Honey, honey, honey....

We've had hives for four years. The first year we obsessed, hovered, dealt with, medicated, and probably drove the bees crazy. They swarmed the second year. I'm sure it was because they remembered the previous year. They wanted out before we started meddling. The second year we tried to be a little less invasive. The third year we thought one hive was dead and the other just holding on, until we opened the hives in August and found two very healthy colonies. This year because of lots of traveling we have hardly touched the hives. There is honey galore. I guess my point is that bees know what they are doing, and have for centuries.




They work so hard. We saved the few frames of honey from the first years anticipating that the hives would need feeding in the spring. This year, realizing that they need little help from us, we took the six frames out of the freezer and extracted for the first time. We will need to extract again before September, because this has been a bumper year for the bees.

Here's what the oldest extraction looked like.


The honey will be fine for cooking, but is a little crystallized for genereal use. I was going to put it back in the hives.... but they just don't need it, so I'll use it and the bees wax. There are about 40 lbs of honey in each box or super.

They need 60 lbs in each hive to get through the winter and next spring.







Three quarts of honey and three candles from six frames.




Laura isn't afraid of bees anymore, after climbing fifteen feet into a tree and helping me recapture a swarm, and Leah is starting hives in Utah in the spring.



The bees that are alive now will not be the bees that emerge in April. The girls will kick all of the boys out of the hive in the fall... they refuse to feed them over the winter.... and they will raise new men in the spring. Most bees live about 42 days, and yes, they are all girls.

Little bees start out cleaning the hive, move up to helping in the nursery, learn to attend the Queen, stock the pantry, provide heat and air conditioning, build honeycomb, and then become guards. That's all in the first 21 days. The last half of their life they gather pollen, nectar, water, and tree resin. They visit 5 million flowers to produce one pint of honey.

I love our girls.




Yeah, Leah and Laura too.

Grandma Helen's Spaghetti

So, this is turning into a series of posts about my favorite foods.  These are tried and true recipes, the ones we return to regularly.  Still to come: the best chocolate chip cookies in the world, pantry stew, shredded pork, and baked spinach penne. 

But for now: Grandma Helen's spaghetti.  She was a wise and wonderful woman and I miss her regularly.

This is a half hour dish, from start to finish, tastes amazing the first night and even better the next day for lunch.

Read, set, go.

Put on the water to boil.  Add a bit of salt to it and make sure there is plenty of water so the noodles don't get sticky.

Dice an onion and saute it in olive oil with two cloves of garlic on medium high heat.

Add a pound of ground beef to that and brown up real good like.

The water should be boiling about now, so throw in a handful of noodles.

AFTER the meat has browned, add about a tsp of salt and pepper to taste (if you add the salt too soon, it pulls all of the water out of the beef and makes it chewy and dry).  Next, add a handful of Italian seasoning. 

Um, actually a little less than this.  I didn't add the whole handful.

Now, Jon and I love bell peppers in our sauce, but don't eat them fast enough so they go bad in our fridge.  For many years, we just did without them except for on the specialist of occasions (Shakespeare made up words, why can't I?).  But then we discovered these babies:

Life changing.  Dehydrated peppers.  They come in a number 10 can at Wal Mart in small Utah towns.  They look beautiful on a glass canister on your counter.  They go in soup, spaghetti, taco meat, you name it.

To this, add a can of tomato paste, a can of tomato sauce, and a can of diced tomatoes.  My hope is to use my own tomatoes for all of this in not too long.  But they are taking a really long time to get ripe.  Stupid buggers.  And a tomato paste trick?  Open both ends and push it out like a red pudding pop.

Last but not least: sugar. About four tablespoons.  Three if you want "diet" sauce.

Sometimes I get crazy and add olives, mushrooms, green peppers, or some chili pepper.

Here is the tricky part: Let It SIMMER!  All that stuff needs to get intimate, mingle, sing karaoke together.  Bond.

Check those noodles. They should be just about al dente by now.  Throw them in with the sauce and stir.  Serve with a romantic salad, garlic bread, and whatever else your heart desires.

Like chocolate chip cookies!

Friday Night Pie

Jon and I have a tradition. Friday night is pizza night.

