The Proposal

Josh planned a special breakfast adventure Thursday morning for our first morning back together after spending a week with our families for Christmas. We climbed up the AIM tree and he had built a platform up there and spread out a blanket. We had fruit, bread, and cheese for breakfast. I was so impressed.

The view was beautiful.

Then Joshua got on one knee and asked me to marry him!! I of course said yes.

Food and Friends in Selma

On my way back up to camp on Wednesday, I was able to stop in Selma to meet up with Juan and Ashley. It was great to see them again. We had dinner and enjoyed reminiscing about our time in London. There was a red phone booth outside the restaurant, so of course we had to take a picture by it after we ate.

Yum

 The rest of our time in Modesto yielded more delicious food. Gayle and I made pecan pie on Sunday for supper after our late afternoon dinner.

On Monday while Josh and I were Christmas shopping, we decided to take a break and have sushi for lunch.  It was delicious. 

Traditions

I had the honor of participating in a Kerr family tradition today. Josh and his dad, Dave, made shortbread cookies, a tradition which has been passed down through multiple generations.We started with lots of butter.

 Then we added sugar and flour.

 Dave rolled out and cut the first batch while Josh mixed the second.

 Dave is one of four brothers and they each have a distinctive fork imprint for their shortbread cookies.

The cookies must be removed from the pans immediately after they come out of the oven so they cool quickly and stop cooking.

Mixing up the third and final batch. I got to roll and cut this batch; I even got to fork some of them.

We ended up with 19 dozen shortbread cookies.

Christmas Festivities

Josh and I made it to Visalia on Monday in time to join my family for dinner and decorating gingerbread houses. We went with something easy this year and had gingerbread house kits.

 Josh, Natalie, and I with the gingerbread house we made.

Gingerbread Lane

Tuesday we all drove to Fresno to walk down Christmas Tree Lane. The lights were disappointing, but it was a fun evening.

A Tale of Two Vintners

Our gooseberry wine making adventures began in October when we picked gooseberries. All the recipes we found said to pour boiling water over the berries and then let them sit for 10 days, so that's what we did.

 But I don't know if it was a good idea because our berries got moldy and started to ferment. The whole thing smelled strongly like vinegar.

 But we pressed on. We scrapped the mold off, boiled the liquid to kill the natural yeast, mold, and anything else in there, then strained it through cheesecloth.

 Then we added our own wine yeast and put it in a bottle with an airlock.

 For a long time nothing happened and we were concerned that the yeast wasn't good or that the gooseberry juice was too acidic and had killed the yeast or any number of other things had occurred to prevent it from fermenting, but finally it started to bubble and we were so excited.

 We had to replace our original airlock with a balloon because we needed the airlock for our apple cider. Once it started to ferment, it kept going. We were expecting it to go for about 10 days, it ended up taking about a month and a half.

Once the fermentation stopped, we began the racking process by siphoning the wine. Racking should take about 4-6 months, the goal being to let all the sediment settle out leaving us with a clear and tasty wine.

The wine is still far from done, but of course we still had to taste it at this point in the process. It was better than expected; seeing as how my expectation was for rancid gooseberry vinegar, that was not difficult. It had a tangy, fruity flavor.

Seasonal Baking

Josh and I tried our hand at making  a festive holiday treat tonight, persimmon cookies. We didn't have a mixer or a food processor, so we had to make them by hand which resulted in chunky cookies. Even so, we were both quite satisfied with the results.