A friend picked 15 pounds of red currants last week and suggested I use them to make wine. Why not? When I looked up recipes for currant wine I was shocked by the amount of sugar called for. I’m used to making wine with ripe grapes that contain all the sugar required to produce a wine of 11 to 13 percent alcohol. Currants, however, are not very sweet. Fifteen pounds was enough to make five gallons of wine, way more than I want. But I figured I should follow the recipe I had. It called for 13.5 pounds of sugar!

First, I mashed the currants in a five gallon bucket with a potato masher. I boiled a few gallons of water in which I dissolved the sugar. This brought me back to days of making simple syrup for Coke and other soda pop concentrates when the family owned a restaurant/glorified burger stand when I was in high school. You can dissolve a lot of sugar in not very much boiling water.

When the syrup cooled, I added it to the currants in a larger food grade container I use for making wine. I added more cold water to bring the volume to about five gallons, then added some pectic enzyme to break down the currant cell walls and a tiny bit of potassium metabisulfite to kill any natural yeasts that could spoil the wine. The next day, I added a yeast appropriate for fruit wines. I put a loose fitting lid on the vat, wrapped in a blanket and put it in the house where it would ferment at 70 to 80 degrees.

I stir the wort and push down the currants once or twice a day. After a week, I’ll siphon the wine off the currants, squeeze the bejesus out of what’s left and start the slow secondary fermentation in a carboy that I can fit with an airlock. I’ll do that this weekend.

That’s it. Pretty simple. Then, all I have to do is be patient for a couple of years. The wine can be racked off the settled yeast and into another carboy a couple times over the next year. After about 18 months, I can bottle it like any other wine. Hopefully, it will be good enough to give away because I know I won’t drink much of it. Who knows, maybe I’ll be surprised.

Next up: cherry wine.

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Like a lot of people, I felt affected upon hearing Michael Jackson had died. As a music blogger, I wondered if I should be writing something, but a quick sweep of the Internet and other media outlets implied my job was already being done by everyone else and their grandma. I really don’t like repeating things that people have heard before, and no matter what your opinion of the situation and the person, it had been said and heard already.

But here we are, five days later, and I’m beginning to feel that coverage has gone from the inevitable overkill to absurdly unnecessary. Stories coming through just this morning from wire services include an article about media coverage of Jackson’s death, commentary about the two sides of Michael, a story about his start with Motown, reports about the public’s opinion of his family’s grieving process, a piece on the family taking control of his creative property, a brief about a memorial for Jackson at the Apollo Theater, and finally one about a moving van delivering items to Neverland Ranch.

Some of these are at least somewhat relevant, although played out, and some make me wonder how anyone could assess it as publishable news. Yesterday, there was an alert that the coroner had ENTERED JACKSON’S L.A. HOME. Not that anything consequential had actually happened, but that he was seen going inside. Today, a man takes stuff to Neverland Ranch. He won’t say what the stuff is, but, YOU GUYS, they’re bringing STUFF to NEVERLAND RANCH. What’s next? Katherine Jackson orders a Big Mac and a Diet Coke tomorrow for lunch? Autopsy confirms so far that Michael Jackson had some bellybutton lint? Paris Hilton thinks Jackson was “Hot”?

Watching this thing snowball is like witnessing a global mass hysteria. Well, not “like” — it is. The more this thing is obsessed about, the more it becomes obsessed about. People need to just quiet down, and let him finally rest in peace. Unless something truly important is happening, all this clamor is completely in vain, all this copy a waste of space.

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Today’s video debuts of one of my favorite activities with kids: cooking. Little ones like to be part of the cooking process sometimes even more than they like the results. Take a little bit of time to prepare before you start and your cooking will be smooth (well as smooth as possible for cooking with youngsters.)

This video features my nephew, Quique, 4, and my niece, Mimi, 3. I think it’s pretty safe to say that we all had a really good time making these bird’s nest cookies. Here’s the story and recipe.

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Cuddle up to Isabella

Isabella is a very cuddly and outgoing Labrador retriever and shar pei mix dog, say officials at the Wenatchee Valley Humane Society.

She is devoted, well-mannered and walks OK on a leash, but would benefit from training to learn commands.

Isabella is happy to meet other dogs and enjoys giving kisses and receiving lots of attention, including belly rubs.

For more information, click here.

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It’s summertime, the season of ketchup and mustard and relish. But the reigning condiment king that is ketchup, I discovered, has become a rare find on the tables of my friends and family.

I really only break it out when creating the perfect burger. When I was a kid, I loved eating it with scrambled eggs, pork chops and just about any savory breakfast food.

Even my friend, Kelsie, who would eat ketchup on almost everything when she was growing up, has found a sauce she favors over ketchup: A1 Steak Sauce. When asked what she puts it on (she’s a vegetarian) she said “everything I used to put ketchup on, anything.”

My sister, Shana, chimed in that she rarely takes the ketchup bottle out of the fridge (admittedly, she’s never been a big fan.) A quick poll of everybody we were with concluded that ketchup has fallen by the wayside, except on burgers during the summertime.

None of us could really determine why ketchup has been relegated to the cupboard or fridge. I know that I eat way less fast food than I did when I was younger, and there’s no doubt ketchup goes fantastically on lots of fast food, maybe that’s why. Who knows?

Have you begun neglecting ketchup, too? Do you have any theories as to what’s behind the dethroning of king ketchup?

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With releases like these over the last few months, I say the state of rock is more than healthy at the moment.