The problem is that pizza places are dang expensive and the pizza is often not very good. So when Jon and I first got married and couldn't afford things like milk and bread, let alone something so extravagant as pizza, Jon decided that something had to be done. He started making his own pizza, using a Betty Crocker cook book that his mom gave us for our first Christmas together. It was cheap, and it was good (the pizza, not the cookbook). It became a Friday night tradition...pizza and a movie.

Years marched past, as they are wont to do, and sometime during the last decade, I took over the pizza making. It probably had something to do with Jon having to have a salad with his pizza and my detestation of the process of salad making. We decided without deciding that he would make the salad and I would be in charge of the pie. It is a good deal. I worked for several years in pizza places when I was a teenager, and I make a very pretty pizza, if I do say so myself.

Which, I do and just did.

This was never intended to be a food blog, but what can I say, we Newbury girls love food. So here is a pizza recipe that will have you saying, "Mama Mia!"

First, ignore everything your mother ever told you about proofing yeast and waiting to add the salt (sorry mom), and combine a cup of flour, 2 Tbs of sugar, a tsp of salt, and a packet (or two tsps) of yeast in a mixing bowl. I use the paddle for this first part as it mixes better than the dough hook. If you are backwoods like my sister though, you use a whisk and your hands. To that, add a cup of fairly warm water and 3 Tbs of olive oil.

Make it smooth and pretty. Then add another cup of flour.

I use a spatula to clean off the paddle and switch to the dough hook at this point. Add more flour until it looks like this:

It is still just a tad sticky, but is not sticking to the bowl anymore. Let the hook knead it for about five minutes. The tricky thing about bread making is that the dough is so affected by things like temperature, humidity, and the alignment of planets. So, one week I use three cups of flour total, but the next I might only need two and a half or so. This is how much of the third cup of flour I ended up using this time. It probably had something to do with the meteor shower or the tide. Who knows?

Now, clean off the dough hook, cover the bowl with a towel and go watch an episode of Seinfeld. Give it about half an hour, until it has doubled and two fingers leave an impression in the dough.

Gently scoop it out onto a floured surface (I usually use my pizza stone). Knead it for just a minute, folding the sides into the middle and set it seam side down to rest for a minute. I said, let it rest. This time to relax and meditate will make the dough easier to handle and roll out...not so elastic-y.

This is a key to a pretty dough. When it starts with this nice round shape, it is easier to get it to this nice round shape:

We are getting ahead of ourselves though. While you are giving the dough some time to relax, shred the cheese and make the pizza sauce. The sauce is an old family recipe passed down through the generations.

Seriously. Sometimes we use the Hunts all natural. I'm kind of neurotic and don't use spaghetti sauce with high fructose corn syrup, so if you care about that kind of stuff, read the labels. I pour the sauce into a bowl and add the paste until it looks like pizza sauce. About like this:

Thicker than sauce, thinner than paste.

Now, roll out the dough on your pizza stone, or put it onto a cookie sheet (see earlier pic). Poke it with fork all over so that it won't become pita bread and puff all up. If you are using a pizza stone, put it in the oven and NOW turn on the oven to about 415 degrees. Bake for about 15-20 minutes. Putting it in without preheating the oven turns the bottom element on so that the bottom of the pizza browns and allows the stone to heat up with the oven. Pre baking the crust eliminates sogginess in the middle of the pizza. If you are using a cookie sheet, you may want to preheat the oven and bake for only about 10 minutes though, because I'm afraid that it might burn the bottom of the crust through your flimsy girly-man cookie sheet.

When your crust looks like this:

Spread the sauce.

Add cheese:

And whatever toppings your heart desires. We usually use pepperoni because Jon's a purist like that, but last night we discovered we were out. We did a half and half with lunch meat turkey and leftover taco beef and olives.

Because I decided it was now taco pizza, I added some cheddar to that side as well.

Put back in the oven and back for about 20 minutes or until it looks like this:

Use your sleeve to wipe the drool off of your mouth and enjoy with a nice cold root beer (Laura should have some of that).

Who needs Papa Johns and $20 pizza?

Monster Zuchs put to Good Use

I have a theory.  It goes something like this:

Chocolate makes everything better.

