Yes dear friends and compatriots,

It is getting to be the time of the year when those words that bring a chill to not only the bones of the hardiest folk it also evokes visions of cold that chills to the bone of the mind as well.

Those words are a "NOR EASTER"

The visions it conjures in one's mind are those of seeming endless day long snow storms and the howl of old man winter blowing in from the frigid North driving the temperatures to well below zero!

So here are few recipes for some concoctions made to comfort the soul and give a hardy brace against those frigid and chill to the bone temperatures !      Brrrrrrrrrrr


APPLEJACK (an Unofficial Recipe)
Hard (fermented) apple cider
Take a quantity of hard cider, preferably several gallons at least, and put it in a cold place. Traditionally this is done in a barrel outdoors in wintertime, but improvise as your circumstances require. After it has chilled for several hours (traditionally this is overnight) inspect the barrel and see if a layer of ice has formed on top of the liquid. Remove this ice, as completely as possible, and discard. Repeat process until cider has achieved the desired degree of intoxicating qualities.
The rationale for this process is as follows: Cider, or any other wine, ferments naturally only to a certain point of alcohol content, after which it either turns to vinegar,  goes bad, or if properly bottled and sealed, just sits there. Alcohol has a lower freezing point than water, so all of the ice removed will consist of water, leaving the remainder of the liquid in a more concentrated state. It’s like boiling a liquid to remove water by evaporation, only using cold instead of heat for the process.
In circumstances where mechanical distillation was either impractical, illegal, heavily taxed, or unknown, the procedure above was the only means available to raise the alcohol content of the beverage any further. The results were not elegant brandy such as distillation would have produced, but achieved the desired result of the biggest drunk for the buck.
A recipe for this product has not been found in the Cookbook Editor’s collection of material from 1865 or earlier, but we had a reader request for this item and decided to pass along what we know about the matter. The same technique using wine rather than cider leads to a higher-proof liquid known as “winterwine”.
 

To all you folks who like a bit o’ the Irish for drink’n laddies here is one for a remembrance!

From Bon-Vivant’s Companion by Jerry Thomas, 1862. via

http://civilwarinteractive.com/cooking/?page_id=371

HOT IRISH PUNCH
1 wine glass Irish whiskey?2 wine glasses boiling water?1 tbs. fine sugar?Rind and juice of 1 lemon (optional)
This is the genuine Irish beverage. Combine one wine glass Irish whiskey with one tablespoon of fine sugar dissolved in two wine glasses of boiling water. If [making] lemon punch, the rind is rubbed on the sugar, and a small proportion of [lemon] juice is added before the whiskey is poured in.?
Tis a glorious fall day to partake of some of these fine old concoctions to enliven the spirit.

Please visit the Civil War Cooking website { http://civilwarinteractive.com/cooking/?page_id=371} for a plethora of relevant cooking, gardening and drink’n information from the Civil War Era.

Thanks to the Civilwarinteractive’s Website for this teaser for their site from dickbloom.com & civilwarblogger.com