Photos Lately

1. Remember that time I got excited about the pink beer we made? Well the pink beer will remain a dream, because this is what became of it.





Maybe the photos are self explanatory, but I'll write some words to go along with them. Maybe writing words can be part of my grieving process.

The pink beer was over-carbonated. We've never had a batch of beer over-carbonate, so this was a new experience for us. Normally when home brewers face this problem it means exploding bottles---glass and beer and danger everywhere. I guess we were lucky though? I managed to not put at least one cap on properly, so one evening we just heard it start to make a fizzing sound. Greg sprang into action, knowing the cap had to come off to avoid the risk of an exploding bottle. If I was as quick on my feet as he was, I would have made him wear the safety glasses. The first bottle got its cap removed indoors, and as you can see from the above photo, this resulted in pink beer dripping down our wall. The rest of the bottles were opened outdoors, using the open-inside-a-plastic-bag technique we learned from our experience eating surströmming.

2. Our garden is not a complete waste!



We got these three carrots recently. I was really excited to grow these because of their unique radish-like shape. They may be small, and not very substantial when split between two people, but we were really happy considering the last time we tried to grow carrots they got eaten/trampled by a cow (I have never owned a cow).

3. We took a long-ish bike ride to explore a new section of town.





4. I made some really delicious pizza.





I used this recipe and this recipe, both of which I'd recommend.

5. Right now there are blue skies, but about an hour ago there was a total downpour, resulting in all sorts of rainbow delight.

Sometimes life calls for pink beer

Somehow I got it in my head that Greg and I needed to brew a pink beer. Probably it started because we had this idea to brew a beer with lingonberries, and then I realized that the result could be a pink beer. So we designed a recipe to ensure that the result would be pink. Mostly that involved making it as light in color as possible so the lingonberries had more opportunity to provide the color. Behold.

Initial ginger beer research

There is so much information to know about making ginger beer! I have spent my entire Saturday morning reading up on the different options.

Now I just need to decide how 'hardcore' I want to be about this. The simplest option would be to boil some water with ginger root and sugar, essentially making a ginger simple syrup, which I could add to bubbly water.

Taking it up a notch, I could do the same sort of thing, but add a bit of yeast. This would result in a (probably negligible) amount of alcohol, and a time-sensitive beverage. Here is a really nice article about this method, designed for school children to make, I guess.

The thing is, it is tricky to have and store a sweet and carbonated beverage. The addition of yeast in the beverage will carbonate the beverage by turning sugars into alcohol + CO2. But since you want your beverage to also be sweet, you have more sugar than you want to turn into alcohol. So when you make ginger beer this way, you need to drink it within a day or two of putting it in a bottle. This is probably not a huge concern (especially if you avoid glass bottles), but it does mean making very small batches. And if you have small batches, then you don't really want to use champagne yeast, because the amount in a package would be total overkill. Maybe there is dry champagne yeast, which you could just use as you need? We normally buy liquid yeast packages though. And I'm getting disorganised in my thoughts here, but I've read that using bread yeast can add strange flavors.

The ultimate project then would lead to pasteurization. This allows you to put a beverage with sugar and yeast in a glass bottle, cap it, let it ferment a tiny bit to produce carbonation (while leaving some sugar to result in a sweet beverage), and then you pasteurize to kill the yeast, thus preventing further fermentation and the risk of bottles exploding. Pasteurization is a whole other animal. I'm not sure if I'm ready to tackle these risks just yet.

Actually when I was doing all this reading it reminded me of the time I gave away all our de-labelled and cleaned bottles when we moved from NH to Sweden. Basically I was thinking that we had spent many hours taking labels off of so many bottles that it would be a shame to just recycle them all. So I put an ad on freecycle, just to see if anyone wanted them. I actually got a few responses in a timely manner. I gave them to the first guy to contact me, who told me he was so glad to get them since he had tried making a batch of rootbeer which had resulted in exploded bottles, so his supply of bottles was lacking.

This is getting really wordy, but I have to say, I have a pretty big concern about exploding bottles. That isn't something you want to take lightly.

