GOOD STORIES WITHOUT SOME DRINKS ON THE TABLE DO NOT EXIST
The source of inspiration for how to relax, relax and why not produce your own drinks. It's not that hard;)
Vitamins not pills...
I learned that the body takes what it needs from nature itself when it needs it, so I listen to what it says from time to time, what it needs and I don't rely on the drugs that pharmacists and nutritional specialists would prescribe.
Spring to summer is an abundance of vitamins and minerals, so instead of taking handfuls of pills, it's better to go to the market and see what fruits and vegetables are in abundance and fill up.
Vitamin C is very important, so I get my fill for the whole year from sea buckthorn, currants and other fruits from the forest. they don't taste too good, but combined with honey or apples they can be good pills for immunity.
The picture turned out for me, but you should know that the sea buckthorn juice with apples and honey also turned out very well...
I also tried from cherries...
I've always wanted to have a cherry tree in my yard where I could climb to pick the cherries at their right time, and this year the dream was fulfilled. And if it was still rich, I said I'd try the cherry liqueur to see if it's better than the sour cherry one.
I don't know if I've written this before, but when I was a child I didn't have fruit trees in the yard, my grandparents had a vegetable garden for which any tree shade affects productivity ;) The garden was the source of income and food and they couldn't afford not to optimize the production. It was difficult at that time, when there was not much money and you had to manage your finances as thoughtfully as possible. Hence the special taste of the vegetables of old, because they were all from the house's garden. Hard times, but beautiful, with grandparents and parents to be appreciated for the efforts they made.
In recent years, fruit trees have also started to appear in the garden: aunt's plums, "Tanti Nuti", apricots that are drying up in the meantime, pears, peaches, quinces, a sour cherry and, last but not least, the cherry tree in the center of the garden which father takes care in a special way, that the grandchildren come to climb the tree, because the grandparents also have their dreams, which slowly begin to come true as well.
Cherries are good, eaten with gusto, straight from the tree, but the liquor did not match the taste and aroma of the cherry. Maybe a little sweet and unflavored, but the cherries left after the alcohol drains... very good :). It looks good in the picture, but all the cherry liqueur remains the favorite.
But I'm convinced that next year we'll find other good liqueurs to make from cherries, so what does my father care about the tree, there will surely be a wealth of fruit...
Country coffee ...
In winter the mornings are very frosty and it is difficult to get out of the house where it is warm and good. Especially in the country, when you have work to do and the cold enters your bones.
When you go to the office, you quickly get in the car and when you arrive you make a coffee and it's like you're new.
In the country, especially when cutting pork, the morning coffee is boiled tuica, with pepper and a lot of sugar, to get your blood moving and to get to work. And see how you forget about the cold :)
This year, the boiled tuica from the pork cut also has a funny story. Well, after I carried the animal in the yard from the gentleman where I had bought it, my mother put boiled brandy for those who helped us. When I took a mouthful of lust, the sour brandy was said to be broken. The poor people who helped us didn't need anything and ran home. What can you see, my mother had mixed the sugar with the lemon salt ... and put it, not a joke :).
Luckily, I had enough brandy and made another row of "coffee", which I enjoyed as it should. With some pickles ... well what else works better?
Bloody drink...
I am a very curious person and open to all kinds of tastes and combinations of food and drink, but look that there was a drink that "haunted" me all my life and that I have never drunk ... until today :)
Well, the time has come, if I keep talking about drinks and when I tell stories, I try to put into practice those moments that come to my mind and to which I reconnect through taste and aromas.
I couldn't help but read its history a little about this drink, because it's a very old drink. In fact, it is such an old cocktail that it has had a very fine evolution from simplicity to the madness of flavors ...
Going back to the personal story with this drink, my father when he ordered the drink in town or when the drink story was interesting, Bloody Marry seemed to me to be the favorite drink of youth. Either it was fashionable, or it was too good, or it was too cheap for everyone to drink and enjoy it to the fullest ...
So, I also tried it for the first time, both the classic recipe, which my father also drank (I replaced the vodka with obsolete brandy from Othello), and the modern one, with Tabasco sauce, Worcestershire sauce , brown sugar, thyme, salt and pepper ... I didn't put garlic, although some recipes also contained this ... as someone I told told me, you say it's marinated meat :)))
But it was a very good, interesting cocktail, especially since it was made with tomato juice made by my mother ...
White wine spritzer...
