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3 DIY wines you can make at home

3 DIY wines you can make at home
When you think of wine, more than likely you immediately think of the juice of fermented grapes, but excellent quality wine can be made from other ingredients including blackberries, plums, rose hips, cereals, flower petals — even root vegetables. While these wines may not be too common on the shelves of your local wine shop, the beauty of home winemaking is that the sky’s the limit. You don’t have to be a master vintner or have a house full of expensive equipment to make wine. Here are three simple, all-natural recipes using strawberries, elderberries and dandelion blossoms. Use recycled wine bottles and local, organic ingredients for truly green homemade wine. 1. Contrary to what you might expect, strawberry wine is not syrupy or sickly sweet. Ingredients: 7 pounds whole fresh strawberries (fresh picked, if possible), washed and hulled2 gallons boiling waterJuice of 1 lemon5 pounds sugar Preparation: Mash strawberries in a large earthenware crock. 2. 3. Photo: jeremkin/iStockPhoto

A Recipe for Mead A Recipe for Mead Elizabeth Scheyder This is a good recipe for beginners – the quantity fits in an empty gallon wine jug, and you won’t spend a fortune on ingredients or equipment. I can’t take credit for the recipe, since it came from a newsgroup called ‘mead-lovers-digest’, which I can’t find anymore. It’s attributed to Cher Feinstein, late of the University of Florida, so it has a good university pedigree, and is dated September 1989. Basic concepts about making mead: Making mead is really very simple. When you add spices to the basic honey/water/yeast mixture, it’s technically called a metheglin. You will be adding wine yeast (or sherry or champagne yeast) to do the fermenting. Ingredients: 2 or 3 cloves, lightly cracked 2 sticks of cinnamon, cracked dash of cardamom 2 to 4 teaspoons fresh lemon zest (just the thin yellow part, not the white part of the peel) 2 lbs. raw honey (get this at a health food store – don’t use a processed honey like “SueBee”) 1 packet of wine yeast* Equipment:

How I Was Able to Ace Exams Without Studying | zen habits Editor’s note: This is a guest post from Scott Young of ScottYoung.com. In high school, I rarely studied. Despite that, I graduated second in my class. In university, I generally studied less than an hour or two before major exams. However, over four years, my GPA always sat between an A and an A+. Recently I had to write a law exam worth 100% of my final grade. Right now, I’m guessing most of you think I’m just an arrogant jerk. Why do Some People Learn Quickly? The fact is most of my feats are relatively mundane. The story isn’t about how great I am (I’m certainly not) or even about the fantastic accomplishments of other learners. It’s this different strategy, not just blind luck and arrogance, that separates rapid learners from those who struggle. Most sources say that the difference in IQ scores across a group is roughly half genes and half environment. Rote memorization is based on the theory that if you look at information enough times it will magically be stored inside your head. 1.

Strawberry Margarita Jell-O Shooters Strawberry Margarita Jell-O Shooters Margarita Jell-O Shooters ~ A fun farewell to summer and a festive edition to your Sunday football tailgate party or gatherings. For another Jello shooter variation like this one, check out my Lemon Drop Jello Shooters cut into the shape of lemon wedges and my Rocky Candy Shooters shaped just like the rock candy you loved as a kid. Strawberry Margarita Jello Shooters As many of you know, my Lemon Drop Jell-O Shooters are my issued dish from my girlfriend who holds the annual tailgate kickoff amongst our friends. This year with Matt being in the hospital, I sent them forward to the gathering in our absence. Now that we can finally make the next one in two weeks, she has again requested Jell-O shooters. That being the case, I opted to try what you see here. Besides how cute and fun are these? Printthis recipe Saveto recipe box Yield: Makes 24-30 Shooters Ingredients: 24-30 Strawberries Margarita Mix Directions: Strawberry Prep: A few notes: Leave a Comment

How to win Rock-paper-scissors every time I admit it. When I first heard there are actual tournaments for Rock-paper-scissors, sanctioned by the World Rock Paper Scissors Society, I laughed. I mean seriously, $50k to the winner of a game that requires no skill whatsoever? Absurd. Boy was I wrong. Rock-paper-scissors isn't just a silly game kids play or a way to decide who has to be the designated driver at parties. Males have a tendency to throw rock on their first try, inexperienced RPS players will subconsciously deliver the item that won previously, and paper is thrown least often, so use it as a surprise. Drunken Coffee Jello Squares OK, kids: This is coffee. In solid form. It’s been sweetened with condensed milk and booze-ified with a healthy dose of Kahlua—then rubberized into a blissful, cocktail-hour finger food thanks to the magic of gelatin. (If you know me, you know how much I love coffee, so you can imagine how excited I was when I came across the recipe.) Now, you have to like Jello, or Jello-like food, for this to work. Huge thanks to The Food Librarian for sharing their deliciousness. (If you haven’t checked out the Food Librarian’s blog, you should. So, years ago, I had several meals that ended with Classic American Jello Mold Torture. This is not that jello. This jello is the short and stout cousin of Vietnamese iced coffee, that fabulous concoction of espresso and condensed milk. This is jello that you could serve to your foodie friends. This stuff is silly. The short version of the recipe goes like this Bloom the gelatin (i.e. mix it together with water) for about 10 minutes. That’s it. Brew the coffee