I've been looking forward to zucchini season for one main reason:

 A word about Dana Matthews.  She is a guru of sorts.  She makes fruit leather, paints, raises chickens, cards and spins her own wool, then takes the yarn and weaves beautiful cloth on a loom.  Everything she touches ends up being lovely and tasty and she pretty much reminds me of my mom, who has these same talents.

I got this from her daughter-in-law, who was kind enough to share with us when we came over for dinner one night. This shows that she is a better person than I am because I would never share.  Except with Jon, but only because he makes me.

So, this cake.  It is divine.  Moist and chocolately and nutty.  It is the perfect use of a green vegetable.

I'm a fan of Julia Child, and believe, as she did, that all good things start with butter.

One stick. I cube it up when I haven't left it out to soften.  This increases the surface area exposed to the warm air and lets me get on with my life.

Add half a cup of oil 1 and 3/4 cup sugar.  Beat it up.  Show it who is boss.  This is, in my humble opinion, one of the main problems people have when baking. They don't cream the fat and sugar enough.  So, it shouldn't look like this:

 It should look like this:

Add two eggs and a teaspoon of vanilla.  This right here rocks my world.  I abhor all things artificial, including grass, flowers, boobs, people...you name it.

And look at these little beauties:

From my very own backyard.  They're even prettier inside:

Deep golden and well rounded.  Well, hello there.

Next add two cups of shredded zucchini (almost an entire small one; I used one of the smaller ones from the first picture).

Next, dump in half a cup of walnuts, and half a cup of chocolate chips.  I'll be honest.  I added 3/4 of a cup of the chocolate chips. I'm rogue like that.

Chopping walnuts always makes me think of my maternal grandmother.  She was a chocolatier the likes of which would put Willie Wonka to shame.  This was always the job she gave to kids.

I hate chopping walnuts.

Now we turn our attention to dry ingredients.  I dump them all in my strainer over a bowl and shake them through.

We've got 2 and 1/2 cups flour, tsp salt, tsp baking soda (I use a bit less here at 6K feet), and 1/4 cup cocoa.  I added a bit more until I liked the color better.

I'm telling you, I'm a rebel.

Add this to the wet alternately with 1/2 cup of buttermilk.  Since I don't keep buttermilk in my fridge because I'm not my grandfather, I make it using milk and vinegar. 1 tsp to a cup ratio is about right. Make sure to incorporate each addition completely before moving on.

Pour the batter into a greased and floured 9x13.  I'll tell you a little secret about floured pans for chocolate cake...better yet, I'll show you:

Cocoa!  That way you don't get the white crusties on the cake at the end.

Pop it in a 325 oven for about 55 minutes.  While it is still hot, sprinkle it with more chocolate chips and walnuts (preferably toasted, but I didn't feel like taking the time to do that, so I didn't.  I'm boss, remember?).

Eat, bless the heavens and the cocoa bean, repeat.  I think I'm going to go and eat my vegetables.

I love this time of year.

The Root of All Deliciousness

In July, my mom came over toting a large, intriguing box. It had two of my favorite words in the world on it.

Root beer.

Yum.

Just saying it out loud makes me happy.

Root beer.

It was a root beer making kit. How cool is that?

I asked her what her tote was all about. She said she bought it to give to either Jon - favorite son-in-law (A) - or D - favorite son-in-law (B). Of course, I talked her into giving it to the one attached to me, and so D and I made root beer this past week for Family Home Evening.

We had a blast! Like I mentioned earlier, this was just a kit - a simple "hamburger helper style" way of making root beer, but it at least gave us a taste of the real process.

This kit involved a lot of waiting... sterilize this, wait 10 minutes. Combine that, wait 10 minutes.

So what is a couple to do while they're waiting??

Play UNO of course!!!!

UNO is a dangerous game to play in our home.

We play dirty. It gets nasty.

SKIP and REVERSE cards are thrown all over the room.

People get called fat.

Pregnant people in particular.

We followed the instructions (believe it or not) and the end result was root beer! This kit carbonates with brewer's yeast, which I really like because it's authentic. However, they flavor with wintergreen - which is a common root beer flavoring these days...

We're just not fans.

We like our sassafras.

A lot.

So at the end of the night, we ended up with four bottles of yummy root beer that my mom drank.

I am still suspicious that this whole thing worked out just the way she wanted it to.

Very mysterious.