Scott Harris of Catoctin Creek Distillery came up to New York City this week to celebrate the New York launch of Catoctin Creek’s spirits line, and I tagged along with him to a bunch of his events!

One of my oldest friends, Emily, has been working for them, and introduced me to their liquor about a year ago– she poured a little bit of gin into a metal thermos for me to take home with me after a lovely brunch. I started experimenting with it right away– their gin is very friendly to folks who aren’t crazy about strong juniper flavors, with a really nice mix of different herbs that gives it a unique profile. In November, Scott and Emily invited me to go out for a drink with them, and then Scott did an impromptu tasting of the rest of their line– and sent me home with a bottle of each of their flagship spirits– Mosby’s Spirit, a white whiskey, Roundstone Rye, and the Watershed Gin I mentioned above.

Then I went down to the distillery in January and met Scott’s wife, Becky, and got to sit in on a special session where they taught us about the distillation process. I already knew a little bit about distilling, but this really improved my knowledge. I also got to play with their bottling line, which was INCREDIBLY AWESOME, and reminded me a lot of playing whack-a-mole, but with gin!

So I was delighted when Scott told me he was going to be in town and asked if I could come to come of his tastings. I met up with him first at the Rum House on Tuesday– but there was a bit of a miscommunication, so no tasting, but we got a drink and some deviled eggs and then went over to Noorman’s Kil, where we got delicious grilled cheeses and beer, and I got to meet Scott’s New York brand ambassador, Kirsten, who was super nice. They had a huge crowd show up to taste the rye. I don’t have photos from that, because it was super dark, but there were loads of very enthusiastic whiskey aficionados. It was getting close to my bedtime, though, so I headed home, and met up again the next day at the Brandy Library.

At the Brandy Library, we had all three of the spirits, and that was really fun– I actually tasted along with the crowd, sort of, except that I got caught up chatting with folks from Scott’s distributor a bit in the process so it took me a while between the rye and the gin, but I eventually got through all three of them. I had a couple really nice cocktails, and then Mayur, who teaches the classes I sometimes take at Amor Y Amargo and who is spearheading the spirits division at Scott’s distributor, showed up, and it was cool to chat with him when he wasn’t behind the bar. I took a whole bunch of photos of that tasting, and one of them ran in Scott’s local paper!

After the Brandy Library, Scott and Kirsten and I went over to Ward III to grab a drink, and then I went home because it was my bedtime!

Then, on Friday, Scott had a tasting at The Whiskey Shop. I’d never been there before– largely because it’s in Brooklyn and a touch out of the way for me to go to buy spirits, but this place is awesome and if you live nearby, I highly recommend going in. I spent most of the time chatting with Jon, the shopkeeper, who is incredibly knowledgeable and incredibly fun, and let me taste a couple of samples of different things.

The people who came into The Whiskey Shop were all really interesting people who wanted to converse about spirits, which was fun. I talked to a whole bunch of different people there about different things. Once that was over, Jon suggested we go to Kinfolk’s Yuji Ramen around the corner, which was a perfect, delicious little meal. It was a great end to the week. I had so much fun getting to see all these different tastings, how different people taste spirits, and the kinds of questions people asked.

If you live in New York, or any of the other states where it is available make sure to try Catoctin Creek’s spirits!

This was so incredibly dense and thick and velvety smooth; I have never made a gelato like this before. I could inhale the whole thing, except that it’s too rich for that!!!

It’s now on the shelves in NYC, and as of last night, I got to take home some samples which I am very excited to play with next week.

With stills they’ve built from the ground up, the distillery is like some kind of adult Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory; they’ve taken fractional distillation to a level that I’ve never seen before, where they can isolate each unique flavor note in the final product before blending them together. It’s really fascinating and awesome to watch these guys work– and a little like being on an episode of LOST, with a buzzer that rings and demands someone’s attention every twenty-two minutes on the button. Dave, the chief-mad-scientist of the operation, showed me pieces of the new still they’re building and a bunch of other exciting bubbly mysterious stuff.

I headed over there with a sampling of my flavored marshmallows (the Fernet ones seem to be the favorite) and a mission: to make a cocktail using a chanterelle-infused vodka the ICD guys had put up for an event.

