Minnesota in the Winter

We haven't seen the sun in a week and it's taking a toll on all of our heads. Everyone is cranky, although it has warmed up considerably this week! It has actually been in the 20s and 30s, and things are getting slushy and melty. (As opposed to this time last week, when it was -20, and the car would barely start. (and when it did, it was crankier than the people here) So, you know its cold when 30 degrees feels quite warm and spring-y

So, the other problem is that my friends and I are all pretty poor college students, which means we dont have a lot of money to do awesome wintery things like skiing.

For a broke college student, the things we end up doing that cost little/no money are:
Eat. (Sometimes we grill in two feet of snow - we do love our brats)
Drink. (beer. have I told you how important beer is to these north-mid-westerners?)
Watch TV/movies. (this one pretty much explains itself)
Play games. (Especially Euchre and Rummy. Settlers of Catan and Carcassonne)

And then there's my favorite, the sitting around, having watched a movie and played some games and now out of new things to do, I call it "Sitting around waiting for someone to exert an opinion or have an idea of something new to do that is indoors and also doesnt cost money" It's simple - all there is to it is to sit around, waiting for someone to exert an opinion or have an idea of something new to do - preferably one that doesnt cost money, and is indoors.

When I'm alone, I am a little more productive. I play a lot of violin, which is nice. Having no homework means plenty of practicing time.

And in the meantime, I get by with a little help from my friends.

Tasty (Wednesday)

A continuation of last week's TT, StageTwo of the delicious limoncello recipe.
The second half of the process:

First, put on some good music.
Now we're set..

So, we left off with the lemon zest steeping in the everclear for a week:

Since we're about to add sugarwater to it, we need to pour it into a container that is bigger than the one we're in now. This is where I didn't plan very well - I thought I was being smart to just stick the zest straight into the bottle to steep. It was a good solution to last weeks problem, but this week, we have to pour the whole thing into the bigger container. And... soggy lemon zest doesnt come out of a bottle very easily.

So - if you're trying this at home, just go ahead and put it in the bigger container from the beginning.
After fighting the bottled zest by poking and scooping at it with a knife for a while, I was able to get most of it out, and into the larger container.

Now that your bottle is empty, you can use it to measure out a liter of water and heat it in a pot.

Remember that 2lb thing of sugar we had? Well, we needed 750g of it. How much is 750g? Let's do some math! 2 lbs of sugar is 907g.
So, 750g is 1.65lbs.
Now screw the math and just pour a little less than all of the box of sugar into the hot water, and dissolve it. When it is all dissolved, let it cool.

Once it is cool, combine the sugar water and zesty Everclear.

Let sit for 10 days and swirl each day.

Stay tuned for the 3rd step and the taste test in 10 days!

Please hold

Due to circumstances beyond our control, Tasty Tuesday will be posted tomorrow, Tasty Wednesday. (doesnt have quite the same ring to it, does it?) (this week only)

Ch ch ch ch changes!

Before:

After:

TT - Limoncello

Welcome to the second installment of Tasty Tuesday. I’ve already received a few yummy looking recipes to try in the near future. Thanks for those that contributed, and for those that haven’t, its not too late! I'm always looking for new ones! (thefloatingviolin@gmail.com)

Today’s recipe is actually not a food, but a drink. An Italian liqueur. (Those who are under 21, don’t despair – I have a section for you, too)

Limoncello (from RP)
This process actually takes 17 days, so I’m just writing about the first step today. Stay tuned for the next couple steps in the next Tasty Tuesdays!

Ingredients:
Zest from 12 large lemons
1 liter of pure alcohol (everclear)
750g sugar
(I’m giving you the amounts that I’m personally using – you can adjust them to make however much you want)

Peel the stickers off the lemons and wash them thoroughly. I got out a new scrubby pad just for this!

Zest the lemons. You can use a potato peeler, but its harder to use, plus you have to be extra careful not to get any of the white part of the lemon into the mix. (narsty) You might as well just go spend 5 bucks on a zester.

This is tedious. I recommend putting on a movie, and then not standing too close to anything, because you will get lemon spatter pretty much everywhere. Or maybe I’m just not a very graceful zester. Also, I zested some of the palms of my hands. Just a flesh wound. (Don't worry, no flesh or blood got into the mix!)
I did kind of feel like I was zesting my brains out after a while. Did I mention it was tedious?

So, this part of the recipe is very simple. Mix the lemon zest with the everclear. If you want to keep all of your liquid, mix it in another, slightly larger glass container. (It is best to use a glass container due to the high alcohol and acidity content of this recipe) I didn’t have a slightly larger glass container, so I just mixed the zest straight into the bottle. Unfortunately, I had to pour out just a little bit of the alcohol to get it all to fit. That's fine.

That’s all. This mixture has to sit for 7 days, and swirl it each day. (but how perfect is that for step two to be next week’s Tasty Tuesday!)

But in the meantime, you have all these sad naked lemons sitting there. 

What do you do when life hands you sad, naked lemons? 

Make lemonade. (happy, clothed lemonade, I suppose?)

