Sometimes something will catch my fancy at the likker store. This weekend — it was the seasonal apple cider liqueurs. Both Jack Daniels and Evan Williams do one. As I’ve mentioned before, I’m not the biggest fan of brown liquors, so I’ve been hesitant to buy these in the past. After a chat with the salesguy, who was a self-described whiskey nut, I decided to give the Evan Williams a try.

Once safely home for the evening, I poured a little in a glass for a taste. Sweet … apple-y … backnotes of fall spices. I imagine it would be tasty warm! But I was thinking more of an iced cocktail (it was pretty warm over the weekend), and I spied two orphan Shock-Tops in the back of the fridge, a Honeycrisp Apple Wheat and a Pumpkin Wheat. I don’t think I’ve ever attempted a beer cocktail, but I knew the Honeycrisp Apple Wheat had definite apple notes, so I said, what the hell. And so this cocktail was born. The two really do complement each other, and the mild bitterness of the ale tempers the sweetness of the liqueur. You’ll get three drinks out of a bottle of beer — so these really are on the milder side. But very refreshing!

As this runs a little under $10/bottle, it’s a nice addition to your fall larder.

When Evan Met Belgium
Serves 1

3 tablespoons Evan Williams Apple Orchard
Splash of lime
4 ounces medium-bodied Belgian-style wheat ale

Put ice in a rocks glass. Add the liqueur and a splash of lime. Top off with ale. Garnish with an apple chunk if you’re feeling fancy.

Standard caveat: This is a personal recommendation. I have been provided neither product nor compensation for this endorsement.

So this weekend, I took a field trip with a dozen like-minded ChoWhounds to Orchid Cellar Meadery and Winery, just outside Frederick, Md. Our goal? To sample as many small-batch meads as the mazer (mead brewer) would pour!

Mead is an alcoholic beverage made from fermented honey. It is one of the oldest beverages — appearing to pre-date both beer and vinifera wine. In Poland, mead was made at home for many generations. Even my husband has made it in the past (I really should dig around that dark closet in the beach shack just in case there’s a bottle still hiding in the far corners!). The folks at Orchid Cellar are fourth-generation Polish mead brewers. They rely on traditional low-technology methods of fermentation and aging, with no artificial flavorings or preservatives added.

Meads can be on the boozy side — so probably not something you are going to guzzle. The can range from dry to fairly sweet. I wouldn’t call them subtle — they pair beautifully with sausages and cheeses. Andrzej Jr recommends serving them at “castle temp” — I like them chilled in the fridge and sipped in small portions — they warm up to “castle temp” pretty quickly. Unopened, these could keep for years. Opened and refrigerated, they should last for several months.

I purchased four varieties for my own consumption:

Melusine Dry Cyser – a fermented blend of apple juice and honey. Alcohol content ~12%, so more like a dry fruity wine. Versatile accompaniment to pork.

Beekeeper Kiwi Mead – inspired by Polish tradition of using gooseberries in mead. Alcohol content 16% – 18%. Delightful as an apertif with sausage and cheese.

Cobbler White Peach Mead – inspired by the availability of lush white peaches at a friend’s orchard in Pennsylvania. A little deeper flavor than the Beekeeper. Alcohol content 16% – 18%.

Archer Cinnamon and Clove Mead – my personal favorite. Dark and complex in flavor. Something to be savored in front of the fire this winter. Alcohol content 16% – 18%.

Their products can be purchased at the meadery, online, or at a number of retailers throughout Maryland. Please see their website for more details.

Standard caveat: This is a personal recommendation. I have been provided neither product nor compensation for this endorsement.

I got REALLY excited when I saw that muscadines were showing up in my Backyard Produce box! I don’t think I’ve ever seen muscadines available for sale around here — so it was a blast from the past to find them in my box! Interested in learning more about Backyard Produce? Please visit their main website or their Facebook page!

A lot of folks, even those well south of the Mason Dixon line, are unfamiliar with muscadine grapes. Muscadines are native to southern North America and were grown by both George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, with varying degrees of success at wine. My grandfather grew them and I **loved** the preserves my grandmother made with them. Muscadines have a distinctive musky, sweet flavor … nothing at all like the insipid green grapes you get at the grocery store year-round. It’s kind of wild — fitting as they haven’t been domesticated as long as European grapes. The skins are thick and leathery — giving you a preserve with some tooth. As I didn’t have enough to make preserves (I am kicking myself now for not ordering more), we settled for eating out-of-hand and cocktails.

