So I finished my jam today but it wasn’t without its pitfalls, mostly of my own creation. First, let me vent about flavored spirits. “Flavors” are mostly a chemical bench “oil” and lend such an artificial taste that it’s best to avoid them at all costs. Infused oils taste good if they are from natural sources. The trick is discerning which are okay and which are not. Add that hostility with my view that anything that makes an alcohol (or coffee) taste like dessert is a recipe from Hell.
So, flavored vodka. Blueberry infused vodka is great. Smoked salmon vodka, weird but also good. This vodka? Very bad.
I must have been half-asleep when I bought this thinking it was plain vodka. Because no one in their right mind would ever buy this shit.
Fast forward to this afternoon when I poured my raspberry/blackberry syrup into my cherry jam, lovingly reduced it into the most vibrant colored jelly (without seeds, which is an enterprise unto itself), and turned the burner off to fill my jam jars. At this stage of jam-making, I add a quarter cup of alcohol and let the hot jam burn off some of the alcohol fumes to leave a fully rounded out flavor behind.
Yah, well, as soon as I poured a quarter cup of this baby, I knew something was VERY WRONG! Holy crap. I added a “whipped cream” flavored vodka and almost puked when I tasted the jam. I thought briefly about pouring the whole mess into my sink. But such a drastic reaction deserved a more considered counter point.
Heat burns off alcohol so I brought the jam back to a boil for 5 minutes and let that toxic fog steam off into the atmosphere. I’ll be honest. It’s not what I would have chosen to do. And I won’t ever do it again. But the jam is fascinating. Cherries are often paired with vanilla (think vanilla ice cream and cherry topping). I think I like it. At least I don’t hate it. And I now have 10 little jars of it.
So that’s the bad. The good is that I started working on my silversmithing again. It’s time consuming and best done while binge watching an entire series of a 6-episode crime series from Wales. This little project (and I usually work in miniature) took me six hours.
It is one-inch across and is made of 30-gauge silver wire (no bigger than a hair’s breadth). My eyes are not quite as elastic as they were and much of this is done by touch and stabbing the wire repeatedly until it hits the right opening. I now have two of these and don’t yet know what they will become.
And now for the beautiful. Today my carpenter came over and set his table saw on the deck to finish the trim inside my cottage. It blew lots of sawdust and when he was done, he asked for a broom. I brought it to him outside and we noticed that a fine film of sawdust had landed to illuminate spider webs under the cottage. A spider web is 20 times as big as the spider and these were at least a foot across. I don’t like spiders in the home (having suffered more than a few night-time bites), but in the right place, they belong. This is the web of the orb spider, which weaves during the day and rests at night. It probably took that spider six hours to spin the web, about as much time as I spun mine.
Out of respect for its work, we took care to sweep the sawdust away from the web.