Happy Halloween everyone! Hope you all have a safe trick-or-treating (or whatever it is you do) and thoroughly enjoy the day.

And because it’s Halloween I couldn’t resist running a few of the various weird images I’ve posted over the years. Enjoy!

I was in our local Bend Bulletin today, in an article about seasonal beers. Nice article, mostly accurate, but I was very surprised by the amount of "screen time" I got, so to speak. I only spoke with the reporter for something like 10 minutes on the phone last week.

This makes the third time that I’ve "officially" been in the paper, as an interviewee; the first was for a story on blogging back in 2004, the second was just last year (also on blogging).

But unofficially, I may have been mentioned without my prior knowledge, so it could (sort of) be more than three times: for instance, my blog was quoted (giving attribution to me) back in 2005 but I didn’t know about it until after the fact.

Thank goodness I come across lucid in today’s article, though. Sometimes I’m in those interviews and I just feel like I’m rambling nonsense.

A few years back, Law & Order had an episode where the killer planted a body part in the wreckage of the World Trade Center so that the crime would be covered up, looking instead like collateral damage from 9/11. It almost worked (but didn’t, of course) and got me thinking that the same type of plot device could be used in a different historical context, for instance the London Blitzkrieg during World War II.

So of course I began working the idea around in my head: a body is found in the rubble of a London building, and it turns out to have been planted there to cover up a murder. But since I’ve very little experience reading detective fiction I’ve decided that rather than trying to put that idea to paper myself, some writer out there must already have tackled the subject of mystery fiction set during World War II London. And I’d rather like to read it.

So, the question: does anyone know of such fiction, and/or could point me in the right direction? (Besides Amazon and Google searches, I mean. I’ll do that too, but those are no substitutes for actual recommendations.)

As a blogger who receives samples of products (mostly beer) and writes reviews of them, I read with interest this story that popped up on LATimes.com today: Bloggers must now disclose if they got paid to write a review.

Basically, the Federal Trade Commission has revised their "Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising" to add specific rules and language concerning bloggers.

A blogger who reviews a product — but leaves out the fact that he or she got a payment, high-value gift or free vacation to write the review — could run afoul of new federal regulations on advertising.

"The post of a blogger who receives cash or in-kind payment to review a product is considered an endorsement," said the agency in a release. "Thus, bloggers who make an endorsement must disclose the material connections they share with the seller of the product or service."

A blogger can, however, accept a free sample of a product for review purposes without disclosure, "provided that the product itself does not have such a high value that would make its receipt material (e.g., a car)," according to the revised rules.

I’m surprised I haven’t seen more being made of this online yet; this should be a big story in the blogosphere. These changes go into effect December 1st.

Fortunately I disclose everything that I’ve received on behalf of my blogs (really only The Brew Site has generated anything), and just as fortunately, while I’ve received lots of samples, I haven’t accepted any money or high-value material payment to do so. (I’ve received various bits of glassware with some of the beer, but that’s it—and it’s all documented on the blog.)

I’m going to be very interested to see how this shakes out the blogging world. Kids, disclose those payments!

This year, or the latter half, at least, has been a big harvest year for us. And one of the things that goes along with harvesting your own produce (or whatever) is the packaging and storage: you don’t want the stuff you picked to go bad. So there’s been a lot of freezing and canning this year as well.

This is the first time I’ve ever canned, believe it or not. Me personally, I mean; my mother canned all sorts of things when I was growing up. But having never done it myself, it was always a bit mysterious as to the process; turns out, it’s very, very easy. Most of the work comes in processing the fruit before it even hits the jars.

Check it out:

• Our July trip to Hood River yielded a bunch of cherries and blueberries: about 12 pounds of the former and about three pounds of the latter. We vacuum-sealed and then froze them.
• Between my small hop vine and the hops at my parents’ place, I picked several pounds of hops, which yielded something like 11 or 12 ounces of dried hops. Which I’ll be brewing the next several batches of beer with.
• The four pounds of wild plums from my parents’ place that I blogged about yesterday is yielding one gallon of wine.
• Another fruit-picking trip to Hood River a couple of weeks ago netted us about 130 pounds of apples and pears. Literally. Plus we brought home 12 or so pounds of peaches. The peaches went into freezer jam, and I’ve made (and canned) applesauce, canned four quarts of sliced apples, and eight quarts of halved pears. So far; there is still a lot of fruit to go.
• Three nice tomato plants were very productive.
• Our small garden this year (which was flooded out by torrential rains in the spring) yielded a number of carrots, onions, and a bit of lettuce; one medium-sized pumpkin (which is still on the vine as of this writing), and even one very small watermelon!
• I have a giant bulb of fennel from my mom’s garden. And come to think of it, several pounds of frozen rhubarb from her garden earlier in the year, too.

There’s more canning to be done this weekend, and I’m also thinking up other things to possibly do with the pears and apples—but since my creativity in this area tends to run towards alcohol, what I’ve come up with is apple/pear beer and pear wine. Perhaps a pear vodka sounds interesting too.

Oh, I was thinking about making some apple butter also.

And I’ve been making more beer this year, I suppose that counts. In fact, I have two five-gallon batches in carboys ready to bottle (likely this weekend), and if I want to brew with the fruit I should probably have another batch going soon.

Our house has become so domestic…

At my parents’ place in Alfalfa, they have a wild plum tree that produced fruit for (I believe) the first time ever this year. They were small, golden fruits that were terrifically sour as they grew, but ripened and turned a deep pink-purple and ended up being rather sweet.

They picked a bunch of the plums, and then picked a bunch more for me (at my request): I ended up with almost four pounds of them, many very ripe! I debated for a bit on what to do with them and decided to make wine.

I found a plum wine recipe online and went with it (the "basic" recipe at the top of the page); for a gallon of wine, it calls for three to four pounds of plums which worked out just right (four for sweet plums, three for wild—I compromised and used all four-ish pounds). The pitting of the plums was the biggest chore, as many were (over)ripe and almost falling apart, and many others were very small. The rest went fairly smoothly: making wine is easy.

That was about a week ago, and I racked it from the bucket to a gallon-size glass jug tonight for secondary fermentation. I’ll rack it again in about three weeks, and then again about three months after that. Then, of course, I’ll bottle it and (according to this particular recipe) age it for another six to 12 months.

(Making wine is easy—I didn’t say it was quick!)

No idea how the final product will turn out, but I did taste the sample I drew for the hydrometer reading: still fizzy with fermentation and a bit yeasty (especially the smell), it was fairly sweet and—if not for the yeastiness—would make a tasty drink right now.

Nothing to do now but shove it away in the the closet and be patient.