The muscadines are quite subtle in this cocktail — but that wild-muskiness is complemented by the gin’s botanical notes. I’ve got just a few left in the fridge, so I might try to make a micro-batch of muscadine syrup to enjoy for the next month, possibly as muscadine soda?

Muscadine Smash
Serves 1

2 or 3 muscadines, quartered, seeds discarded
1 tablespoon orange liqueur
3 tablespoons gin
Lime wedge
Ginger ale

Put the muscadines and orange liqueur into the bottom of a sturdy wide-mouth tumbler (“Old Fashioned” glass). Muddle these together, making sure to smash the grapes well. Add the gin and a squeeze of lime and stir to combine. Add the ice and top off with ginger ale. Garnish with a muscadine half.

Disclosure: This post was sponsored by Backyard Produce. I received compensation in exchange for developing these recipes. Regardless, I only recommend products or services I use personally and believe will be good for my readers.

I should probably clarify that title. There is no such thing as leftover pie. There’s pie for today, pie for tomorrow, and if you are REALLY lucky, pie for the day after. Pie does not languish in this house.

What I’m really referring to is the pile of apple peels leftover after you peel apples for pie (was that even grammatically correct?). It seems so wasteful, you know? I never peel an apple to eat out of hand. I leave them on to make applesauce (and fish ’em out later). But I will peel apples for pie. And in this case, it was apples from my Backyard Produce delivery. You know I’ve mentioned them already — I’ve been an enthusiastic subscriber since May and those weekly deliveries were an absolute godsend during my convalescence from the big bathtub fall. A gorgeous box of fruit and vegetables delivered to my home every Wednesday — what’s not to love?? So when Backyard Produce was looking for bloggers to develop recipes with their produce — you KNOW I was all over it! Interested in learning more about Backyard Produce? Please visit their main website or their Facebook page!

So I got an idea — there’s still a fair amount of flesh left on the peel — guess I’m not that good of a peeler? And there’s good flavor in the cores (that’s why we leave them in applesauce). So I decided to make a simple syrup with these leftovers — trying to wring out the last bit of flavor from these glorious apples.

Spiced Apple Syrup
Yield varies

Apple peels from at least 4 or so apples
Cores from those same apples
Cinnamon stick, and/or
Cloves, and/or
Star anise, and/or
Ginger knob, sliced
Water
Granulated Sugar

Wash your apples well before peeling. Put the peels AND the cores in a pan and cover with water (use the apples for pie!). I had the peels from 5 medium-sized apples and I used 4 cups of water to cover. Add whichever whole spices you are using. Bring to a gentle simmer and cook until the peels are pale and lifeless-looking and the cores are soft and mushy.

Allow to cool slightly, then strain through a fine-mesh strainer over a bowl. Use a spatula to gently press liquid through — you’ll get a little cloudiness in your syrup but it’s worth it for the flavor! Discard the solids.

Rinse your pan. Or dirty a fresh one — your call. MEASURE the strained liquid and put into the pan. Measure an equal amount by volume of sugar and add to the pan. That means, if you had 2 cups of liquid, add 2 cups of sugar . Even though I started with 4 cups of water, I only had 2 cups of spiced apple liquid after straining. Bring the sugared solution to a gentle boil, stirring frequently to dissolve the sugar. Boil gently for 1 to 2 minutes. Allow to cool to room temperature. Store covered in the refrigerator.

What does one DO with this amazing syrup? It makes a lovely, subtle homemade soda – a welcome change from the store-bought stuff. I think it would be amazing to sweeten an herbal tea. Or mixed with some lemon and hot water as a kid-friendly hot toddy. Drizzle over ice cream. Make cocktails!

*****

Spiced Apple Soda
Serves 1

Ice
2 – 3 tablespoons spiced apple syrup
6 ounces seltzer

Put the ice in an appropriate-sized glass. Add the syrup. Pour the seltzer over. Stir gently. Consume immediately!

