Sunday, December 13, 2009

Recipe: Make Your Own Horseradish

Horseradish… dispense with the jarred stuff

By: Tom DiGangi, Jr.

After my wife walked into the house smiling broadly and displaying an enormous quantity of horseradish from the garden, I was curious. After reading the ingredients on a jar of store bought horseradish in our refrigerator, I was inspired. Why don’t we make our own?

A bit of research and a few minutes later, we were comparing our own homemade horseradish to the stuff from the jar. The difference was remarkable. Ours was, for lack of a better word, pure. The jarred horseradish was eggy and sweet, in an unpleasing way. And, the heat difference was remarkable. The homemade product was hot, a good hot. The kind of hot that makes you want to eat, then eat more, then wipe your brow and when you’re done, blow your nose. That’s worth making your own horseradish.

Horseradish (Basic Preparation)

Ingredients

1 Large Piece of Horseradish (about 5 inches)

3 T. Water

3 T. White Vinegar

Kosher Salt to taste

Procedure

Peel the horseradish with a vegetable peeler, roughly chop and add to a food processor or blender with the water and salt. Puree until smooth. Add the vinegar and puree again. If you want the final product HOT, then wait a few minutes before adding the vinegar because the acidity halts the development of heat.

Adjust the seasoning with salt. Serve immediately or store in the refrigerator for a month or more.

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The Big Bad Blog Beginning: Marketing Gone Awry

So awhile back, I was talking to my home business and web marketing diva. I know what you're thinking right now. You're thinking, "Big deal! Everybody has a home business and web marketing diva." Maybe so, but if you're not talking to Dina at http://www.wordfeeder.com/, then you've got the wrong gal.

Since I have the right gal, Dina said, "You should start a blog to help promote your website."

"Really? How come?"

She then said something along the lines of "Hoogety boogety search engine optimization foogety moogety page hierarchy loogety toot toot meta-tags and strategic links...." and many other extremely smart things. Please keep in mind Dina has never actually said "hoogety boogety" to me in any context. What she did do was give me a brief explanation of web marketing that made complete sense, but the wisdom of which I would completely mangle upon retelling. The relevant gist was as follows - a blog, when properly done, can be a great tool to drive traffic to my website.

I mulled this over for quite some time. Could I write clear and informative articles about the decorative painting business? Er, sure, I think. New techniques, preferred paint and brush brands, offers of free templates.....Ooh, but how bout the funny fellow painter ladies I see at my teacher's studio? Or the nutjobs who I meet at craft shows?

And then I started thinking about other humorous stuff, like the time my mother swiped HER mother's mother's day gift from me and refused to give it back. And the stories from my grandfather about the 8-10 different ways he's accidentally electrocuted himself throughout the years, and yet still stands. Or about the time I spent half a day convinced that drunk people snuck into my yard during the night and dug up 48 newly planted impatiens (until I realized a deer ate them).

That's about the point that I realized that I actually want a blog to show the world how hilarious I am, and if I can throw some web marketing in there, so be it. I can make it work. For example, the two funniest things I do are 1.) garden organically 2.) allow people to speak to me. Since I paint flowers and creatures and landscapes, does it count as web marketing if I blog about growing flowers in a landscape while shouting obscenities at creatures? You betcha! And when my mother does something bizarre, should that go in there too? Absolutely. Ah, yes. Yet another blog is born.

So in the end, I will market my website the way I organic garden - seek out the advice of experts, change it all around, and find myself continually shocked when my system doesn't work. Effective? No. Funny? Oh yes indeed! Keep reading.....