Catching up

I’ve been fairly busy (and tired) lately, so it’s been a while since there’s been a real post. So here, in no particular order, is a quick run-down of what’s been going on…

• I am part of the 2006 Rutherford Hills “champion” wine blending team.
• The blueberry liqueur has hit phase two and ought to be complete in a month or two. Guy and Megan are right: it does sort of taste like cough medicine.
• Two different batches of limoncello have been put up. One batch currently includes lemon leaves, just to see what happens. When they hit phase two I’ll be adding other non-standard ingredients, also just to see what happens.
• A cranberry liqueur was put up last weekend. It’s already a lovely shade of red.
• An apricot brandy was put up last weekend. The batch includes almonds and uses orange blossom honey instead of sugar. One of the quickest liqueurs so far, it’ll be strained and bottled after only a week.
• On Sunday I started another batch of beer. This time it’s an ESB. Judging from the bubbling in the fermentation lock and the beery smell oozing out of my closet, things are going well.
• It’s been approaching 100° lately, so very little cooking has been done at my place.
• I’m trying (once again) to take up knitting. It still seems more frustrating than crochet.
• After over a year away from the hills, last weekend I returned to Mt. Tam. It was only a nine mile hike (the Matt Davis trail from Bootjack down to Stinson Beach and back), but there’s a mountain in the middle so my legs were still protesting a couple days later. Gotta do that more often…

That’s the brief version. There are pictures available for some of those items (the wine blending party and Mt. Tam, specifically), but at this point I can’t promise to get them posted.