This summer it seems like I'm very, very hot so hydration is essential :). And since beer makes a belly, summer spritz is an excellent alternative. And if it's made with soda, then it's a real one that really quenches thirst.
I finally found a siphon in Bucharest, after long searches. Well, my father came with him from home, so I thought of exempting him from this and treating him with a spritz from Bucharest :). Where? of course in the market at Obor, where you can find everything for everyone. Elegant, in exchange, with filtered water from a small business worthy of encouragement (www.fabricadesifoane.ro). The siphon in the picture is functional, but I still haven't found the phone to fill it.
Then see what the soda spritz tastes like, if you don't feel like buying mineral water. And on this occasion I remembered many stories and dishes that go perfectly with the spritz ... The stuffed pepper was the first food enjoyed with a cold spritz, but for long-distance drinkers through restaurants with fiddlers and wine battery (which does not mean a bottle of wine but a kit for spritz - wine, soda and ice) , the marrows go great with spritz ... I can't wait to find them at the butchers (they are a bit hard to find, but I won't give up) and to prepare myself;)
Fancy drink...
I've heard about this drink in the movies but I didn't think I would do such a thing at home :). Not for nothing, but I thought the drink was English and does not fit well into the landscape of drinks stories on the site.
But what to see, about a month ago I woke up in the fridge with 60 eggs received from a relative from the country, fresh, homemade and very beautiful. I made fillings, burnt sugar pandispan cream, but there were still about 40 in the fridge after a week.
So, look on the net for egg dishes that do not spoil the goodness of organic supplies, trio, mio. And I took my heart in my teeth when I saw how easy is to do Egg liqueur.
It turned out very tasty, a fine drink as a dessert ... but many people refused it thinking that salmonella is swarming with this fitze drink. :)
However, I managed to convince a few people and they were very pleased with the taste and texture.
I will do more, despite the critics and supporters of this drink with the risk of salmonella ... I still believe that that 96-degree alcohol and blending at high speed dusted any trace of salmonella in the drink :)
My childhood tea...
I have never seen such a rainy and cold summer as this year. But one evening when I was running around the neighborhood, I realized how cool the evening is after a summer rain.
Freshly recovered after COVID with a good part of the tastes and smells (not all of them but I have patience and I will recover them until I come back completely) I smelled the linden flowers like I have never felt it before. An aroma so clean and strong that I no longer wanted to run but to sit like that to smell like a dog.
Since childhood I had a weakness for lime tea, although my parents (especially mothers) did not give it to the boys because they were careful not to spoil the toy in their youth :). We drank chamomile tea all the time, but my favorite has always been lime tea, with popular biscuits or bread with butter and jam ...
Today I prepared it for the evening, after a half of running to sleep peacefully and not wait very long until it cools down. So I slammed some ice cubes into it and something delicious came out ...
Nettle juice ...
Every spring I really like to prepare nettles, so the first weekends when they appear in the market I buy some bags and prepare them. I only eat at the moment, because I still haven't managed to convince Thea to eat, but maybe in the future she will appreciate her health and atypical but special taste.
So, after cooking the nettles, there remains the juice in which they boiled, the juice that was used intensely when I was a child. Well, who didn't have nettle shampoo when he was little, or who didn't wash his head with nettle juice at least once so that his hair wouldn't fall out, as a recommendation from his grandmother? :)
I kept trying to drink it afterwards, but the taste is not too easy to digest. And it kept spoiling me and I couldn't use this very healthy juice for anything, good for anemia and invigoration.
So, now we tried a new combination of ingredients to see if it can be drunk easier. I made a fresh ginger tea, took the maple syrup out of the mothballs and made a very tasty nettle juice. Maybe, maybe at some point Thea will taste this juice instead of Cola. :)
I would have liked to add some mint liqueur, but maybe next time ...
Medicine post COVID...
Whether it's early winter (November / December) or winter is over (February / March), a mulled wine with anise, cloves, pepper and cinnamon goes, to clear your airways and warm you up.
It worked for me even after the post COVID cough, which seems to leave me today after a generous cup of hot wine ... it's true that I didn't put cinnamon, but the fact that if you put cinnamon it gives me a pussy a special aroma ...
Unlike boiled brandy, which will also have its special place in this category of stories about and about drinks, Boiled Wine gives me a feeling of relaxation, peace, maybe a fireplace from which you can hear the crackling of wood while burning. ...... these suspension points take the place of other phrases that I can't write in detail here ...... so that you can fall asleep in the blink of an eye and not wake up until late in the morning ...
