[Sca-cooks] Re: Still ... what happened to the still?

[Christiane]

Message: 6
Date: Wed, 1 Sep 2004 22:42:32 -0400
From: "Daniel  Phelps" <phelpsd at gate.net>
Subject: [Sca-cooks] Still... What happened to the Still?
To: "Cooks within the SCA" <sca-cooks at ansteorra.org>
Message-ID: <00ad01c49096$8084d6a0$310fa5d1 at DanElizabeth>
Content-Type: text/plain;	charset="iso-8859-1"


Was written:

Grandpa had built the house with a cave; it had the barrels
> for the wine and the barrel for the vinegar. It also had Grandpa's still,
> where he made the rocket fuel, um, I mean, grappa.

snip

> After Grandpa died, the still was shut down;

Just before my father went off to war way back around 1950,  his namesake
great uncle Dick took him out to "the shed" and showed him "the still".
Pops says it was the prettiest little copper still you ever saw.  Great
uncle Dick said to him "...it's yours when you come back.  I'm leaving it to
you."   It's family legend that thoughts of that still kept him safe through
the invasion at Inchon and the movement to Chosen and warm through the long
walking "attack in a different direction" that got him out the other side of
Korea with all his toes and fingers.   To this day Pops wonders what happen
to that still.

============================

Well, from a discussion of knowledgeable folks on the herbal list, I have found out that to distill alcohol, even for your own consumption, is illegal in the United States. Back in the old days of the neighborhood, when it was entirely Italian and the street was occupied by my family's relatives, no one was going to rat out my grandpa for having a still — especially not when the social rituals when menfolk visited in the afternoon or evening was to have the grappa jug out. But the still was definitely grandpa's thing, and one that he bodged together himself; after he died, and the neighborhood was changing, my uncle carried on the winemaking but didn't want to get arrested for illegal distilling or blow up the house. So the majority of the still was dismantled.

Your Pops' still is probably in pieces in a scrapyard, unfortunately. 
=========================================

Odd food note, he still refuses to eat canned fruit cocktail.  It seems that
for a time during the period when they were surrounded by "Chinese
volunteers", cut off and vitually given up for dead by everyone but
themselves, that was all he had to eat... a whole case of fruit cocktail.
That and tootsie rolls kept him alive.  Did you know that if you chew a
tootsie roll and then press it as a lump into a bullet hole in a jeep
radiator it will carmelize and plug the hole?    The company that makes
tootsie rolls still sends boxes of them to his Chosen Reservoir veterans
group reunions.   Tootsie rolls, the real "life saver" candy.
================================================

Canned fruit cocktail is bad when you have the option of eating something else; no wonder why your dad refuses to eat it now!

I always found Tootsie Rolls kind of gross; knowing that they can be used to plug holes in Jeep radiators makes them all the more gross! But at least then they have a use!


Gianotta