Posted by Loulou on Mar 17, 2015 | 12 comments

I know, I know that sounds a bit like “Debbie Does Dallas”, whatever that was, but I was actually helping today with the booze-making to celebrate St. Paddy’s Day.

More lemons coming off the tree or the new spring flowers will not have enough energy to make nice BIG lemons like these.  So mama was out there this morning, sun pouring down, no jacket weather and just two hours later, here it is wet, awful, sweater time, foggy, misty, rainy, humid, you name it.

What a winter!!!

Well, at least there’s a bright spot on our countertop:

No, you’re not crazy…the bottles come this way.

All these little soldiers lined up are limoncello and mama’s 175-year-old vinegar made from a “mother” that was given her back in the 60s (of course she was only a child then, haha) by a Sicilian friend who had kept his nonna‘s vinegar mother alive and passed some on to my mama.  She gives little pieces of it to everyone–it resembles a huge piece of raw LIVER, can you imagine. And it sort of slips and slides when you put in on a plate and you just hack off pieces and put them in bottles and then add leftover wine.

Hey, bonne chance around here to have wine leftover, what a laugh!

But when there IS some, in it goes to mama’s three big wide-mouth jars to start its fermentation.  Around this little ville there are lots of vinegar musts (the stuff that coats the grapes) or “starters” because of so many vineyards.  But mama’s vinegar is special in that it is very strong and very deep burgundy red and has the round, toasty taste of roasted nuts.  I don’t put it on MY food, but the salads around here are pretty tasty and need only olive oil and salt, no herbs, no spices, just plain old vinegar and oil (with emphasis on the OLD, that’s for sure).

As for the limoncello, mama tried to give samples to some workmen here and papa and another lady who stopped by this morning and by the time they all tried the stuff, the workmen were wobbling and the lady was listing and papa was putting just another little taste in his sample glass (the size of a thimble–mama knows her “tasters”, haha) and by the time mama had the sugar balance correct, the samplers were singing Irish St. Paddy’s Day songs and beginning to step dance across the floor!

So even if the weather is truly awful, at least there’s some productivity going on around here indoors.

Mama’s lecturing me NOT to go out in this messy weather without my raincoat but of course, I’m WEARING my raincoat…duh!

Anyway, when I get lectured, I just neutralize the whole thing by doing this:

Laugh and the world laughs with you!