I’d played with chanterelles before, in a sugar syrup, but the night before, I played around with several simple vodka cocktails, not having actually tasted the chanterelle infusion. When I got over to the distillery, I was presented with a bottle of high-proof liquor that had been steeped with mushrooms.

Dave & I diluted the chanterelle-infused vodka in tiny proportions to get the flavor and texture we liked best– the flavor was so mild, but the mushrooms imparted a meaty texture to the vodka that was nice– and once we’d settled on a solution for the vodka-to-water ratio, I got to mix drinks…

WITH PIPETTES.

Getting into the mad scientist spirit of the thing, this is the first time I have mixed a drink with pipettes. In fact, up until the moment I did it, I had NEVER CONSIDERED SUCH A THING.

It makes sense; it’s how people add bitters to alcohol. But this was a first. Using the pipettes created such amazing precision that I was able to add very specific and delicate notes to the drink; which was good because the flavors in the mushroom vodka were so subtle. After various experiments, with Dave and Peter being my tasting guinea pigs, we settled on a drink that involved vodka, the chanterelle-infused vodka, Dolin’s blanco vermouth, Cocchi Americano, black pepper syrup, and champagne vinegar. I was working in such tiny proportions that some ingredients found their way in in amounts that could be recorded in drops.

It was pretty awesome, because normally when I make drinks, I’m working in proportions that are first off, not nearly as precise– I mean, how many cocktail recipes call for a “dash” of something? But also, I usually think in 1/4 oz increments. Breaking things down even more was super fascinating and changed the way I was thinking about what I was mixing…in a way that was utterly appropriate, given the product and the locale.

I got sent home with samples that I got to pick from specific, unique cuts of the vodka– that is, bottles of undiluted individual isolated flavor notes, which means there will definitely be some playing going on.

If you are in New York, you should check out Industry City’s vodka. Here’s a map of locations where you can buy the real thing. These guys are awesome and I can’t wait to have more to tell you all.

Lately, I’ve developed a fondness for homemade marshmallows. I’ve been making marshmallows on and off for a few years now, but never really started experimenting with them, although I Had Ideas.

Let me start with a secret: making marshmallows is easy. It is so ridiculously easy, and fairly reasonably-priced, and the results are so good, that if you have forty minutes to make them and don’t mind waiting overnight to have marshmallows, you might never buy store-bought marshmallows again.

I’m serious.

Basically, marshmallows are simple: you boil a mixture of 1 cup sugar, 1 cup corn syrup, 1/2 cup water, until it reaches about 250 degrees Fahrenheit on a candy thermometer. You pour the sugar solution into a blender where you have .75 oz of gelatin in another 1/2 cup water. The solution will foam up; you will turn the mixer on to its highest speed and mix for ten to fifteen minutes, at which point you will feel like Bartholomew Cubbins fighting off the Oobleck. You will coat a rubber spatula in margarine, which will make the Oobleck miraculously slide off the spatula, as you scrape it into a greased baking sheet lined with a mixture of 1/2 cornstarch, 1/2 confectioners’ sugar. You will let it sit overnight. In the morning, there are marshmallows. You can cut them apart with scissors, and then toss them in more sugar-cornstarch.

The basic trick to marshmallows is just to have a really good mixer. I destroyed two hand mixers making marshmallows, which had a lot to do with why I didn’t make them very often– but then, for Christmas this year, my parents gave me a standing mixer. And it makes a huge difference in the marshmallow-making process.

The thing with marshmallows is that they required heavy whipping for an extended period of time. So if you have a hand mixer, you had better have a book in the other hand or a television in the same room as your mixer. Or something. This is why having the standing mixer makes such a difference.

So once I got the mixer, I really started spending a lot of time playing with flavors. I started logically– infusing herbs in the sugar syrup, peppermint once, and lavender and tarragon another time. Then I moved on, realizing I could substitute some of the unflavored gelatin for Jell-o, and get day-glo marshmallows with delicious artificial candy flavors. Lately, I’ve been playing with boozemallows, and I’ve done three flavors that are all quite good: Angostura, Fernet-Branca, and Sazerac.

