The Most Popular Thanksgiving Dish was the Toilet

And, no, no one got sick. 

We spent our Thanksgiving this year with the Schram side of the family in Wisconsin.  For the most part, it was a very traditional Thanksgiving.  For the most part.  Of course we had the classic dishes...turkey, mashed potatoes, green been casserole, cranberries, pumpkin pie and don't, the wine!  We played games, watched football, laughed and shared what we are thankful, just like we should on Thanksgiving day. 

However, this year was a little bit different.  Instead of exchanging recipes on our favorite Thanksgiving casserole dish, everyone was chattering about another type of dish...a certain porcelain "dish."

Throughout the noon hour, I'd hear some of the men say, "Well, I'm off to visit Rudolph..." And they'd walk off to the bathroom.  I attributed this to being some Schram family joke that I wasn't privy to quite yet.

Then later, some of the women would ask me, "Have you been to the toilet yet?"

At this point I started to question what kind of family I had married into!  I knew the Schrams were quircky, and fairly unabashed, but why was everyone talking about going to the toilet?

When they started to scurry into the guest powder room in twos and threes, and would come back giggling and say, "You have got to go to the bathroom," my curiosity got the best of me and I had to go see for myself what the fuss was all about.

This Thanksgiving was a year of firsts.  Besides being my first Thanksgiving as a wife, Thanksgiving 2009 marks the first time I have ever I asked my host, "Would you mind if I took a picture of your toilet and posted it on my blog?"

And my multi-talented and artisitic sister-in-law, Jenny,** who was hosting us, exclaimed, "Of couse! I would be honored if you put a picture of my toilet on your blog!"

So I am.

Can you see him?

Jenny, who lives with two males, one being an 8 year old, was sick of, ahem...wiping off the toilet seat.  So through a little research she found that if men have some sort of "target" in the toilet, they are pschologically inclined to "aim" for the target, thus leaving the toilet seat dry and clean. 

And what better toilet target to kick off this holiday season than Rudolph, the Red Nose Reindeer!

After 13 males using the same toilet throughout the day, the seat looked pretty good at at the end of the day! It worked!

One thing I never thought I would be posting on this blog is instructions on how to paint your own toilet target.  But, here it goes.  Thank you, Jenny, for sharing this little craft with me!

If you pour a bucket of water in the toilet, it drains all the water out.  Once the water is out, let the toilet dry out and then use nail polish in whatever colors of your choice to paint whatever you like.  Viola!  You have your own painted toilet!

**Not only does she paint toilets, but I also got a sneak peak of a painting of our vineyard Jenny is painting for us and it is fabulous!  With her permission, maybe I'll post some of the other awesome work she does in another post another day. 

I promise, next week I will go back to my regular posts on wine, dogs, and living on the vineyard.  Just thought this was too good NOT to share.

Hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving!!

Someday...

Ummmm...Ashley, why are you posting a picture of...a road? 

Because, this is the road that runs perpendicular to our road.  It is a road you take to get to our place.  Notice the gravel on the bottom of the picture above?  Yeah, that's our road.

Look at that beautiful black pavement. Two days ago, this road running perpendicular to our road was GRAVEL.  Today it is paved.  Are they paving our road?  No.  Ours still looks like this (below)...that's gravel if you can't tell. 

But it is one sign that gives us a glimmer of hope that our township is slowing easing into the 21st century and that maybe, just maybe, one day soon, they will realize the luxury of driving vehicles on this newly paved road and decide to pave the rest of the township roads...namely ours!  Plus, think how much cleaner all of our cars will be if it is all paved!  We'll save hundreds of dollars a year on car washes!  Have I mentioned that our house is like .8 miles down our road to a Target that was put in last year?  I literally drive on the gravel road for less than a mile and turn right into the back entrance of Target.  I mean, how many Targets are that close to a gravel road?   Don't you think a road that close to Target is worthy of pavement?  I do. More information on why we are anxious for our road to be paved is discussed in this post.

All right, enough about that.  It was just such a thrill when I drove on it this morning for the first time that I put my windows down and my hands up in the air! 

This morning I drove to meet a friend to do some shopping.  And whatever you may be thinking, I did NOT make shopping plans to get out of doing more post pounding in the vineyard.  Noooo, siree.  I wouldn't do that.  I just figured since my sister had gotten a really cute piece at Mudd Lake (furniture and decor shop in an old red barn) last weekend, and a fellow blogger mentioned there was a sale this weekend, that I needed to make a trip.  And it is a very cool place!