I drank the most mulled wine when I was in the dormitory. Well, every night we warmed ourselves with mulled wine, because we didn't have much heat, the same points, and not even money for going out in the city :). What times. I boiled two liters each and slept on logs.
I drank it at lunch today, and after it I didn't even sleep or the suspension points :). But it cleared my coveted airways and gave me the energy to write a few stories ...
End July Drinks
July is the month when ripe fruits bring you the flavors of childhood, that taste that you keep looking for in the markets and you find it less and less ... and when you find it, you smell, taste and it seems like time goes back to childhood, exactly in the moments when you tasted with the desire of a child ...
Every child who grew up in a block of flats has stories about stealing fruit from neighbors, from a yard or wandering around the city in search of those fresh seasonal fruits ...
The cherries were the most sought after :). Well, every time one of us was caught in the tree eating cherries, the owner of the tree. We didn't take our bags with us, we just filled our pockets and ate there in the tree with that crazy craving ... then there were the peaches ... those small and fragrant peaches that you could barely find :). And last but not least, the apricots. What else do we walk after them through the city and its surroundings. Tasty and fragrant for hours on end, we followed the well-known trees to catch a few ripe ones before being picked by the owners :) :)
Strawberries were not very popular in our time and I don't even mention cherries ... I think they were, but their sour taste didn't stimulate us so much to go after them :).
And look, now I look for them every summer, not only to eat them, but to make liqueur from them ... well, after many attempts, these two remained the favorites: strawberry liqueur with mint and cherry liqueur ... this time with sugar, keeping the classic recipe ...
I can hardly find them cooked properly, because for the market I pick them less baked so that they don't spoil ... but it seems that this year I was more lucky, so they came out very tasty ...
Drinks from the childhood of others
I once bought a small pot of mint to put on fresh strawberries, as I really like to eat them because it gives them a special flavor.
Not using all the mint, I said to plant a stem in the yard to keep it better. And what to see, after a year it had grown so much that I didn't know what to do with it :).
Until this year, when I came up with an idea for this special liqueur, which I was looking for on the net and I heard only beautiful things said about it.
And I started to try a recipe taken at random from the internet, without too many hopes but not wanting to throw mint goodness raised with a sense of responsibility :).
I forgot to tell you that mint is of two kinds: 1) mint and 2) "izma". Well, mint is the one you find in drinks from restaurants and bars, "izma" is the one you find next to ponds and lakes.
I planted both types and you can feel the difference between them.
Mint liqueur turned out very fine, especially since I sweetened it with honey and besides being good, it is also healthy: P.
So, I have added to the list of favorite drinks this liqueur that I will continue to produce from now on ... enjoy ...
Mint liquor
I once bought a small pot of mint to put on fresh strawberries, as I really like to eat them because it gives them a special flavor.
Not using all the mint, I said to plant a stem in the yard to keep it better. And what to see, after a year it had grown so much that I didn't know what to do with it :).
Until this year, when I came up with an idea for this special liqueur, which I was looking for on the net and I heard only beautiful things said about it.
And I started to try a recipe taken at random from the internet, without too many hopes but not wanting to throw mint goodness raised with a sense of responsibility :).
I forgot to tell you that mint is of two kinds: 1) mint and 2) "izma". Well, mint is the one you find in drinks from restaurants and bars, "izma" is the one you find next to ponds and lakes.
I planted both types and you can feel the difference between them.
Mint liqueur turned out very fine, especially since I sweetened it with honey and besides being good, it is also healthy: P.
So, I have added to the list of favorite drinks this liqueur that I will continue to produce from now on ... enjoy ...
A special topping
I think I wrote somewhere on the site about the story of grape liqueur (of course Othello) but I will say it again briefly, especially since now I have really found a special way to enjoy it.
I was harvesting in 2018 with my relatives and while talking I discovered that the neighbor had made a grape liqueur and praised it so much that I kept thinking about it until the evening after harvesting when I tasted it. The taste of Othello was so pronounced that I made it that year.
As I am a big coffee drinker, and the coffee with topping is the best, this afternoon I had such a longing for topping that I started looking around the house for something to bring to the coffee a new flavor ... And here's how an espresso can be enjoyed with an Othello liqueur, giving it a special flavor, of a topping that seemed to be missing from that coffee ...
