Real Peppermint Schnapps

I can't believe how easy it was to create my own organic Peppermint Schnapps. I cruised Google for directions and within about 10 minutes found some extremely easy recipes. I've simply used them for some basic guidelines which I will provide in photos below.

The ingredients are simple: pick fresh leaves and add 80 proof vodka, simple huh? If you prefer a sweet tasting schnapps, you can add stevia leaves to each jar.

All you need to do is pick enough leaves to fill the jar (these are spaghetti sauce Ball jars) about 2/3 full and add vodka. Fill the jars to the top with vodka. Seal lid tightly and shake it a few times. Place each jar in a dark area, but make sure they are easy to get to because you must shake them at least once a day.

Let the jars sit for about two weeks (10 to 15 days), and shake daily. Then you're ready for the straining of the leaves.

Place a colander over a large sauce pan and pour out the contents. Only a few of the leaves will fall into the colander. I then get 2 paper towels and place these into the colander.

Shake the leaves into the paper towels and then get ready to squeeze the remaining liquid into the sauce pan.

It's not much, but I feel it's got more concentrated flavor, and why waste it?

I then use my handy-dandy jar funnel to pour the strained schnapps into clean jars. At this point, the Schnapps is very flavorful, but you really should age it for 6 months. The aging will mellow the Schnapps over time. Always store jars in a dark place such as a cubbard.

So there you have it; simple Schnapps - but don't stop at peppermint. I have also started orange mint and spearmint schnapps. I'm so glad to finally be using a lot of my mints from the garden. They would usually just get lightly picked each year with me drying about 10 sprigs of each in the rafters.

:)

August Gardens

Now that August is here, I will share some of the photos that were taken in late July. This has been a spectacular year for gardening. My only complaint is that the record heat means watering just about every night.

This photo was taken on August first and shows how I like to tie-up everything! If it has a vine, it gets tied-up! In the front, to the left, is an Ali Baba watermelon growing up a string. Behind that in the next row back is Waltham Butternut squash and Amish musk melons. And behind them, in the third row is Pippin squash and cucumbers - all tied-up and happily growing up their own string to the support wires about 7 feet above the garden.

And of course, the heirloom tomatoes are tied-up as well. I'm a little embarrassed at the weeds shown here. I lost the upper hand on this section of garden mostly due to constant fence construction that consumed nearly all of my free time each weekend. But I'm happy to report that all of that hard work has paid off, with no more attacks from the relentless ground hogs.

This is a Fish pepper with spectacular white and green leaves. I've read that these pepper plants are sometimes used in landscaping because they're a real eye-catcher. I've also read that these are hotter than Jalapeno peppers, so I'm eagerly awaiting their harvest. On a sad note, I lost about 60% of these plants to the extreme heat in early July.

I read about these peppers called Beaver Dam in the winter edition of The Heirloom Gardener (the same one I was featured in...) and just had to have them! I only had a handful that made it to the garden and of the 6 planted, 5 have made it.

So far each plant has given me 2 fantastic peppers. There are a few more that will mature in about a week from now. I'll keep track of yields, but if I only get 4-5 per plant, it's definitely worth it! These taste so good!

This was my first Beaver Dam pepper that I harvested on the evening of July 29th. This is a wonderful tasting pepper that has taste & seed characteristics of a bell pepper but is pleasantly hot (I would rate it as half as hot as a Jalapeno). Needless to say, I saved the seeds and marked as "first" to be grown next season.

This is the front garden with my Better Boy (6) and Trip-L-Crop (2) tomatoes climbing up 6 feet of caging. So far this experiment has been a great success. Please see older posts to get information about the book. The photo above was taken on August first (believe me, they're taller as I type this)!

And this was taken on July 17th - that's only 3 weeks apart, wow! Today, August 7th, 2010, There are hundreds of green, baseball sized tomatoes on the 8 plants. This method of gardening has changed everything. I will be using this method for all of my tomatoes in 2011.

:)