Winter Comes to Manitoba

It happens every year. Winter arrives in Manitoba. Sometimes she comes gusting full force leaving us gasping with the severity of the onslaught. Sometimes she slips in quietly with just a whisper of soft, white snow to announce her presence.

This year was somewhere in between, lots of snow and wind for a couple of days with mid-temperatures ranging from about ten above to thirty below. It doesn't really matter if it's celcius or fahrenheit when it gets that cold.

Christmas rapidly approaches; shopping is almost finished, food is planned. Only eight sleeps until the big day.

It seemed an appropriate time to sample those brandied cherries I bottled back in July. Well, I have to say that next year I will be brandy-bottling every kind of fruit I can get my hands on. The cherries are very good, but even better is what the cherries did to the brandy. It became a soft, not sweet version of i'm not sure what...but very, very good! I suspect that different kinds of alcohol with different fruit might be the answer and I look forward to experimenting with different flavour combinations.

Brandied Cherries

A couple of weeks ago I made for the first time, Brandied Cherries. Pretty simple really. Cherries, sugar and brandy. The brandy was acquired at duty-free during a hockey trip to the USA and the cherries purchased at a good price at the local town grocery store. I washed the cherries well. Who knows whats on them these days? Then, did the usual things for sterilizing canning jars. Next, put the cherries, sugar and brandy into the jars, wiped and sealed them. Then into the  water bath. I did this even though recipes said that process was unnecessary due to the brandy but I wanted to be certain.
I am very much looking forward to trying them sometime around Christmas although they should be ready before that. I will take some pics of them in the next couple of days and post them here.