*****

Apple-Pom Cocktail
Serves 1

2 tablespoons spiced apple syrup
1 tablespoon Pama pomegranate liqueur
3 tablespoons silver rum
Lime wedge
Seltzer

Put the syrup, liqueur, and rum into the bottom of a sturdy wide-mouth tumbler (“Old Fashioned” glass). Squeeze in your lime and throw the wedge in. Stir to combine. Add some ice and top off with seltzer.

 *****

Disclosure: This post was sponsored by Backyard Produce. I received compensation in exchange for developing these recipes. Regardless, I only recommend products or services I use personally and believe will be good for my readers.

Every so often I’ve purchased a bottle of something out of Washington State’s Chateau Ste. Michelle. NOT just because of the name. I remember liking whatever I bought, but since it was pre-blog, I didn’t take notes :). I’ve always felt that if I had to pick a bottle for a hostess gift, I probably wouldn’t be embarrassed to bring something from Chateau Ste Michelle. And the wines generally get good reviews from people who know more about wine than me.

Their wines are typically priced above my self-imposed ceiling of $10, so when I saw a bottle of Riesling on sale at Giant for less than that, I grabbed a bottle (I think I paid $8.99). It was a really nice little weekday wine. I’d characterize it as off-dry — a hint of residual sugar but not cloyingly so. A medium body — this has more oomph than a pinot grigio — but not overly heavy. It’s a nice before-dinner wine — would probably pair well with fairly assertive cheeses. I think it would make a nice sangria as well — cut back on the sugar a little.

This is also my first post since my little bathtub accident. I’m on the mend, but I walk like a pirate. People are really nice to you when you are on crutches — drivers even encourage you to jaywalk. I just need a better story than “I fell into the bathtub.”

Standard caveat: This is a personal recommendation. Chateau Ste. Michelle does not know I exist and has provided neither product nor compensation for this endorsement. In fact, they’ll probably sue me if this ever gets in a search engine.

Beer really isn’t my go-to adult beverage. Don’t get me wrong, if I’m out with friends and that’s the happy hour special — I’ll drink it. Or if I’m down on the hot sandy beach and someone offers me one — I am grateful. But I wouldn’t think to plan a meal around it, like I did for this trio of Old Vines Zin, nor would I generally think to take a six-pack as a hostess gift. But I usually have some around for my beer-drinking friends.

I prefer milder beers — not too bitter and hoppy. I also like a hint of fruit in there. So I was pleased to find the Sam Adams Porch Rocker on the grocery store shelves again this summer. It’s a seasonal release, so you won’t find it year-round. A medium-bodied lager with just a hint of lemon, it’s refreshing but still a beer. It paired quite nicely with last night’s buffalo shrimp, in fact, I think I may have to try poaching some shrimp in it one day! It also is a great accompaniment to our barbecued ribs.

Standard caveat: This is a personal recommendation. The Samuel Adams brewery folks don’t know I exist and have provided neither product nor compensation for this endorsement. In fact, they’ll probably sue me if this ever gets in a search engine.

So sometime over the winter I was in a Trader Joe’s [*] and saw their VINTJS Dry Creek Valley Zinfandel, priced around $7.99. So I grabbed a couple of bottles, just on a whim. I don’t remember if this was before or after the Big Bronchitis, but we didn’t open a bottle until sometime in February. Oh my goodness — what a lovely wine! Lush, medium-bodied, and reminiscent of fruit — blackberry came to mind. Just a really lovely wine. I drank it with this down-home casserole — this is not a pretentious wine.

A couple of days later we got socked with a pretty decent snowstorm. After some shoveling, I was hankering for something warm and adult. I saw the partial bottle of wine and thought Mulled Wine! So I poured the remaining wine (estimated 3 cups), one cup of cran-rasberry juice (100% juice), and 1/4 cup of sugar into a saucepan. I wrapped two tablespoons of mulling spices in a cheesecloth sachet and dropped that in. Gently simmer 15 or 20 minutes until hot and the spices are well-infused. Serve steaming hot in mugs.

[*] I swear I am not a paid shill for Trader Joe’s. But you just can’t beat them for reasonably-priced everyday wines.

Standard caveat: This is a personal recommendation. The Trader Joe’s folks don’t know I exist and have provided neither product nor compensation for this endorsement. In fact, they’ll probably sue me if this ever gets in a search engine.