My friend also introduced me to another really cute store near there called Kathie's Finds.  A woman, named Kathie (imagine that), has a shop out of her really old farm house.  Lots of little rooms filled with Christmas decorations, vintage furniture, crystal chandeliers hanging from the ceiling, timeless treasures, kids toys, and even a kitchen with hot cider and cheese balls and pretzels!  Definitely started putting me in the holiday mood. 

However, the highlight of my visit to this shop was when I peaked out on the back porch of the shop and saw this guy...

And then I looked a little further in the room and I saw ALL these guys...

Hard to tell in my little snapshot, but there are THREE Great Danes!  And I thought we were crazy for having two!  Plus, she had two cute little fluffy dogs.  Anyway, her Great Danes were huge!  Note the little white dog in the corner for measurement comparison.  But, look at them! There were tons of  folks walking all around their home/this little shop, and they were just hanging out, not bothered one bit, reinforcing to me that these are indeed gentle giants.  I just have yet to see this peacefulness with mine.  But it gave me a glimmer of hope. 

Of course, I tracked down Kathie and ask her about her Danes.  She said they go through 10 lbs of food...A DAY!!!  Holy cow...what have I gotten mself into?!  Can that be right?  Maybe she meant in a week.  She also said she cooks for her dogs...makes them hamburger, eggs, rice, and carrots.  She said it is cheaper than dog food AND very nutritious.  Does anyone cook for their dogs?  If so, I would like to know.  All I've fed my dogs (other than their 5-6 cups a day EACH of IAMS Large Breed Puppy food) is peanut butter.  And they go crazy for peanut butter.  But, I would love to hear of any good dog "recipes."  We'll see if I can rationalize cooking not only for my big eater husband, but also my big eater dogs.

Today was a good day for dreaming...

Someday, we will have our road paved.

Someday, we will get our winery license.

Someday, we'll be able to open up our own "shop" right outside our home, just like the two places I visited today. 

Someday, my energetic Great Dane puppies will chill out and they'll be the ones lying on the back porch of our tasting room with visitors admiring them.  They'll be perfect gentle giant vineyard greeters. 

Someday.  Hopefully soon!

Happy Hour: Mulled Wine

As a reprieve from writing about our various projects, events, and progress at Schram Vineyards, I am going to start a regular Happy Hour post.  No promises on what day of the week these will come out or even how often,  but I will make an effort to pepper my blog with some of these posts dedicated to wine, wine tastings, and even some wine related crafts.  Something Aaron and I started doing together last year is designating a wine night for the two of us.  I know, I know...every night is wine night for us!  It's a tough life having to drink wine for this business, but it's "research." But really, it's a night where we set aside an hour or two to further our knowledge of the industry, wine, Minnesota wine, to experiment, to research, to plan, really whatever as long as it involves wine!  We call it happy hour.  What better forum than this blog to share some of what we are learning and doing?

With the holidays approaching and cool weather setting in, I thought I'd share our hot spiced mulled wine libation, which has been a hit at our Harvest party the last two years.  Similar to Sangria, there is no one recipe for making mulled wine.  There are lots of variations and I've never used the same ingredients or measurements every time.  Plus I'm not big on using exact measurements myself.  It's just a matter of adding this and that until it tastes to your liking and within the characteristics of mulled wine.  In general, here is what you will need to make your own mulled wine:

1.  If you've ever wanted an excuse to use cheap wine and serve it to your guests, this is your opportunity because the spices in a mulled wine help cover up the wine's flaws!  If you happen to make your own wine, you can use a batch of wine that maybe didn't turn out to your liking, or one that isn't worth bottling on its own or one you're saving just for blending.  A dry wine works best for mulled wine.  Last time I made it, I  used a Cabernet from a kit we made last year that we weren't crazy about.  We decided it wasn't good enough on its own to bottle and drink, but it made great mulled wine! 

2.  Find a crockpot or a big coffee urn so you can warm up the wine.  Pour the wine in and keep it on low heat.

3.  Stir in sugar.  This is a spiced sweet warmed wine.  Add about 1/2 cup of sugar for each 750 ml bottle of wine.  Just don't add too much...you don't want it to taste like wine kool-aid.  If you are feeling especially punchy, you can also add a bit of brandy.  Something to keep in mind...a little goes a long way!

