Monticello Vacation September, 2018

 We took a very nice vacation in September to see the home of Thomas Jefferson in Virginia, Monticello.  It's someplace I've always wanted to see, and the main reason is his famous gardens. 

We took a few days to get there, driving leisurely and stopping overnight two days before reaching our destination.  I liked that we weren't rushing and had time each evening to have a nice dinner and John could get a break from driving.  We do enjoy sight-seeing along the way.

Our stay in Virginia was the Afton Mountain Bed & Breakfast.  This home was built over 170 years ago, and is currently owned by the hosts who live on site.  We had an upstairs room, but there were several rooms downstairs open to guests for lounging and catching up with television if you desired.  John did go down a few times to find out what the weather was doing, since we were a little nervous about a hurricane that was predicted to come this way.  We did end up leaving a day earlier then we had originally planned, just to be sure we weren't going to get caught up in bad weather.

We had some fantastic food while we were here, the first night at the close-by Blue Mountain Brewery.  I even had a flight of their beers (most were great, some were weird! Raspberries on Acid was very different!)

Monticello itself was a little smaller then I thought it was going to be, but they've done a good job of keeping it up and making it available to tourists.  There is a visitor's center at the base of the hill, and a shuttle to take you up to the main home, which was nice in the very warm weather they were still having there.  The focus this year, from everything we heard while we were there, was to apologize for slavery.  I really thought we were past that here in the US, but I guess not, or we are regressing.  It's most likely the current press to change history, which we all know can't be done. Sigh.

The garden's were fantastic. I imagine every home in those days had their own gardens and had to raise all of their own food. The garden stretches out over 1,000 ft. by 30 foot, with terracing in between and some very permanent gazebos overlooking a fruit orchard below.  Currently the gardens are kept by volunteers and master gardeners who are available there for questions.

We had lunch that day at Michilli Tavern at the base of the property - they served lunch in period costume and much like what it would have been back when it was a stagecoach stop. The fare was very southern - fried chicken, blackeyed peas, potatoes, stewed tomatoes mixed with cornbread (way too sweet). 

Of course I bought some seeds for next year's garden from their gift shop! Excited to keep these varieties going.

We visited Appomatox the next day and toured the village that hosted the end of the war, where Lee and Grant signed the surrender of the south.  They had some of the best docents there who dressed in period clothing and acted out their parts. So enjoyable and educational! 

We also did a tour of wineries - lots of fun! Some good wines and some dry wines (haha!) and we packed lots of it in the car to bring home. A thoroughly enjoyable vacation!  

Only one of the wineries we visited. I wasn't very good about taking pics that day.

Does anyone know what this tree/bush is? Was on the street downtown near Appomatox where we had lunch at a diner there.  Interesting -- and I brought home one of the pods to see if I could get any seeds out of it.

Very, Very, Very Sweet Chips

I've embarked on a 9 day recipe to make some sweet pickles, the old fashioned way.  These are called "Grandma's Society Chips".  The first 4 days are a process of soaking the cucumbers, then boiling the liquid and pouring it over them again. I'm on day 5 now, so they are being soaked in a ridiculously sweet syrup.

 Bad photo, but these are the chips after being soaked a couple of days in the water.  They are beginning to be "see-thru" at this point.

Here they are soaking in the syrup yesterday.  There's a big glass dish weighing them down in this photo to keep the chips down in the syrup.  Bright green because the recipe calls for green food coloring.
Only 4 more days to go!

Making Farm House Cheese

UPDATE:  This was soooooo delicious!  It was finally about 1-1/2 cups of cheese, and we tried it on french bread....wow! So good.  I'll make again!

So tonight I tried another "old school" skill.  I made farm house cheese!  It was interesting and worked just fine, but I haven't tried it yet.  It's in the fridge marinating the herbs and dried tomatoes, along with the sea salt.  I'll give it a try in the morning.  It sure looks good, like a fine ricotta or a chevre, but seriously, a full gallon of milk and 2 cups of buttermilk only made about a cup of cheese....I felt guilty throwing away all of that whey.  I'm not sure I'll do it again, but it may be that good, who knows!

 Heat the milk to 180 degrees.  I've always been nervous when I heat up milk.  I can hear my mother telling me "just scald it, don't burn it!" but of course, I always burned it. If you know me, you know my reputation.

 The necessary ingredients

 Pour into the cheesecloth in a collander

 Tie it up and hang it in the sink for about 1 hour

 The cheese as it comes out of the cheesecloth

  Other ingredients added, and into the fridge.  Looking forward to trying it tomorrow!
Recipe here!

It's SOAP!!!

I'm flabbergasted!

I cannot believe this actually worked.  This morning I opened the box of soap I made yesterday to see if it was hard enough to cut yet, and it was beautiful!  A creamy huge block of lemony smelling and soft pale yellow with small orange flecks, still soft enough to get a knife through.  Gorgeous!!
I unwrapped it and set it on a towel, then cut it into blocks.  I have 24 blocks of varying sizes, plus a small sliver I cut off to "test" it out.

The blocks are now setting up to air dry to the correct hardness.  The blogs I read say about 2 weeks.
I tested the sliver at the sink and it was perfect.  A nice soapiness (and I read that this foaming will increase as the blocks dry harder.) It left my hands feeling squeeky clean and smelling like lemon.  I am calling this a success!  Now I want to try some lavender bars.
Fun!