Chive Blossom Vinegar

 If you grow your own chives, you'll know that they produce a pretty lavender colored flower. From those flowers, we get seeds. I've been growing the same pot of chives, that I started from seed, for close to 10 years now.
What can you do with chives other than snip them onto a baked potato? Well, there's a lot you can do with them. I like to dehydrate them and powder them up and use them in seasoning blends. I also love to pick the flowers and make vinegar with them. They make an amazing base to vinaigrette dressings.

First, I'll show you all yesterday morning's livestock sighting down in the rock pit.

They like to graze down there. We like to watch them grazing down there. We see deer here almost every day. There were 4 does, but I couldn't over to get the other 2 in a photo.

I asked Bob if he would go out and pick the flowers off of the chives so that I could make vinegar. He agreed.

I did have to tell him to not pull the chives out by the roots.

He used his pocketknife. That was completely fine with me.

He came in with a fairly decent amount. They will continue to flower, so I'm not worried about not leaving enough blooms to reseed. There will be plenty for that and to make more vinegar.

I divided the blooms between 2 half-pint jars. I also snipped in some fresh chives.

I topped off the jars with white wine vinegar.

After that, just put the lids on, put in a dark, cool place for 3 or 4 days and then strain the vinegar. I plan on putting it back into the white vinegar bottle.

Now, I am waiting for my garlic scapes to come on. I hope it's soon!
Enjoy!

Homemade Fruit Vinegar

I was super bored a while back and I ran across a YouTube video of a guy who made his own vinegars. This was intriguing to me. I decided to give it whirl. I used dried fruit: mango, blueberries and regular ol' raisins.

You want to fill a very clean quart jar 1/4 of the way with dried fruit and top it off with bottled water (you want it to be purified). Top each jar with a coffee filter and secure with a rubber band. It will take a few weeks to see anything happening. This is where you are trying to capture some wild yeast.

Every single day, you want to stir your fruit. After about 2 weeks, it will start to turn into alcohol and you'll be able to smell it.

It will be foamy when you stir it. If you forget to stir, it can get a bit of mold on it. Just remove that with a spoon and carry one as normal.

Here are the raisin photos. It's the same process with any dried fruit.

The raisin one took a few more days to ferment than the mango one did. I still haven't gotten the blueberries to go. I'm going to just let them hang out and see what happens to them.

Yesterday, I strained the fruit out and discarded it. It did its job wonderfully. When I tasted the liquid, it tasted like vinegar. I put it into a clean jar and capped it. Vinegar ages well, just as wine does.

Finished mango vinegar. I'll use this in some Caribbean-inspired BBQ sauce.

Next, I strained out the raisins. I tasted this vinegar. This was surprisingly delicious. I'll be using this in place of rice wine vinegar in Asian recipes.

I have 2 new vinegars to experiment with now. Next on my list is some papaya and some currant vinegar. What will I do with those? I do not know, but the sky is the limit!