Roy's pride and joy

You can take one guess which is his pride and joy: the walnut crop or his 4 barrels of fermenting fruit, aka as "cefre", the raw material of his beloved palinka? The barrels are off to the still a month today and the liquid in the barrels is about - or just under - 400 litres. The ratio of "cefre" to palinka varies between 5% and 8%. The latter can be achieved in a good year, which this one definitely was. It depends on the sugar content and on how juicy is the fruit. This would mean that he might end up with 35 litres of palinka, which should last him for a while (one hopes!!). He has been looking at the gunge, sniffing it lately and looking worried. One developed a crust, another some white powdery stuff on top. Apparently none of it matters, let's hope that's true.

The next job is to design a label for his "Dragonfuel", which is what he has called it for years. Another plan involving the palinka is making some walnut liqueur, which is apparently quite easy. Alex and Meaghan have fallen in love with "Nocino", which is an Italian walnut liqueur on their honeymoon to Dubrovnik on the Dalmatian coast. So, he requested a bottle or two of it for next summer, when they are coming over to visit. If I manage to make some next summer, that will be entirely from our own produce. Let's hope there will be some walnuts, as the trees have a habit of resting for a year after bumper crops, like this year's. If only Alex told me earlier, I could have made some this summer, but as you need green walnuts for it, we have to wait until June/July next year. Also, the recipe I got suggests that it is best drunk after a minimum of one year in the bottle, as it is a bit too bitter before that. We'll see!

Now I have to go to lunch, after which I will try to put together my all singing, all dancing new desktop computer. I would have done it earlier, but the roses needed to be covered as soon as possible against the frost which has arrived with a vengeance this week. So did the tits, demanding bird seed in the feeders, which was fortuitous, considering we have just gone and bought 20 kilos of the stuff.