Preserving Floyd: Herbal Vinegars and Maple Vinegar

It's been raining pretty steadily for a month now.  Every once in awhile the sun will deign to peek through, a patch of blue might appear.  But mostly it's gray and drizzling if not downright pouring.  Everyone's behind.  You can't plow, till, seed, or transplant because the ground is just too wet.  Water gushes up along the edges of my wellies just walking across the lawn.  The earth is saturated.  People are getting grumpy.

I think this is affecting the local strawberry crop.  For two days now I've been searching my usual sources and there's none to be had.  I'm hoping the berries have just slowed down until the sun returns.  I'm praying they're not rotting in the fields.

On the other hand, the perennial herbs are flourishing!  They need to be cut back now!  In order to use up a good bit of them I'm going to start steeping jugs of herbal vinegars.  It's just way too easy and takes no time at all.  And it will keep me busy until the strawberries return.

Cooking Floyd: Bottle of Red, Bottle of White

During a hiatus from Floyd we lived in the Finger Lakes area of New York state, New York's answer to the Napa Valley for proliferation of wineries.  Floyd is also surrounded by wineries and in both places I enjoy exploring the local vintages.  However, Michael and I are not big wine drinkers, usually consuming only a glass or two out of a bottle with an occasional meal.  I use wine in cooking but that wouldn't use up the rest of a bottle very fast.

I like using wine vinegars to make herbal and fruit flavored vinegars and while I could get red wine vinegar by the gallon, finding bulk white wine vinegar was more difficult.  The small bottles in the store were prohibitively expensive to buy for the amount I wanted to work with and I couldn't seem to get a restaurant friend to understand that I wanted to buy an entire case of 4 gallons if he would order it for me (he insisted on giving me a gallon of red).