So since I was banned from cooking for a while, the wife decided she wanted to make up some loaves of quickbread this weekend. So we made a couple pumpkin spice loaves and a couple banana nut loaves. Tomorrow she has muffins on the agenda. Funny thing is, she wants to cook these things, but she doesn't really cook, so it ends up being me in the kitchen again. Well, long as she is happy, who am I to question.

Oh yeah, we also made a batch of old fashioned vanilla ice cream today. Tomorrow we make some chocolate.

Did I mention all of this is no sugar added. We are using splenda. The ice cream turned out excellent. Quite a thing to be eating homemade ice cream while it is snowing and blowing outside.

Nope, I don't support mexican agriculture. That is good cured long leaf by the name of "Diamond Crown". I still have a nice wooden box more than half full that I've been working on slowly. Good brandy dippers.

Yes YoDuh, but that ain't mexican agriculture, least ways not the kind I was referring to. I am after all a native born Texican, so you should know I would appreciate a good set of melons.

Stick with homebrew... Pretty easy to do and makes a nice relaxing hobby...

A few rules:

1) It is easy to brew a good homebrew
2) It is also easy to mess up a homebrew
3) You should be drinking a homebrew when making a batch of homebrew

I've done several batches over the year, but haven't had time of late to do another.

I belive the keys to making homebrew are:

1. Good ingredients. Like good ingedients improve the dishes one cooks, good hops, malts, waters and yeasts improve brews. Trying having the right one of each for the type of brew you are making;
2. Know what your ingredients taste like. If you do not know what it tastes like going in, how can you figure out what an ingredient did to the flavor of your brew;
3. If you are ever in doubt, wonder or simply have a moment with a free hand, relax and drink some homebrew right then and there. If you do not have homebrew, something made by someone else will need to suffice until you do, substitute liberally.

Yes Dan, but in your item 2, as with my sausage making, sometimes you just gotta experiment and see what comes out the other end.

One other key for brewing...

Sanitation -- Those nasty beer loving microbes won't screw up your first (or second) batch of homebrew -- but they turned my fourth batch into a nasty tasting, self-decanting mess.

Yeah, sanitation is paramount. The one-step sanitizer is great stuff and you don't have to fully rinse it either.

Hmmm... getting thirsty...