for battle!

We'll start in the dusky bean fields...

And then we'll hitch a ride with Uncle Bill over to a neighboring cornfield...

...then we'll hop into the lean mean corn-eating machine with Dad.

...don't forget to say hi to Granddad, he's our (retired) captain and commander. 

....and remember to keep your eyes peeled for that gold...

By George, I think we've found it!

What's that you say? You're getting hungry? I've got you covered. After all , we'll need some fortification before we can haul all that gold home...

Uncle Bill

Uncle Larry

Perfect, we can safeguard our gold in this bin. 
And look, we made it home just in time to enjoy the sunset. 

Good adventuring with you! Until next time my friends. 

Last week I rode my bike to Granddad's place. He has two apple trees in his back yard that are literally heaving with apples. The branches are drooping to the ground underneath the weight of them all. So, armed with an old laundry basket, I went to work relieving the trees of their scrumptious little burdens. 

I picked one laundry basket full and Granddad drove me home (I couldn't very well carry them all on my bike), where I began the process of washing and dicing the apples. 

I had finally finished the reconstruction of my apple cider press earlier in the week. Having bleached all the parts, repainted the metal piece on the bottom, re-varnished all the wooden pieces, and sprayed everything down with two coats of food-safe glaze (which I found at Big R), I was eager to squeeze my little beauties in the press. 

The only problem was, before you can put your apples into a press, you have to grind them up. Once they've been good and smashed,  then you toss them in the press and squeeze out all the juices. The finer the mash, the more juice you can squeeze out. 
This left me in a bit of a pickle.
I scoured the internet high and low for a reasonable way to grind a large quantity of apples. It seems that others had also stumbled across this similar situation, as I found that everything had been tried from professional apple scratters (a scratter is the actual term for whatever you use to pulverize your apples), to meat grinders and rigged up garbage disposals, to pounding the apples in a bucket with sledge hammers.
As much fun as sledge hammering apples sounded, we decided to try a few other alternatives....
I double sacked the apples in black garbage bags, squeezed out as much air as possible, and tied off the bags.....then Dad set to work finding the best method to squish the apples into mush...

Living on a farm with large machinery does have its advantages....

Despite the impressively large scale of apple-mashing destructive force tactics that we employed, those tough little apples weren't in the pulverized state we were hoping for. 
In the end, we dragged the sorry sack of apples to the cement area in front of our barn and Dad rolled over them again with the steel drum attached to the tractor mower. (Setting them on the cement helped since the apples couldn't mush into the ground)
The apples still managed to be a little chunky, but it was as good as we were going to get, so we carefully dumped our mash into the apple press, trying (and failing), not to get dead grass (that was now stuck to the garbage bag) into the press as well. 
Our apple mashing techniques still left a little something to be desired. 
In any case, I carefully layed the wooden pieces over the apples and Dad screwed the lever system on top, and we began to turn it and squeeze. 
We did manage to get a minimal amount of juice, but there seemed to be a problem with the lever system. Somehow it was supposed to ratchet back and forth to apply more pressure to the apples, and we couldn't get it to work. Even my Dad, who by my standards is a mechanical genius, couldn't figure out what we were missing. All in all, it was a bit of a disappointing venture. 
But don't cry for me Argentina! There are many more apples to pick and the Great Cider Adventure must go on.
In the famous words of Thomas Edison, "I haven't failed, I've just found 10,000 ways that don't work."  Let the cider-ing adventure continue!

P.S. anyone want a fully restored apple cider press? 
ha

Its the MOST wonderful time of the year. 
With the leaves all a-turning
And everyone yearning to have apple beer.
Its the Most wonderful time of the year.
Its the hap-happiest season of all
With the apple trees calling, they'll be bushels for hauling
and cider for ALL
It's the hap-happiest season of all.

Granddad dropped off a bag full of apples last week. 
Feeling inspired, I decided to try making my own cider. 

The end result: a snappy little cider that makes you dream of turning leaves and warm scarves and crisp fall evenings. 

The next day, Dad and I took a bike ride to the apple tree down the road, which was simply brimming with apples. Before plucking any fruit though we decided we maybe should check with our neighbor, who owned the property on which the apple tree grew. So we hopped back on the bikes and headed farther down the road.  

Our neighbor has a beautiful old brick farmhouse hidden behind creeping vines and unruly gardens. Its the kind of place that some people might call unkempt, and others (me) might call a little wild and a little magical. Its the kind of place that makes you wander what you will find if you stray off the path. 
Lucky for us, we had our neighbor as a guide. After I explained to him that I wanted to make apple cider, he told us we could pick as many apples as we wanted, and then led us to an old shed full of gidgets and gadgets and whatchamacallits.  

And guess what we found?!
An old apple cider press. 

There'll be apple cider for all this fall!....(if I can figure out how to put it together)

Apple Cider Adventures Part II coming soon....

Breakfast at Tiffany's or Dinner at Michelle's? Well, if you answered Breakfast at Tiffany's, you obviously don't know Michelle...

Fashionista and fellow lover of dresses, Crafter Extroardinaire, Green-thumb Gardener, Wearer of hats, my Jewelry Twin, All-Around American Beauty, and in the case of last night...the Hostess with the Mostest.

Take a gander at her beautiful deck, mostly decorated with refurbished thrift store finds (see adorable yellow puppy statue below). 

Also...see actual adorable puppy below.

I showed up a bit early for the dinner party (I had to be in town for a job interview. Yeah! More information to come about that) so I got to help out with all the pre-party planning fun. And Michelle definitely knows how to have fun. 