Cuban flavors ...
Cuba remained in my mind and taste both through the delicious food, but especially through the drinks with that authentic rum that you only find there ... well, how do you think Hemingway's inspiration came to him?
So, with the appearance of berries, I took the bottle of authentic rum from and gave it a taste of fruit with a real smoothie ...
As much relaxation as I had today and the desire to dance to Olaf's song from Frozen 1, who imagined how he would have fun in the summer ... That's how I remembered the beaches, the food, the cocktails and the Buena Vista Social Club ... to Olaf's rhythms, of course :)
Of course i was not dancing alone, but with Thea who enjoyed a lot ..
I was avoiding to make the classical sour cherry liqueur but eventually I did not resisted :). And it seems like I did well that I eventually tried. Classic drinks remain the most tasty.
A bit sour and yet sweet, the sour cherry liqueur has a special flavor. And from the remaining sour cherries you can make the cherry cakes later :) .... Hmmmm, I'm just waiting
Wherever we went to visit when we were kids, the sweet liqueurs were the delight of ladies. Everybody had but us :) , because it seems we did not like sweet drinks :P. Some of them also had coffee liqueur ... quite a few ... my mother-in-law has the best recipe and maybe I'll try it some time ;).
And with this last drink, I end 2018 exactly as I have proposed: two drinks to make once every two years (Sour Cherry liqueur and Strawberry with mint liqueur ) to have time to get old. Next year i will prepare Blueberries and Raspberry liqueur.
Sour cherry liqueur , aka "VISINATA" - July 2018
I was deeply impressed a few years ago when I first drank strawberry brandy. A pleasant aroma combined with the right amount of alcohol, which has nothing to do with what other home made spirits you've been drinking before.
So, I thought I'd do it once.
And as my father-in-law had a alambic (Romanian word, you can see the tool in the picture) from Ceausescu's time when you were doing at the gas stove alcohol with what you can find near the house, he left it o me to use it and give forward the brandy tradition.
I tested the alambic on my strawberry brandy ... a 54 degree delicacy, especially as the day we made it, we remembered stories from the village boiler, that day the priest came and make the first baptism of Thea and he told us memories of his boiler ... everybody remembers a smell of boiler, grandmother or grandfather and stories that leave you a knot in your throat and pleasant memories ...
About these memories is the Costic Wine and the bridge that he makes between the Magargiu generations and not only;) .... and their transmission from generation to generation
I tried strawberry liquor last year but did not come out because I put honey and weak brandy. This year I made it after the classic recipe, to which I added my footprint :) ... I added mint to give a nice flavor ... I like to eat strawberry with mint, is a pleasant combination
In July I tried with mint flavor ... I first put the leaves directly, thinking that they give the flavor ... but it did not happen and I had to try something different and use the blender and use it to extract the flavor ... and finally it has a pleasant taste of fresh mint ... now let's see what others are saying ;)
Strawberry brandy and liquor - June 2018
Aged Brandy (plum, wine or grapes)
It's an old story saying that the aged brandy gets softer and it takes the color and the taste from the wood ... It sounds so good that I could not resist not to test it.
In 2016 I started aging the first brandy ... when I served it in the first year, the taste was not very appreciated ... I was just trying to compensate with the story, with the barrel I took from the market who told me it's better in oak than in other wood ... but nothing... it still remained unappreciated
And after two years, while moving the wine from a barrel to another, in July, i said why not to taste it again to see if it changed the taste ... and, surprise, even those who criticized it a year ago they started to ask for it :) ... the picture is exactly the glass I tasted with emotions and the hope that the stories heard are not just simple stories ....
I have tasted also some wine from my dad in 2016 ... and it seems like I got a traditional balsamic vinegar:)) ... well, I will still keep it for half a year and I will put it in the glass with the balsamic vinegar label:) ... let's see the first salad with pure traditional dressing ...
And now I am motivated to age the next barrel of the brandy made from wine by my father in 2017 , especially for such moments, when it shows that old stories seems not to be only stories ....
I also wanted to make some sweet drinks, specially for ladies, but with small adjustment to the traditional recipe: I replaced honey with sugar.
It tastes good, but the degree of alcohol is not so high ... I say it's worth it, for pleasure and not make you drank :)
I tried others but they did not come out of my taste: Murata, Melonata, fig-wine
Cranberries liquor
Raspberry liquor