The Sazerac marshmallows were the first ones I made that actually approximate a cocktail instead of just having a bit of a specific ingredient flavoring the marshmallow. They’re very mild, but if you eat them alone, you can taste all the subtle flavors you expect from a Sazerac: whiskey, absinthe, and Peychaud’s, and they even have the tiniest tinge of pink to them (though it doesn’t come across much in the photo).

To the recipe I related above, I added about 1/4 cup Catoctin Creek Roundstone Rye, about 1/8 cup Tenneyson Absinthe, and about ten dashes of Peychaud’s bitters– I added these right at the beginning of the whipping process, into the mixer. Use a splash guard for your mixer if you have one. You can taste the marshmallow to see if you want more or less of any ingredient, and it’s easy to add a little bit more later on– as long as it’s not too much, it mixes in well.

Of course, once the marshmallows are done, I recommend popping a couple of them into a glass of whiskey.

A lot of people ask me why, when I live in New York City, arguably one of the most always-on places in the world, I spend so many of my weekends in Connecticut at my parents’ house– especially in the winter, when the garden is not producing, and the bees are hibernating their little hearts out.

Here are one of the things we do in the winter. This year, I did it singlehandedly, because both of my parents were busy with other work.

This is what a grape arbor looks like in the winter.

It’s basically a whole lot of bare vines, in a great big tangle.  Grape vines are a lot like roses.  Every year, you want to cut back most of the new growth from the year before, leaving only the “main vines to sprout new growth for the coming season.  This needs to be done in the winter, before the vines begin growing again.

We also put up an arbor mid-season last year, because this was the first year our grapes had enough growth to really need something apart from the fence.  So, as you can see, the vines were sort of selective about whether they wanted to grow on the arbor or not.  Some grew on the arbor.  Some grew on the fence. Some grew on the arbor and then turned around and grew on the fence.  Some just decided to be stubborn little brats and grow on the rhubarb.

So, today, I went in with my clippers and pruned the heck out of the arbor.  Basically, you want to prune off pretty much everything but the main vine, and you want to do it as close to the wine as possible:

It took about an hour to trim everything back to where we wanted it.  I had a little difficulty because the snow had frozen shut the gate to the garden, so I had to do most of the work from outside the garden, reaching my hands through the wire fence.  The chickens were very, very curious about what the heck I was doing.  After everything was trimmed, I trained all of the remaining vines onto the arbor, with one exception– there was one vine that was very thick and heavy and mostly growing on the garden side of the fence, so it was difficult to move.  I also got all the grapevines untangled from the hops vines, which was very exciting.    This is what it looked like when I was finished:

By early autumn, believe it or not, this will be back to looking like the “before” picture– only with lots of leaves and fruit on it!!

When I was a little girl, my mother was one of those Kitchen Goddess moms, the ones who made ten or twelve kinds of cookies for Christmas, as well as fudge and sometimes some other candies. Christmastime, or the time leading up to Christmas, was an absolutely magical time for me, and I would arrive home from school every day to discover new delicacies stored neatly in containers and tins, new smells wafting from every corner. But the best part was that once school was over for the day and homework was done, it was time to help. There was something even more magical about practicing the alchemy that created the treats we would serve and give away to friends and family.

Now, we’ve cut back quite a lot. We don’t have big parties or huge family get-togethers anymore, and for the most part, we don’t really miss them. But there are a few kinds of cookies that we make every year, no matter what, although maybe in smaller quantities than we made when I was a child. (There is a note on one recipe, hand-written by my mother, from the year I graduated high school: 1996, 6 recipes= 375 cookies.) These are the cookies that make Christmas Christmas for me. They don’t really make an appearance the rest of the year, but at Christmastime, they are on every tray. They might not be the shiniest or prettiest or most colorful cookies, but they’re the ones that taste the best, or remind me the most of happy family times.

The cookbook shows above is the 1966 Woman’s Day Cookie Cookbook. It’s torn apart (missing the back cover), dogeared, yellowed, and covered in ballpoint-pen-notes. We don’t use it for much, apart from one very special recipe.

But a couple weeks ago, my friends Aleph and Beth, one of whom is Swedish and both of whom live in Sweden, came to visit the US. I didn’t get to see them, but they made their presence known in the form of a box of delicious candy.

In the box was a bar of Kex, but also several bars of flavored Kex, in blueberry and raspberry, something I’ve never seen, let alone tasted. So I was very excited by this development.