Coctail Concocter...you can also add that to her impressive resume. Cool Tequila Cucumber Lemonade anyone? Why yes, I'll take two please. 
Ok so Tequila wasn't really on the dinner menu...but hey...I wasn't about to argue :)

A few pre-party drinks and it was time to get down to business....the menu.

(Here we have Michelle finding some jams next to her handsome hunk of meat)

And here is her actual handsome hunk. He, like the rest of us, is pondering the jicama,the strange root vegetable that was called for in the Korean Lettuce Wrap recipe. 
We left him to ponder (He's pretty much an all-star cook, so we were confident the jicama would be just fine in his hands), while we went into craft mode. 

Apples from the tree outside and brown paper bags made perfect place cards and silverware holders.

Yes, we chose a vintage American picnic theme for our Asian-inspired dinner. Now, this normally might be the point at which I would say something about how our decision was meant to foster the acceptance of many different cultures and our underlying message was about unity and world peace...but really we were just taking advantage of the free apples in her yard. 
Regardless, it turned out pretty darn lovely if I do say so myself. 

20 minutes later, it was back to the kitchen to check on Sam. 
That's his "How do I chop this?" face. 
Don't worry he figured it out (as evidenced by the perfectly sliced spears below). We knew our confidence was not misplaced.  

Turns out, jicama is delicious...crisp and refreshing, it tastes like a cross between a carrot, a pepper, and an apple. Just try it, trust me. 

Sam also expertly grilled and sliced the pork. Did I mention Sam is pretty much an all-star chef?

By the time the rest of the guests (my sis and her hubs) arrived, we were starved. We grabbed our lettuce wraps and stuffed them full of fresh veggies and pork and spicy dipping sauce...

And then we stuffed ourselves!

Unfortunately...it started to sprinkle and we had to take the party inside. Fortunately, that's where all the food was, so we were all ok with that anyways. 

Now I don't have Michelle's Korean Pork Lettuce Wraps (which were amazingly delicious and healthy)...but I CAN share with you the Thai Peanut Spaghetti Squash. 
Spaghetti Squash is an all-star when it comes to whittling your middle. It clocks in at just 42 calories per cup (compare that to 221 calories for a regular cup of cooked spaghetti) and also provides a modest amount of vitamin A, vitamin C, and dietary fiber. And like most squash, if you plant it in your garden, you'll end up with way more than you can eat. Which is what happened to my neighbor, who generously gave us four, count 'em, four giant squashes. Since that is quite a bit, even for a squash enthusiast like myself, I took one up to Michelle on the day of her dinner party, and that's where the inspiration came to turn our spaghetti squash into an Asian-inspired side dish (not featured above, btw, because we ate it all up too quickly!!)
The recipe was a bit improvised, so you can adjust the flavors to suit your needs, or simply follow your own favorite recipe for peanut sauce. Here's what you'll need for the Molly/Michelle version (which I recreated at home the following day because it was so good)

Thai Peanut Spaghetti Squash

1 spaghetti squash 
5 tablespoons peanut butter
Juice of 1 lime
1 teaspoon sesame oil (or 1 tablespoon tahini)
1 tablespoon hot chili garlic sauce (available in almost every Asian food isle)
4 tablespoons soy sauce
1 tablespoon honey (or sweetener of choice)
1 clove chopped garlic
Garnish:
1/4 cup toasted almonds (or nut of choice)
Cilantro 

1. Chop the squash in half and scoop out the seeds in the middle. Place the squash cut side down on a plate and cook in the microwave for 8-10 minutes (depending on size of squash...ours was large so we needed the full 10).
2. Allow squash to cool and use a fork to pull apart the flesh of the squash into long "noodles." You can put these in a separate bowl, or just leave them in the squash as I did in the picture below. 
3. Mix together all of the remaining ingredients into a sauce...taste and adjust to your liking. (ground ginger or siracha sauce also make good add-ins)
4. Top the squash with toasted almonds and cilantro if desired and serve with the peanut sauce. If you have left overs (you probably won't!) then simply store the squash and sauce in the fridge separately (if you stir them together, the salt in the sauce might draw out the liquid in the squash and cause the noodles to become soggy). 

Voila. A healthy, tasty, and satisfying meal. Your welcome :D

My mother is bargain hunter. She has almost single-handedly furnished apartments for all three of her daughters with refurbished flea market and mission mart finds. She can spot a deal from a mile away, and she has an eye for seeing something for what it can become, not necessarily what it is at the moment. 
In short, she's pretty much amazing. 
So when the flea market and art fair set up shop downtown this weekend, we got to spend a little mother-daughter time perusing the wares. 

You can find just about anything at a flea market,  from hand-crafted or antique jewelry and old kaleidoscopes...

...to tutus (Mom is checking these out to see if she can figure out how to sew some for my little cousins. Ya, she sews too. I told you, amazing.)...

...to metal yard art and giant roosters...

...and plenty of upcycled crafts and art. 

You simply cannot be bored with so much to see. Plus, flea markets are a great place for inspiration. (The picture above, or something like it, will be my next project!)

We then wandered over to the "Art" part of the fair. Here the vendors were actual professionals who made a living on their artwork. I love art, so I thoroughly enjoyed wandering through the different stalls, even though the price tags nearly had me running back to the flea market. 

I didn't come away empty handed for the day. Mom, with her super radar bargain sensors, found a cool little stand selling crocheted ear warmers. (How does she do it?)
They were just adorable and perfect for fall and I fell in love immediately. 

To find your own crocheted ear warmer, try perusing through some of the vendors on Etsy, or check out the flea market nearest you :)