Sausage Patties

Last Saturday I made yogurt and you can see my post on yogurt making here but on Sunday Phil had requested that I make more sausage. Phil likes the second recipe that I posted on this blog post. It is quite spicy.
I had place a nice big pork shoulder in the refrigerator a few days before so it would be thawed and ready. I was determined to remember to take pictures this time and I did....until the battery in the camera died anyway.

Don't let Phil's hands fool you, he was only putting meat in the grinder while I took the picture. I cut it up and ground it and then went to put the spices in and found we were out of brown sugar so I had to make my own by adding molasses to regular sugar.

I made it a bit spicier than it called for because my last batch wasn't spicy enough. Then I just made them up into patties and put 4 patties each in a quart bag.

There was 9 lbs of sausage and it made 25  (rather large) sausage patties. It is a bit spicy this time but Phil thinks it is great.

Garden Shots

Here are some pictures of the garden right now. They are a bit pitiful and weedy as I haven't really had time to mess with the garden lately.
Here are the broccoli plants with their tiny little heads.

Here are a couple of pictures of the cauliflower which is growing great but have no heads yet. I don't think I have ever had them grow so big before.

The cabbage doesn't look nearly as good but it is coming along nicely, I think.

This last picture of the garden is of the bed that had the kale, turnips and garlic. On my first planting,, they sprouted good but only grew on one side of the bed so I have replanted and they have sprouted so that is what you see in this picture. The little bit of garlic I put in is in the back.

I did not take a picture of the bed that had the savoy cabbage in it as it looks like it is going to be a total failure. They just aren't growing.
That's it for the garden. I was going to take some pictures of the tomatoes on the windowsill but the camera batteries died on me before I could.

The Lemon Cleaner and Wine

I have been a bit slow in posting lately but work has been getting in the way with trainings lately and it messes with my free time and lately most of my free time is spent practicing my violin which I truly am enjoying.
However, this post is mostly about how the lemon cleaner turned out. Here was how it started with the Meyer lemon peels in a jar filled with white vinegar and water (approximately 1/4 jar of white vinegar the rest water).

It has been sitting there a few weeks and today I got a spray bottle and strained the new (hopefully) lemon cleaner into it. It filled the spray bottle about 3/4 full but it was very strong smelling. It is hard to explain what it smelled like but it is not exactly lemony like the lemon cleaner at the store. It is quite a bit harsher than that. I filled the rest of the bottle with water which toned it down some and it isn't too bad to clean with now.
It did make me think about how much nicer the lemon balm smells though and I think this might be a good use for all that lemon balm. Next time I would like to try putting some lemon balm in a pan and boiling it (which always smells wonderful) and then using that water to pour over the lemon peels. I also am not sure how essential the vinegar is but it likely would be nicer smelling without it.

Other than lemon cleaner making this weekend, I was also wine making again. The lemon cleaner is sitting on the primary that is filled with an apple raspberry wine mixture. Yesterday it had had a mixed berry wine mixture in it. I racked that into jugs with air locks on them and then just put the new juice in on top of the leavings of the mixed berry wine and that way I didn't need to add any more yeast. It started fermenting right away and is doing really well.
I'll try to get in a garden post in this week. I have tiny little broccoli heads. Some year I would love to be able to say that I have "huge" broccoli heads but I guess this...won't be the year.