Unwrapping it, you can really smell a whiff of blueberry. It reminds me of smelling something else, too, but I don’t remember exactly what– obviously something else berry-scented. I think it may have been a Dagoba chocolate bar, but I’m not sure. I actually procrastinated on tasting it because I liked smelling it so much!

The flavor of it, while having a hint of blueberry, isn’t actually as distinctive as the scent, which was interesting to me. It tasted a little different from regular Kex, and if I hadn’t known the flavor, I would have known it was some kind of fruit, but I’m not sure blueberry would have occurred to me. Hmm. All in all, though, an exciting gift!!!

As many of you who have followed my blogging for many years know, Thanksgiving is pretty much my favorite holiday in the world. Note that I do not like the more disgraceful aspects of the holiday’s history, and think it’s important to acknowledge them, but the idea of a holiday that is a day of gratitude that is a time for reminding friends and family how much they mean to you and reflecting on all the good that has happened over the last year is something that I think is really important, and I do think that the two sentiments can be inclusive of each other. But this isn’t a political blog, it’s a food blog, so I’ll leave it at that for now and get on with the food part.

Beginning in 2005, I have made my family’s Thanksgiving dinner almost singlehandedly and entirely from scratch, including from-scratch versions of stuff like stuffing, cranberry sauce, and other dishes that I was previously perfectly happy with in the pre-made version. I have two elderly grandparents, and so around that time, I decided that there was no better gift I could give them than to prepare an amazing dinner for them. I make everything in advance, with the best ingredients possible (my mom foots the bill for most of it), and we trek down to Delaware with Thanksgiving dinner in hand early on Thursday morning. Then I assemble the feast. Typically, we get between 8 and 12 people for this dinner.

I know many of you who are in the US also love to celebrate Thanksgiving and might be planning your own dinners and get-togethers for the holiday!

Believe it or not, this is when you should start getting ready! I’ve got my menu mostly selected, and tonight I’ll be making my shopping list. Shopping this week for everything but the ingredients that must be bought extra fresh means cutting down time waiting in line in the grocery store, and it also means that you have plenty of time to realize you’ve forgotten something, to realize you bought the wrong quantity, to discover you need to go to that specialty deli 35 minutes away to get the right kind of meat, and so on. So, in the spirit of starting at the right time, I’m going to start posting my tips!

1) If you’re planning a big dinner, using a spreadsheet can be a huge boon, whether you’re cooking the entire meal or need to assign or keep track of responsibilities with a group of people. You can print it out, share it with friends and relatives, and check it via smartphone or tablet from the grocery store. Here is my handy spreadsheet, available for you to use. It has columns for nearly everything. Note that it has two pages: one to write down your recipes and schedule tasks, and one to write down and sort a shopping list.

2) Order your turkey! Many grocery stores and butchers may have already closed orders for turkeys, but if you want a fresh turkey, ordering can be the best option if you live somewhere where turkeys fly off the shelves quickly. Try to do that as soon as possible as many stores close their orders. Ordering turkeys also means you can specify a close range of size (16-18 pounds, 18-20 pounds, etc) and other requirements, like if you want an organic or free-range bird.

3) Make your stock! This week is a great time to make some turkey, chicken, or vegetable stock! You can store it in the freezer until you need it. Last year, I wrote up a little turkey stock how-to if you’ve never made your own stock before. I highly recommend it!

4) Also make your decorations! If you are hosting Thanksgiving and want some nice centerpieces, you can make them from cloth and dried flowers and other non-perishable items well ahead of time so that you’re not rushing to do things like that at the last minute. Place cards, print-out menus, and other things like that can all be made now!

5) Start planning! All the Thanksgiving issues of the cooking magazines should be out and available, or you can search online for many great recipes. If you are having Thanksgiving with a group, make sure everyone knows what they are responsible for– the sooner, the better, so there are no surprises!

6) When planning, think about how much advance time you will need for each recipe, as well as how long in advance you can do things. For example, if something says it can be done a day ahead, it can probably be done two days ahead, so plan to do it Tuesday. If something requires a lot of time, like defrosting and brining a turkey, make sure you have enough days– a turkey can take more than a day to defrost! It’s always better to have as much prep as possible done ahead of time, so that you have time to manage disasters or just to have a relaxing holiday. I get so much done in advance that sometimes I get to relax all Wednesday night, which is lovely.

