100 Bottles Of Beer On The Wall.....100 Bottles Of Beer........

Last weekend was bottling day for the Beer Making Process.  It was very interesting to me.  But mostly, it was fun to see how much fun Mr. G and our son in law Jake were having.  They were like a couple of little boys on Christmas morning.

I had to laugh at this one.  It looks like Greg is holding the siphon tube to his mouth.  I assure you, he is not! 
They are starting a siphon to transfer the beer that has been proofing, from one barrel to another.  They had to distribute the sugar water into the beer to begin the next process by which the sugar water creates the carbonation after the beer is bottled, and rests another 2 weeks.

Taking a sip.  I took one too.  It was good!!  Even before the finishing two weeks.   So fresh and YEASTY!
Oh, and they trashed my kitchen!  Here they are talking about what to do next.

After an entire afternoon of turning our kitchen into a micro brewery, this is what they wound up with.

100 Bottles of Beer!  Or...a lot anyway!!

They brewed 5 gallons of beer.  They bottled most in regular size bottles, and a few in liter bottles, and then one of these little kegs.

Today, I cooked all day.  I wanted to make a meal to bring over to my neighbors house this afternoon.   I made a big tray of baked ziti, a green salad and a home made loaf of English Muffin bread.  French would have been the obvious choice, but this English Muffin bread is perfect for toasting, and I know my friend Sue likes it, so I made that.

Since I was making it anyway, I went ahead and made two pans of ziti.  Actually, ours was bow tie pasta since I didn't have enough ziti.  I even had two machines going to make the bread.  One for Sue and Carl, and one for us.
This was our baked bow tie pasta.  I made a sauce with lean beef, sweet Italian sausage, Italian seasonings.  Layer the pasta with ricotta cheese, parmesan cheese, and mozzarella cheese.  Then add second layer of pasta, and repeat cheese layers.  Bake at 350 for 35 minutes.   For ours, I made a salad of fresh orange and avocado.  If you have not tried this combination before, I suggest you do!  If I had some butter bib lettuce, I would have used that in the salad too.  But it was wonderful just with those two ingredients, and a bit of fresh ground sea salt and black pepper.

 YUMMY!
Over the weekend, we had a cold rain!  Once in  while, we get snow on the mountains right above us.  These are the Santa Ana Mountains.  They are very close.  We hike up there from time to time, and have even seen deer!   On Sunday morning the snow was beautiful!!!  I leave you with a few photos of the beauty of those mountains after a dusting of snow.  These were taken from our front yard.

I have been enjoying the rain and cold weather so much!!  Til Next time....