Laughing Out Loud ~ The Day I Spent Making Chocolate Candy

Laughing Out Loud

The Day I Spent Making Chocolate Candy

Don’t you just love to laugh? I truly believe that life is more enjoyable when you get to laugh. I try to surround myself with people who are cheerful and amusing.

Growing up, I loved watching the tv show I Love Lucy. Of course it was in black and white. With my mother sitting by my side, we would laugh and joy would fill our house. After losing my mom several years ago, it took me only a little while to realize that Lucy will always remind me of my mother. Although Lucille Ball was a few years older than my mom, the style, the mannerisms, the laughter were all so similar to my mom.

The I Love Lucy show has some great classics episodes. My favorite was the one where Lucy gets a tad tipsy selling Vitemeatavegamin.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m-wErh2qp2o

Trying desperately to get the script right all while having to taste over and over the little bottle of peppiness. Are you unpoopular? Do you pop out at parties? hahhaa

Another one of my favorite I Love Lucy episodes was called Job Switch. Lucy and Ethel get jobs at a Chocolate factory while Ricky and Fred hold down the house doing housework.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8NPzLBSBzPI

Of course who would not want to repeat the fun of Lucy and Ethel making chocolate candy? And that’s exactly what my friends and I did!

First my friends and I stopped in the centrum of Valkenswaard for lunch at a lovely little place was called Miss Coffee.  

We were served an array of salads, sandwiches, fruit and desserts. It was truly delightful. Next we drove 5 more minutes to Winter’s Chocolaterie.

We immediately put on our little plastic aprons, and our little plastic bonnets. We all washed our hands several times and then we were ready to learn and discover.

Mixing all the ingredients to make chocolate was so much fun (and delicious). Milk, pure and white chocolate… coming fresh from the mixer… just a fabulous messy delight.

We all got to pour and mold our own candies and then take them home. Mine I filled with hazelnut filling. Oh my!! 

And we did our very best to not let any chocolates get past us so we wouldn’t get fired!  Oh we for sure were on a sugar high. Laughing and having so much fun. At the end, we asked our teacher to take a silly photo of us playing out the I Love Lucy moment… right before she and Ethel get fired. Oh I Love Lucy!

Thank you Winter’s Chocolate for letting us come have fun in your factory. Truly a dream.

Oudewater Weigh House~Something Wicked this Way Comes

Oudewater Weigh House

Something Wicked

This Way Comes

With Halloween almost upon us and magic in the air,

My friend Ruxi and I visited a weigh house and thought we would share.

We traveled to Oudewater on a bright sunny day,

But what lay before us, neither could say.

Canals, leaning trees, we followed the winding path

Driving back through time when people took their wrath.

Men, women and children, 1000’s under trial

Thought to be witches, their lives had taken a spiral.

Burn them, cut them, see if they bleed,

Weigh them, let’s see if they are light enough to fly, indeed.

The Oudewater Weigh House became famous that’s true

For finding these witches were just people… making stew… not brew.

If you’d like to find out if you are a witch or not

Just drive to Oudewater and give that scale all you’ve got!

Champagne ~ The Search for the Perfect Glass of Bubbles

Champagne

The Search for the Perfect Glass of Bubbles

My weekend with friends celebrating a birthday, friendship, good food and laughter.

In celebration of my friend Jane’s birthday, she asked several of her friends to join her in the Champagne region of France. Eight of us, all Americans, took off early on a Friday morning driving the 4 short hour to Reims, where we would be touring several Champagne Houses.

There is no way I could possibly tell you the process of making champagne correctly, even though I listened quite intently several different times. I will leave that up to the experts. But I will say these are the things that I loved learning about champagne.

In order for the sparkling wine to be called champagne the grapes must be grown in the Champagne region of France and follow the rules of the Champagne appellation. They use three different grapes to make champagne…Pinot Noir, Pinot Meunier and Chardonnay. The Pinot Noir and Pinot Meunier grapes are black which makes you wonder about the color of champagne, but inside the black skin of the grapes is white juice.

They hand pick all the grapes. Yes you read that correctly, handpicked! Then they have 30 minutes to get them to the presses carefully without damaging or bruising the grape so the skin does not bleed into the juice.

After the juice has been pressed it is placed into a barrel. This is where the first fermentation takes place. Then it is placed into the bottle in which it will be sold.  The wine is mixed with a triage of wine, yeast and sugar. This is when the special champagne secondary fermentation takes place over time. This is the process that makes the wine bubbly.

 The wine is then aged for at least 15-30 months. I think this depends of the type of champagne. The next process is rotating the bottles over time slightly everyday either by hand or machine allowing the dead yeast cells known as lees to a new position.

As the bottles are rotated they are also lifted slightly each time upside down. This allows the lees to settle into the neck of the bottle.

 Once they have settled fully into the top of the bottle, the neck of the bottle is frozen, thus containing all of the lees into the neck. The crown cap is then removed at which time the pressure in the bottle forces the iced neck containing the lees to pop out. Wine from former vintages and sugar is then added to level off the champagne. The bottle is quickly corked and the wire cage attached.

As I said above, I am not the professional… just the girl who got to see the process and enjoy a “few” glasses of the beautiful bubbly delight during our girly weekend. We had a wonderful time wandering through the Champagne Houses, the vineyards, dining in French restaurants and even munching on a few croissants. But the best part was just being with friends enjoying our friend’s birthday.

Happy Birthday to our dear friend Jane… and many more.

Our tours of Champagne Houses:

G.H. Mumm, established in 1827.

Champagne de Castellane, established in 1895

We went to Moet & Chandon, established in1743. We were unable to get a tour so we just went to the boutique shop and outside on the grounds. Stunning!!!

For lunch we first toured the family owned Champagne J Chopin, established in 1947. 

The family has been cultivating the vines since the 18^th century, but they lost it during World War 1. It was taken over by the J Chopin family and the champagne was established in 1947. We had lunch served by the owner while we were there. Truly a delight.

Then on to Champagne Bouche Pere & Fils, established in 1920.

Happy Birthday Jane, and thank you for sharing it with us! Truly the time of our lives!!