At the same time, Greg and I (mostly Greg) have a slight interest in making cider, so learning the art of pasteurization could be a useful skill for our future.

For me, it all sort of comes down to my goals for making ginger beer. A few weeks ago I was trying to find an interesting restaurant in Stockholm, and I found a dumpling place and they had ginger beer on the menu, and ever since then I've just been wishing I could more easily get myself some ginger beer. (That restaurant was, sadly, not open on the weekends, which I didn't realise until we were standing outside the door.)

So if I just want the experience of ginger beer, any of these methods should suffice, so logically it makes sense to just do the simplest and cheapest option, which would be one of the first two. Both are really simple, and I'm sure both are quite economical, but I could check the numbers to maximize that benefit.

I think my plan will be to start with one of these methods, because I just really want to drink a ginger beer. Then, after I can do more research on pasteurization and gain some confidence in my (our) skills in that area, step up the ginger beer-making game.

Also, for reference (for my future self, mainly), I read this entire forum which was really useful. And here is one that will be useful for pasteurization research, but really? I can handle 17 pages, but 108?

I've done a lot of other reading as well, but if anyone has tips or sources I'd love to hear about it. Brian, are you still lurking? When you made cider did you pasteurize it? I think we had some friends 'pasteurize' by exposing their cider to some sort of light? I don't know, but is this a thing?

7QT - food things

- 1 -

Apparently grape seed oil is a new popular thing? I've read about it in at least two places in just the past week, after never hearing about it before. That is, after never hearing about it in English before. You see, here in Sweden, when I wanted to buy something like vegetable oil or canola oil, I ended up with rapseed oil. I didn't even know what it was when I was buying it, but this was when I used the method of buying the item that was available in the largest quantity, because that meant it was reasonable to think many people used said item. This technique worked particularly well when I wanted to buy flour, just plain regular white flour, and I encountered at least a dozen different options.

- 2 -

Come to think of it, I find that things in Sweden work like that most of the time. There is very little variety of items due to personal preference it seems. Usually there is just one of a thing available. I think that says something about Swedes being practical maybe? So like, here is a baking soda, it is the best one, everyone knows that, everyone buys the same one, so places only sell the one option. Also, for example, the same candle holder lantern thingy that is a decoration in my apartment was also a decoration at the little snack shop in the airport. True story.

- 3 -

And you can easily figure out where Swedes have strong and differing opinions based on what items come with a lot of variety. Knäckebröd (a sort of cracker thing) and cheese in tubes fall into this category.

- 4 -

Two weeks ago was Culture Night in Uppsala. Culture Night is a full day of activities showcasing culture all throughout the town. Tons of people roam the streets and there is street food. Greg and I saw an a capella group consisting of four young men who sang a medley of Backstreet Boys songs. It was spectacular.

- 5 -

A little while ago Greg made a comment about earl grey tea smelling like fruit loops. I thought it was madness, but well, it really sort of does. Now when I have a cup of the earl, my entire tea-drinking experience is something different and a bit strange.

- 6 -

We tried our beer and it is yummy! It is still a bit 'green' as in, not quite at its prime, flavor-wise. The banana flavor is mellowing out, which I appreciate. I think I wrote before that when we bottled it, we tasted it and the overwhelming flavor was banana.

We were going to start our next batch tomorrow, but we didn't order ingredients/supplies in time, so it will have to wait a week. It is time to brew a Christmas beer! I found this recipe for an award-winner called Bad Santa that is made with cherries and vanilla and cinnamon!

- 7 -

And since I wouldn't want any 'quick take' to exclude the topic of food, we found a cooking pumpkin! In a grocery store near our apartment! Last year we had a really hard time finding pumpkin, which is a big deal since you can't buy canned pumpkin. Or at least, it was a big deal last year when we thought we could not buy canned pumpkin. But we found this cafe that is run by an American and he sells poptarts and canned pumpkin.

- The End and The Linkup -

7QT - no photos again, but a great birthday surprise!