Can I just take a moment to say that if you don't own a lemon squeezer like the one above, you are a crazy person.. It's super cheap, and its wayy, way better than any other manual-juicers out there. If I had a fancy electronic spinny juicer, I'd use that, but I'm poor, and this was super easy. Plus a great arm workout, but not the killing kind. (and my faithful readers know how much I prefer unintentional exercise to the intentional kind)

Homemade Lemonade is pretty simple. I had enough lemons to make two cups of lemon juice, so I looked up sugarwaterlemon ratios on the google, and I had the perfect amount to make a whole big pitcher of some yummy, yummy homemade lemonade. (I even had an extra lemon to slice and float for decoration! Fancy.)

-2 cups lemon juice
-2 cups sugar dissolved into two cups of warm water (on the stove at a low temp, to make a simple syrup)
-About 6 cups plain cold water.

Mix, chill, serve, etc. Yum. Have friends over. Best if you have a porch, unfortunately I have no porch, and it's 10 degrees outside. Oh well. We can pretend.

Oh, before we go, let's check on our bottle of everclearlemonness:

This has been Tasty Tuesday! Thanks for joining us, I’m Rebecca Hannigan, the Floating Violinist! Stay tuned for the second half of Limoncello, and in the meantime, make good use of life’s sad naked lemons! Stay classy!

Sea Longing

by Sara Teasdale

A THOUSAND miles beyond this sun-steeped wall
Somewhere the waves creep cool along the sand,
The ebbing tide forsakes the listless land
With the old murmur, long and musical;
The windy waves mount up and curve and fall,
And round the rocks the foam blows up like snow,--
Tho' I am inland far, I hear and know,
For I was born the sea's eternal thrall.
I would that I were there and over me
The cold insistence of the tide would roll,
Quenching this burning thing men call the soul,--
Then with the ebbing I should drift and be
Less than the smallest shell along the shoal,
Less than the sea-gulls calling to the sea.


...oh yeah. Happy FBIHD!

Here yar.

As promised, a commentary on the Minnesota accent.

Before I moved here, I had some idea of how Minnesotans talked, based on my experiences making fun of my good friend Jason. When I decided to move up here, there were movies that I was required to watch in order to understand northern life, like Fargo, Grumpy Old Men, and Drop Dead Gorgeous.
Jason assured me it wasn’t as bad as it is in the movies.
Yes, it is.
I’m used to it by now, and even sometimes picking things up (heaven forbid by May I come back talking like them!)

To begin, I’d like to observe that a lot of people up here don’t even really know where Tennessee is, other than “South somewhere, and sort of east?” Yes, that’s about right. A coworker of mine told me about how she couldn’t remember where I was from and was trying to describe it so a friend: “East, and maybe from Kentucky?” I’ve also talked to people that thought Tennessee was north of Kentucky. Not saying people up here are dumb, just that they apparently don’t think much of the eastern/southern states. That’s all right. Before I moved here, I was unsure of how all these weird Midwestern states fit together, also I frequently forgot that Nebraska existed. Now I know not only how things fit together, but also that just everyone around Iowa makes fun of Iowa – even Iowa makes fun of Iowa. And, if I hadn’t traveled around New England, I wouldn’t know how all those little Northeast states fit together. So, I’m not blaming anyone.

Initially, the most obvious difference to me is the word “Bag.” (and all other words ending in –ag. Bag, flag, snag, etc) The way I pronounce it, of course, is the correct way. The vowel “a” in “bag” is the same as in the word “back.” Minnesotans say “baig” as in, rhymes with “vague.” I was told by a local that if they heard me say the word “snag” like I say it, they wouldn’t understand what I meant.
I pledge allegiance to the flaig, of the United States of America.
I'm gonna go snaig a nap while I have some time.
Man, this day is really draiggin’ by. Time is standing still.
(not to be confused with: Watch out for that draigon! He will burn you with his firey breath.)

Another difference is the “O” vowel. It’s longer, with a hint of “oo” in it. (As opposed to the apparent Maryland "O")
Hmm, here's a pretty good example of a ramble by a guy from northern Minnesota.


Myths:
-"Aboot." Canadians say aboot. Minnesotans do not really say abOUT, but its sort of a hybrid between about and aboat. What are you talking a boat?
-Also, a lot of people confuse Minnesota and Alaska. It’s similar, but I’ve found that when imitating a Minnesota accent, people automatically morph into Sarah Palin/Tina Fey exaggerated alayaskin accent. They are different.

Another large part of Minnesotan vocabulary has to do with football, which I don’t understand very well. I laughed to myself at the first person I came across that played fantasy football. I had always thought it was a lame thing that no one actually did. Come to find out, that EVERYONE here plays fantasy football. I stopped laughing – it’s apparently pretty legit. I asked a friend (a local Minneapolitan) if this was a really a thing. She told me it was pretty popular in the Midwest. I guess people in Iowa don’t really have much else to do besides eat pigs. (I recently found out that minnesota, iowa, nebraska, north carolina, and south dakota have more pigs than people) (I’m not complaining. I like pigs.) But, it's much more popular than I realized.

What do Minnesotans think of southern accents?
“I don't know... we like making fun of you, but at the same time it's cute”
“Well, you do that ‘y’all’ thing.”
"southern accents on guys make them sound less intelligent."

Things I’ve learned:
When youre in the minority, you can’t make fun of how they say things.
If you mention a “potatobug mandolin” in casual conversation, you will get blank stares.