Monday, February 4, 2008

Agave Mead!

My friend Leslie, an awesome vegan and animal rights activist who moved to Asheville, North Carolina last year, came to visit this weekend. She's taking a mead making class back home, and she came armed with supplies.

Mead is homemade alcohol made from fermenting honey with yeast. But we don't use honey, so we substituted agave nectar. Someone in her class had tried agave and said it worked fine. I filled a half-gallon sized bottle with hot water, 2 cups of agave, and herbs (meadowsweet, woodruff, and jasmine). Leslie made hers using apple juice in place of water.



Now we have to let our bottles sit in the back of a closet for THREE MONTHS while it ferments. That's a long time to wait! But since we made the concoctions around the 1st of February, it should be ready in time for May Day! Yea! I'll let you know how it turns out.

Yesterday, I ate the last chickpea cutlet (see previous post). Instead of serving with gravy, I baked it, sliced it in half, and stuffed it in warm pita bread with spring greens and homemade tahini sauce. It was tasty! I'm trying to use up my white flour pita bread since I'm giving up flour. I'll start buying whole wheat when I run out.



I also made veggie lasagna this weekend for a potluck but didn't take pictures. It tasted great, but it wasn't all that pretty because I had to re-heat it in the oven when I got to the event. Re-heating made the sauce on top dry up a little. And I made "Garlicky White Spread on Crostinis" from "Skinny Bitch in the Kitch" for another potluck. No pics there either. I forgot. But I have some leftover spread that I may photograph later this week for leftovers.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Thanks for calling me awesome Bianca, you're the best.

Bianca said...

Girl, you know you're awesome! What other friend do I have that makes her own soymilk, takes mead making classes, and creates vegan Halloween gingerbread houses for potlucks....oh, and makes me a chocolate chip cookie cake for my birthday!

Anonymous said...

Oh, Bianca, I'm tearing up & blushing at the same time...that haunted cookie mansion was SO good.

Dianna Dalton said...

I have a DIY fermentation book and mead was one of the recipes in it. It's good to know I can use agave nectar!

Anonymous said...

Making an alcoholic drink from agave nectar as you would mead from honey does work and makes a similar drink. Technically, a drink called mead is made from honey. If there is no honey in it at all, it's not actually mead. It's more of an agave wine, as mead is basically honey wine. I am interested in trying to make some agave wine, though; it sounds like it would be very good.