 4.  Add spices.  Here is where you can get creative.  My personal preference is to go to the grocery store and just buy the pack of mulling spices for $1.41 (see below), which includes cloves, allspice, orange and lemon peels, nutmeg, ginger and cinnamon. I pierce an orange with whole cloves (see above) and let that float in the pot to get some orange zest and clove flavor and I also put in a a few cinnamon sticks.  You can also take the mulling spices and put them in a cheese cloth to float around in the crock pot or perk through a coffee pot to filter the wine through the spices.  You just don't want the spices floating around themselves so they get poured into the drink!  You could use these same spices for a hot apple cider too. 

5.  Let the spices "mull" a bit in the wine and keep on low heat.

6.  Serve and enjoy!

Schram Stogies

Good guesses on the mystery photo in my previous post!  Maybe that was too easy?

Among our various homegrown products, tobacco was on the list this year.  Okay, before you judge us for being politically incorrect, let me explain.  It's just for stogies!  Apparently, we're all about indulgences here and we figured, why stop with wine?  Let's grow our own cigars!  Well, not actually grow the cigars, but you know what I mean. I took this photo of the tobacco leaves drying out in our greenhouse last weekend.

Yes, this was one of my husband's crazy ideas and if you are like I was when he told me of his plans to grow tobacco leaves on our property, you likely have a few questions crossing your mind.  Let me see if I can address them for you here: 

Yes, it is perfectly legal to grow in Minnesota.
No, we don't plan to sell cigars with our wine, because,
Yes, we'd need yet another license to do that.
No, this picture is not of the tobacco that goes in the cigars.
Yes, these tobacco leaves will be used as the wrappers for the cigars.
No, neither of us are smokers.
Yes, Aaron enjoys a cigar now and then and,
Yes, sometimes I'll take a puff or two.
No, we've never rolled cigars before.
Yes, Aaron has done a lot of research on how to do it.
No, I am not a fan of his breath after he's smoked a stogie.*
No, I don't know what a Minnesota grown cigar will taste like, but
No, I'm not a cigar officianato who could tell the difference between this and a Cuban anyway.
Yes, we do plan to share cigars with friends who come to visit because,
Yes, we planted plenty of these plants out in our field to experiment with, which are,
Yes, actally really quite lovely looking tall flowering plants.  Tobacco plants. Who knew?
No, they will not be ready to roll for another 3-6 months, but
Yes, we are prepared with some old fashioned cigar molds purchased from ebay.
Yes, I will do a post when we have our first rolled cigar and give a review.

*I've heard eating an apple helps cure (or at least counteract) cigar breath.  Good thing we have apple trees too.  I'll be testing out this theory.

If you have any other cigar breath cures, I'm all ears!

Any Guesses?

...As to what this could be?

Hint:  It was harvested from our property this year.  You can smell it, you can taste it, but you can't eat it.

Answer will be revealed in a future post.  Stay tuned!

Tackling Post Pounding

After an atypical rainy, cold, and even snowy October, this first weekend in November greeted us with sunshine and 65 degree t-shirt weather, reminiscent of a typical Minnesota September weekend.  This bout of warm, dry weather did not come without strings attached, however, as Aaron reminded me that it meant  getting some vineyard chores done that we couldn't get done in that disgrace of an October.  Just when I thought I was off the hook for hard labor for at least 5 months, I had to break out the rubber boots and gloves yet again and trudge out into the field.  Remember those 500 8 ft posts I referred to a while back?  You didn't think those went in the ground themselves, did you?  We've learned that recruiting free manual laborers on a regular basis is harder than we thought, so my poor husband has to rely on his petite wife, whom he plucked right out of uptown and could benefit from lifting a few weights, to help pound posts in the ground to build the trellis system for the vines we planted this last spring. 

I don't mind helping at all.  Really, I don't.  I am excited to be making progress and getting things done.  And I believe I have made great strides in acclimating to this farm life and learning the art of grapegrowing, which has been evolving over thousands of years across the world.  But I do sometimes have a hard time completely escaping from all the modern world distractions in order to devote my entire day to vineyard work, which now without daylight savings, is quite a bit shorter.  And there is no rooster crowing at this farm!

