Catching Up with Vinegar and Booze

Last week, we expanded our horizons up at our cabin; thus, we missed the vinegar preservation challenge.

However, we'll make up for it this week for whatever it's worth. Last night, we filled two jars with plums and brandy. It wasn't very complicated overall. The organic plums were smaller, and they were a lot harder to pit. As a consequence, we lost more of the meat than we would of liked. In contrast, the second set of plums was easy to pit and went quite smoothly. We chose not to add any sugar to the mix, but we did spice them with cinnamon. We will add some vanilla beans as soon as they arrive in the mail. The whole process took about thirty minutes. We have never tried brandied plums before, so it will be interesting to try one.

For the vinegar challenge, we chose to preserve herbs. Unfortunately, locating organic white vinegar was more difficult than we imagined, so we settled for the basic sort. After picking a handful of Marjoram, Chives, Oregano, and a few sprigs of Parsley, we diced them after removing stems, and then mixed them thoroughly before pouring them into the two jars. Finally warming the vinegar slightly, we topped off each jar and sealed them.