Spring!

Yesterday was the Vernal Equinox. I wish I would've been outside planting cold crops and turning the compost and enjoying fifty degree weather (and otherwise celebrating the change in seasons as a representation of future food, flowers, and babies); instead, I was inside at work all day, spent the evening at Whitney and Scott's house for the Three Best Friends Saturday Triple Feature!!: Volume 3, and have a newly broken foot, so probably wouldn't be too productive shoveling compost anyway.

However! I did plan ahead enough that we were able to share a bottle of Sima, a Finnish spring mead, for the first day of spring. My mom lived in Finland for a year and a half when she was twenty-one (trying to convert Finns to the LDS religion, which is apparently almost impossible). While she didn't make a whole lot of foods from Finland when I was growing up, we did usually have this fermented lemonade in the spring.

To make it, you put the peels of two lemons in a gallon bowl/jar, cover them with boiling water, and add 1/2 C brown sugar, 1/2 C sugar, lemon slices (pith removed), and 1/4 t yeast (I used a multi-purpose yeast for sparkling wine, but regular baking yeast works fine, too).

Let the sima sit, covered, for one or two days on the counter. The yeast will start doing its work, making carbonation. After a couple days, bottle the sima, and add a five or six raisins to each bottle. Cork the bottles. As the drink gets more fizzy, the raisins start to float.


When the raisins are floating, put the drink in the fridge to cool before drinking (or just drink right away. Sima's good lukewarm, too). I didn't put the bottle on the left in the fridge soon enough after the raisins starting floating, and so much CO2 built up that the cork popped off and hit the ceiling.


If you drink right away, the fermentation is little enough that it's okay to serve to kids- like kimchi, vinegar, etc. If you let it sit longer, it will quickly become as alcoholic as other wines. We're considering trying a batch like that, but it's so good this way, I don't know if I can wait long enough.

The number of raisins you get when you pour the sima into your class is a sign of how many kids you're going to have: three for me, six for Luke (uh-oh!)


I'm spending this first spring Sunday hanging out in sweatpants, drinking sima in front of the picture window in the livingroom, and updating my Netflix queue. Luke's on the couch next to me on his computer, and we're not really talking, but just doing that being-together-without-doing-something-together thing. So pleasant.

Happy Spring!