7) Also think about your guests! Know their food restrictions and make sure you will have things that everyone can eat. Most Thanksgiving food can be made vegetarian, with the obvious exception of the turkey, and enough things can be made vegan/dairy-free with very few changes to the recipes (olive oil or margarine instead of butter, for example) that anyone should be happy. Make sure that you know if anyone has an allergy or dietary restriction or religious/ethical eating restriction and then try to accommodate those restrictions in your planning. Most people who have dietary restrictions are used to having to accommodate themselves if necessary, so if for any reason you absolutely can’t accommodate someone (for example, if you have guests with conflicting dietary restrictions), give them lots of advance notice so they can bring a dish of their own to supplement their meal. There is usually so much food at Thanksgiving that everyone can eat something, but sometimes it’s just a question of bringing one extra thing.

8) Pick your dinnertime NOW! Knowing if you are eating at 4, 6, or 8 will make a difference in how you plan your dinner. Eating earlier means less prep time, but more time to dig into a long sit-down dinner. Eating later means more prep time, but you will probably want more munchy appetizers and cocktails available.

9) Check all your recipes for “weird” ingredients that you might not be able to locally. If there’s something you don’t recognize, look it up online. Then figure out if you can get it locally. If it’s a dry good, you may be able to order it online and get it delivered by the beginning of next week. If it’s a fresh ingredient, see if you can find out a good replacement. Most things can be substituted with something else if it’s not available near you.

10) Don’t be afraid to ask questions! I have been doing Thanksgiving for so long that I have gotten to the point where I am a bit of an expert at it. If you need help, have questions, or there are specific things you’d like me to post about over the next couple of weeks, I’ll be happy to do it.

Now, I love chocolate. I love it with every fiber of my being. It is one of those amazing, wonderful ingredients that is so versatile and delicious. And I have to admit that I was aware that chocolate production was problematic, but I didn’t realize to what extent– I didn’t realize how much more problematic it was than the production of many other types of food.

And for me, reading about the child trafficking and slavery surrounding chocolate made me realize that I can’t eat chocolate and be a conscientious person unless I do some work to make certain that the chocolate I’m eating is not contributing to these conditions. It doesn’t matter how much I love it. Nobody’s life is worth a snack.

My friend Lauren found a collection of various links with more information. I’ve already posted these on my personal LiveJournal, but here I’m posting them again in greater context.

“Did you know that cocoa farmers engage in human trafficking and slave labor to make your chocolate bar? They do.

Did you know that TEN YEARS ago there was an international protocol passed requiring chocolate makers to work to end child slavery? There was, and people were too busy patting themselves on the back to enforce it, so nothing has changed.

Think a boycott will just hurt the people who make those 15 cents a day? You’re missing the big picture.

Addicted to chocolate? Fine, here are the Fair-Trade companies that don’t use slave labor.

Want to give money to supporting international labor rights? You can do that, too.

Want to learn about better candies to give out at Halloween? I have an app for that.”

Well, to be completely honest, most of us can’t afford to give out fair trade chocolate at Halloween. But there are other things we can do.

1) Give out non-chocolate Halloween candy. This is a good option for other reasons, because chocolate often contains dairy and sometimes nuts, both which cause severe allergies for many kids. Did you already buy chocolate to give out at Halloween? If the bag is sealed and you have a receipt, you should be able to return it.
2) Have kids? Going Trick-or-Treating? Raise The Bar Hershey is focusing their campaign specifically at Hershey, being one of the biggest users of slave labor in chocolate production. Talk to your kids about it. Agree to refuse Hershey’s chocolate while Trick-or-Treating this year.
3) Go one step further. Carry a copy (or have your kids carry a copy) of the Raise the Bar Hershey Petition to collect signatures.
4) Or, you know the UNICEF boxes? Instead of collecting money for UNICEF, collect money for International Labor Rights Forum
4) Fill out Hershey’s CSR Report
5) Email Hershey Executives
6) Do you have a favorite chocolate bar that isn’t on the list of Fair Trade chocolate? Write to the manufacturer and encourage them to go Fair Trade.

If you know of more resources, please pass them on.