It was a cold November night, fall was all around. Halloween was placed in boxes and gently packed away awaiting next October's frights while Thanksgiving was peaking out its head. The splendor of orange and yellow and rustic red around the house mirrored the blasts of color and heat cast out from the fireplace. The leaves outside the big picture window had started to change with bright bursts of color being whipped around by the cold November wind. And Charisse was snuggled up on the couch straining to hear her favorite Seinfeld show over the banging and cursing and carrying on that was Eric on his own in the kitchen. Yup, things were pretty much normal. You see Charisse actually had a touch of a cold, so Eric decided to whip up some hot mulled apple cider which would fit the night. Unfortunately, Eric decided to do it his way and in the kitchen that doesn't always work. Actually, he followed the steps pretty faithfully, but neglected the difference between "finely diced" and "Pureed". He also bought the cheap cheesecloth from Safeway and so was ending up with more of a mulled apple sauce than a cider. It was one of those moments when he realized we had Charisse's
juicer 
around and that a juicer would be much better than trying to squeeze apples through a fine mesh strainer. We have the Waring one and it is a beast. Eric had gotten through about half the apples when he switched to the juicer, which pulled the same amount of juice from the "done" apples as Eric had done the hard way, then pulled all the juice from the rest all in about 2 minutes. Next time, were going all juicer all the way. Anyways, once we got the juice thing figured out, we pulled the cider together and it really was just what the evening needed.