First Time Home Buyer Tips and Guide EmailEmail First time home buyers risk the highest percentage of their assets in the typical purchase. Yet, they know the least about the whole process. Buying your first home can seem daunting at first. Buy When It Makes Sense With real estate, timing can make a big difference. Get Pre-approved for a Loan Before You Start Looking for a House During the boom years, you can get a loan for any house you possibly want. Consider a Shorter Term Loan You see 30 year fixed loans as the golden standard in mortgages, but there are actually other, shorter term loan options as well. Work Out the Numbers Yourself Every lender will give you different options. Figure Out Your Needs and Wants Once you have an idea of how much house you can (or want to) afford, it’s time to look at the options available. Be Patient One thing to remember during this whole process is to be patient. Get a Competent Agent Especially for a first time buyer, the whole process is very overwhelming. But Before You Ask Related Posts

How to Make Beer - Making Beer at Home Making a mash is not always necessary--you can brew a perfectly good lager or ale with prepackaged malt extract. But for this recipe, we're going all out, with an all-grain beer-- we extract the sugars from the grain ourselves. The recipe we're following is for a beer in the Belgian white or "wit" sytle. It's called "Wit Ginger, Not Mary Ann," and was published by the esteemed beer-brewing magazine, Zymurgy. Ingredients: 11 pounds of grain 11 quarts of water Our grains include 5 pounds Belgian pilsner malt, 4.5 pounds of German wheat malt, 1.0 pound of flaked oats, and 0.5 pounds of caramel pils malt. Take the mash (all the ingredients above in a pot) and bring it up to 150 degrees F, keeping it at that exact temperature for 1 hour. * Test the mash: The point of mashing is to turn starches in the grain into sugars and extract them into a sweet liquor.

US economics: One big Ponzi scheme Thank you, Bernie, for breaking your silence - even if you are still clinging to that cover-up mode you adopted since you took the entirety of the blame for your crimes. What is clear is that ripping off the rich is punished far more severely than ripping off the poor. The lengthy sentence you were given spared countless other greedsters and goniffs from facing the music - what music there is. In an interview - with a reporter from The New York Times who is writing a book to cash in on a man who has already cashed out - we learn, in the vaguest terms, that Mr M believes the banks he did his crooked business with "should have known" his figures did not figure. That said, how right he may be. For years, he went undetected by business journalists, who knew - or should have known - what he was up to. Do not believe all you read Madoff is also still not coming clean about the web of alliances he had internationally, as well as in New York. Banks close ranks "'They had to know,' Mr Madoff said.

Homemade Baileys Irish Cream - You'll Never Buy it Again My homemade Baileys Irish Cream led to far more questions and comments from my friends than my cupcakes ever do. “What’s in Baileys Irish Cream?” “Where can I get the recipe for Baileys?” “OMG! This Baileys is sooo good! Products Related to Homemade Baileys Irish Cream Vitamix 1363 CIA Professional Series, Platinum Sure, any blender will do for homemade Baileys Irish Cream. Homemade Baileys Irish Cream Recipe Here is the homemade Baileys Irish Cream recipe for all of my friends, both on and offline. Homemade Baileys Irish Cream – You’ll Never Buy it Again Ingredients 1 cup light cream (I used heavy whipping cream, which made it even richer) 14 ounces sweetened condensed milk 1 2/3 cup Irish whiskey (I used Jameson's) 1 teaspoon instant coffee 2 tablespoons chocolate syrup 1 teaspoon vanilla 1 teaspoon almond extract (I skipped this entirely) Instructions Combine all ingredients in a blender and set on high speed for 30 seconds. Video Demo

Science News: Nanoguitar Photo by D. Carr and H. Craighead, Cornell. The world's smallest guitar is 10 micrometers long -- about the size of a single cell -- with six strings each about 50 nanometers, or 100 atoms, wide. Made by Cornell University researchers from crystalline silicon, it demonstrates a new technology for a new generation of electromechanical devices. The world's smallest guitar -- carved out of crystalline silicon and no larger than a single cell -- has been made at Cornell University to demonstrate a new technology that could have a variety of uses in fiber optics, displays, sensors and electronics. The "nanoguitar" -- made for fun to illustrate the technology -- is just one of several structures that Cornell researchers believe are the world's smallest silicon mechanical devices. "We have a new technology for building the smallest mechanical devices," said Harold G. The guitar has six strings, each string about 50 nanometers wide, the width of about 100 atoms. Photo by D. Photo by D.

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