And so, even though we decided to sleep in until 9:30am, and even though out in the field I was periodically pulling my smartphone out of my pocket to text some friends about our plans for that night, or to take a quick glance to see what was going on on Facebook...and even though I had to stop and snap a few blog-worthy photos with my digital camera to document our vineyard in the changing seasons...

And even though my cute little size 6 green rubber boots took twice as long to stomp in the mud around the posts than Aaron's size 12 steel toe work boots...and even though the weight of my body jumping on the shovel to dig up dirt made minimal impact in the ground...and even though Aaron is still getting over a head cold and I am fighting one coming on...

...and even though we had to take some breaks to throw around the frisbee with the dogs to

burn of some of their puppy energy...

...and lost daylight by 4:30pm, we were STILL able to get close to 100 posts in the ground.

Only 400 more to go.

So, yes, while I did help, I'll give most of the credit to my diligently working husband, who is much less distracted than me.  And now that I spent a day doing that, I can now totally rationalize him purchasing the post digger tractor implement he worked so hard to convince me we needed just for this purpose. Money well spent, honey!  The rest of the trellis posts will have to wait until spring, unless of course, this warm spell continues, which is unlikely.  This is Minnesota afterall.

Oh, AND I think it worth mentioning we did find some time to powerwash our cars.  After driving on wet gravel road for the month of October and still getting embarrassing comments from people, we figured it was time.  Don't you?  I told you we do wash them...occassionally.

Gotta run.  Gonna sweet talk my husband into giving me a shoulder massage.  All that post hole digging made me sore!

The Unity Wine Pour

In an attempt to jazz up my blog, you may have noticed I added a new picture to the title, so I thought I would give a little context behind it.  This was a candid shot taken by our photographer during our wedding ceremony last June and has already become one of my favorite photos of all time.  Since wine and wine making is a central theme in our lives, naturally, it seemed appropriate for that to be a theme for our wedding, as a metaphor for our marriage.  Instead of doing a unity candle after saying our vows, we took a bottle of red wine and a bottle of white wine, each representing our unique characters and qualities, and poured them in unison to create a beautiful rose wine. 

The funny part about it was, we hadn't really practiced how this blending was going to go before doing it real time.  We liked the idea of doing a wine pour and what it represented in our life together, but for all we knew, blending a red and white together out of the bottles could have made a really mucky and ugly color wine.  And it had the ability to get expensive if we tried to "practice" with multiple bottles of wine to try and get the perfect pour.  At 11:30pm the night before the big day, I was up experimenting with 5 ounce glasses of water and trying to decide how much we should pour, what vessel we should pour from, what we should pour into, and just hoping that with the actual wine that it would all turn out okay.  The morning of the wedding, I called Aaron and instructed him to just pick up two bottles, a red and a white wine that he thought would look nice blended together for this very special and unique moment uniting us as a couple.   Nothing like the last minute details! 

In this picture we were blending our two wine bottles together, while our musicians played a violin and keyboard instrumental of "You Raise Me Up."  I remember watching in awe at how our wines poured together turned this gorgeous raspberry color, which happened to be one of our wedding "colors."  And I could have sworn at that very moment, a ray of sunshine peaked out right through the shaded area our ceremony was taking place and shined right through the giant wine glass we were pouring into.  It could not have fallen more perfectly into place if we had spent months planning it.  Go figure.  The one thing we spent the least amount of time planning and left the details of until the very last minute, was one of the most memorable and meaningful moments from our wedding day.  But of course everything was lovely and special.

Another memorable moment from our wedding, was the surprise "groom's dance," when  Aaron and all of his groomsmen came out on the dancefloor wearing lederhosen as a salute to the night we met.  A little background:  Aaron and I met at an Oktoberfest celebration in Minneapolis, ironically, while drinking German beer, and he and his friends were donning authentic lederhosen they had bought in Munich the month prior.  Apparently, I am a sucker for a tall, dark, and handsome goofball in lederhosen. And so our story began.  And so did lederhosen as another theme in our life.  Not as a materialistic theme, but as a symbol of the silly circumstances under which our whole journey began.

So you'll understand why we thought it was so stinkin' cute to dress our precious (now 85 lb) pup in lederhosen for Halloween to continue carrying out this lederhosen theme in our life...