- 1 -

I just read the greatest news ever! Blessed John Paul II and Blessed John XXIII are (mostly likely) going to be canonized on my birthday!!

- 2 -

We've been back from France for almost a week now. Hopefully I'll get some photos posted at some point, because Biarritz is really an incredibly beautiful place. Aside from getting sick (and getting the worst ear aches in the world on the plane home) it was a really nice trip.

- 3 -

Swedish. It is a language I do not know enough of, considering I live in Sweden. Especially considering there are free classes for immigrants offered. The problem is that most immigrants coming to Sweden and taking the free classes are (apparently?) the type of people who benefit from their language teacher shouting at them about how they need to not focus on the money and how without Swedish they can't get education or a job. Never before have I had such a strong urge to flaunt my phd to anyone.

(Don't worry, this Swedish teacher is not actually from Sweden, so my love of Swedes/Swedish culture/Swedish ways of treating people, all still remain intact.)

- 4 -

Our beer is fermented. We need to get on that whole bottling of the beer thing.

- 5 -

The water out of our kitchen sink can get incredibly hot. Honestly, I've used it for tea before (although, it isn't quite as hot as I'd normally prefer the starting temperature for my tea). For awhile, I had been having hot water with lemon right when I wake up in the morning. Somehow I forgot about that routine, even though it was so easy since I could just use water straight out of the tap, but this morning I returned to it, and I really enjoyed that.

- 6 -

I am also overdue on photos from when my mom and her husband visited me and Greg in Sweden. I think I took a lot of photos of our grand adventures, but I haven't yet had a chance to review the photos. But hopefully those will make their way here eventually.

- 7 -

There is a surprisingly detailed and useful Swedish grammar wikipedia page. This was found after trying to figure out what the 'supine' verb form is. My extensive online research has further confirmed that I need to no longer go to my current Swedish class.

- The End and The Linkup -

7QT: prepare to brew edition (also the no-photo edition, sorry)

- 1 -

I updated my About page. Ta Da.

- 2 -

I maintain that Conan O'Brien's Dartmouth commencement speech was the best ever commencement speech. (Here for reference.) And even though I didn't graduate until the following year, I still sort of claim it as my own. The woman who gave ours was lovely and accomplished and perfectly deserving of giving a Dartmouth commencement speech, but because I am a horrible person the only thing I remember her saying is a comment on how unfortunate it is to be the person following Conan's speech. Right.

So anyhow, that is not the point of this quick take. The point is that I saw the transcript of this commencement speech on kindness, which was really a great thing to read. I highly recommend it.

"what we really want, in our hearts, is to be less selfish, more aware of what’s actually happening in the present moment, more open, and more loving"

- 3 -

This weekend, we brew! The big surprise I got for Greg before he arrived in Sweden was homebrew equipment. It seems a little odd to buy new equipment, since we had equipment in NH, but it was actually more economical to buy new than to ship. Plus the resale value of the equipment will be quite good, from what I can tell. We found a recipe for a rye-wheat, so hopefully that turns out to be delicious!

- 4 -

That means tonight, we clean! The apartment is still pretty clean, because I spent a lot of time cleaning before Greg got here, but clutter has gathered and recycling needs to be recycled and whatnot.

- 5 -

Here are some old blog posts about our previous brewing experiences. (Note two of these are written by Greg.)

- 6 -

Today my library book is due. I really really like taking trips to the public library. So many books, just waiting to be read!

- 7 -

Last year I bought a waterproof backpack cover from a sporting goods store, but it ended up being too small. Luckily, Greg's backpack is smaller than mine, so it fit his perfectly. I've gone without for a long time now, sticking to the put-my-stuff-in-a-plastic-bag-inside-my-backpack trick. But I figured it was time to get a cover. I ordered a size small after debating between the small versus the extra small for a long time and reading a lot of conflicting reviews saying the listed dimensions were larger/smaller than actuality. Needless to say, it is about three times larger than it needs to be, but luckily it sinches waaayyyy down. I am pretty sure I could fit inside of it.

- The End and The Linkup -