Love potion No. 9
Monday
I snapped this left-outside art near the railroad tracks and Earth Sciences building at UNH yesterday afternoon. It was family weekend and we had brunch and a nice walk around campus with our coed.
Anna seems happy and oddly well-adjusted. And then I get home and find the bill from iTunes. For what derelict late-night purposes did she purchase 13 mambo songs plus the Monster Mash?!
We are the champions of the world, here in Red Sox Nation. The Sox in four! Patriots won too. It is just too good to be living here in bright crisp October, despite our serious sleep deficit and beer-swollen livers.
Laura was Humpty Dumpty all day yesterday on the Storybook Trail at Applecrest Orchards. It so happens to be the same character her big sister played three or four years ago. What is it about Kane girls that makes them so perfect for egg suits and pratfalls?
"How many times did you have to fall off the wall today?" I asked at pick up.
"About 40," she said. "But sometimes I was doing it just for fun."
The little kids on the hay wagon couldn't see that there was a nice puffy old mattress just behind the fairy tale wall. The king's (wo)man, Cassie, took lots of photos. Between wagons they had apple wars with the Peter Pan skit just down the lane.
Straining and bottling the raspberry liqueur
The cool thing was that after three months the vodka had sucked the juice and color right out of the raspberries so, when I poured it off last night, the lumpy berries that were still whole were pale and flesh colored.
"Omigod, what is in that?!" asked Laura.
"Well, this year I added chipmunk brains for extra protein."
The blueberries in one bottle and raspberries in another had been soaking for three months. I made a sugar syrup, two parts sugar to one part water, boiled then simmered until they become one. Then I added it to the juicy, strained-through-paper-towels vodka to taste. So I had to do a lot of tasting to get it just right.
They will age for another month, in their pretty bottles, but so far I'd say blueberry, picked from our own bushes last summer, remains my most successful liqueur. Everything about the wild flavor is preserved and enhanced and set afire.
Raspberry is new this year and tasted a little like cough syrup to me. Maybe it will age well.
I made a spirited seasonal iMix on iTunes. If you click the link below (and you have iTunes) you can see it and hear clips. (If my link experiment works.) If you buy any of the songs, I get a tiny commission. (Of course, it's really meant to be listened to all together. The transitions between songs are nice.)
The mix is a little goofy and grimly romantic. Like me!
Hey the link works. Love to listen to Neko Case--that girl's got a touch of hillbilly in her. And who could resist James Booker or the Hollies? And in defense of college girl, 'The Monster Mash' is a must-have this time of year...
Posted by: Marie | 29 October 2007 at 09:54 AM
Yay! Glad it works. Neko is quite an original.
Maybe my kid is hosting a Mamboween party?
Posted by: Amy | 29 October 2007 at 10:50 AM
amy, music is so inspiring isn't it??
update quote from Anna's facebook page:
"Anna is cleaning and listening to really fantastic cuban music. MAMBO."
ps
i can't wait for this year's liqueur!!
Posted by: miss annie mac | 29 October 2007 at 08:46 PM
Yes!
Hm, I may have to try some mambo for housecleaning today.
Posted by: Amy | 30 October 2007 at 07:02 AM