Friday, January 30, 2015

Of Mead and Cheese

Last night after dinner I had an after dinner repast of mead and cheese.  It was somewhat similar, I suppose, to after dinner wine and cheese plates being had in scattered places across the globe.

The difference was that I made mine.

The mead was a four month old Lavender Rosemary blend that I have had in my refrigerator, a prize for a Highland Games event for which my attendance got delayed until this year.  The cheese is the remnant of a Castle Blue that never developed the blue veins which are characteristic of blue cheese but has been chopped down as other sorts of molds (not nearly as tasty) have tried to taken root.

There are much better meads of course, and there are blue cheeses that actually have blue in them, not just in the name.  But what made these remarkable is that they were mine.

I procured the raw materials.  I brewed or made them.  And now I get to enjoy them.

There is always more I could do, of course.  Mead comes from honey, which means if you really wanted to secure your supply line, I should get bees (this may be a next year project).  Cheese derives from milk, so one needs a milk supply along the same lines (alas, this will probably never happen).  Pickles come from vegetables and vinegar (vegetables I can sort of grow; vinegar -  I do not know - perhaps this is a project?).  And so on.a

But for one moment was nice to simply take what had been done and enjoy it, secure in the knowledge that for one moment, for these two items, I could make and enjoy them without having to procure them from somewhere else.

In fact, it was one of the greatest feelings in the world.

4 comments:

  1. I love a good mead. Yours sounds good too :)

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    1. Preppy, it is surprisingly good (I am always surprised when something I make is good). I have tried clove and ginger before but the lavender/ rosemary combination works really well. I fill into beer bottles (12 oz) and the alcohol content is 15%, so I have to be judicious - one bottle at one time is quite...um...exciting.

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  2. TB - i understand the elation that comes from something that you made. you wouldn't even believe the looks of joy on mine and jam's faces when we pick a sugar snap pea off of the vine and eat it right there on the spot. or a tomatoe. last evening, we were mowing down on our own baked potatoes and the only words spoken were "nom nom nom" with big grins on our faces and greek yoghurt in jam's beard and butter running down my chin.

    your mead and cheese sounds absolutely divine. i am glad that you so enjoyed those moments. it's in those moments when we can touch the divine!

    your friend,
    kymber

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  3. Ummm...baked potatoes. Sounds very good indeed!

    There is a certain feeling when one enjoys the direct fruits of one's labor that cannot be experienced someone has never made and consumed such a thing.

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