Manchester Orchestra – “Shake It Out”

Wilco – “Wilco (The Song)”

Mastodon – “Oblivion”

The Mars Volta – “Teflon”

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Congratulations to Nic Dowd on being drafted by the LA Kings in the 7th Round of the 2009 NHL Draft. Nic is a great kid with big things ahead of him. Still don’t believe Wenatchee is a hockey town? Here’s your proof!

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Among the highlights of a 2,500-mile motorcycle ride I took a couple weeks ago were the windy roads through Northern California’s famed Napa-Sonoma wine country. I took Highway 128 between Healdsburg, where I had spent a night with friends, to Davis, where I caught Interstate 80 to hightail it up to Auburn, where I have family.

Healdsburg, in Sonoma County, is surrounded by some of the great vineyard areas, including Alexander Valley, Chalk Hill and Russian River Valley. Ferrari-Carano, Ridge, Rodney Strong, La Crema, Kendall-Jackson and many other famous wineries are located there.  Riding east through the Alexander Valley on Highway 128 I passed one familiar vineyard name after another.

Crossing the county line into Napa, the distractions only got worse. More than 400 wineries are situated in Napa Counties 788 square miles. Napa has 45,000 acres of vineyard, nearly a third more acreage than all of Washington. Between St. Helena and Rutherford, I passed oak tree lined driveways leading to Charles Krug, Beringer, Sutter Home, Robert Mondavi, Louis Martini, Hess, Grgich Hills. I had stopped to taste wines at many of those pioneering wineries several times 35 years ago when I still lived less than 100 miles away. Wine tasting was free back then. Now, it can cost $5 to $15 or more to sip. With 4.7 million Napa Valley tourists annually, charging for wine tasting sounds reasonable.

I didn’t stop at any of the wineries on my route. Highway 128, especially once you leave Rutherford and head towards Lake Berryessa, demands serious focus on a motorcycle. I  did stop to examine pruning and trellis techniques at several vineyards that might lend themselves to my 100 struggling vines in Cashmere.

I opened a bottle of Kendall-Jackson Cabernet Sauvignon later that evening while dining on grilled sausage and pepper sandwiches with my mother, brother and sister in Auburn. Pretty darn good for a wine made from grapes that grew right down that long crooked road.

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Yesterday the World ran a blog post I wrote several months ago about my son and his lemonade stand. The topic of the post was my son’s desire to expand his product line by saving enough money to purchase a soda machine that he would set up on our well-traveled sidewalk. I should probably mention that my son is 7.

This morning, I had heard from two friends who had shared the article in last night’s paper with their kids before I had enjoyed my second cup of coffee. Both moms were calling to tell me that after hearing the article, their kids “wanted in”. They wanted a tiny part of lemonade glory. I spent the rest of the morning thinking about this. So far, the lemonade stand has taught my son about fiscal management, inventory management, diversification, marketing and customer service. It now presented the opportunity to teach lessons in human resources or franchising, so we talked about it.

I told him that two of his friends wanted to be a part of his lemonade stand and that the next time Luke’s Lemonade was open for business, he should call them to come help. He asked a few questions, I provided a few answers and his conclusion was quite simple: “If I let them help, they’ll learn the secret to my lemonade.” He had a point.

I’m a big believer in the concept of “the more the merrier”, but business is business, after all. So, before his friends are invited to help, they will be presented with a non-disclosure agreement for review, probably crafted in orange crayon (his favorite color). It’s never too early to instill the concept of proprietary protection, after all.

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No Weekend Funnies today.  This obviously has not been a good week, Farrah Fawcett’s death almost got submerged by Michael Jackson’s passing, a fellow I worked with in the public sector was taken from us unexpectedly early this week, then I learned last night,  courtesy of a posting on www.soulfuldetroit.com ….thank you Mark Speck…..that Sky Saxon died yesterday morning in Austin, Texas.

Sky who?  Sky was co-founder and leader of the mid-late 60’s garage rock/punkish/bluesish band The Seeds, which belonged to that interesting little pocket of rock and roll at that time that tried to bring the underground sensibilities to Top 40.  Think Blues Magoos, Amboy Dukes, Electric Prunes, and Roky Erickson’s Thirteenth Floor Elevators, bands whose effect on the progression of R&R far outweighed (and outlasted) either the life of the band or their success on the charts.   All of these bands helped lay the groundwork for the “acid rock” that was to follow, and in a way one could trace the emergence of the punk movement back that far.

As a bass player he was ok (it’s Jan Savage on guitar  and Daryl Hooper for the keyboards), as a singer he was pretty good, but as a band, The Seeds just seemed to click in the same way that sometimes a semi sloppy “jam” can sound better than a fully realised piece of production. 

He was still out there playing.  He’s was in the 2008 video for Smashing Pumpkins “Superchrist”, and touring relentlessly with a new version of The Seeds.  He had appeared last weekend in Austin, fell ill after the show, was taken to the hospital and died Friday morning.  He was (everybody thinks) 63.

From 1967, The Seed’s Top-40 single “Pushin’ To Hard”, with a real young Casey Kasem doing the intro….

….and carrying it one step further, “Tripmaker”

If you can find it, the 1966 lp (it’s on CD now) “A Web Of Sound”, which has both of these cuts, is worth the price you have to pay.  You’ll hear much more than you expect from this (then)  L.A. based outfit.

 RIP Sky.  You may not have been a commercial hit, but your music still lives……

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