tea berry-blue

I Use Bees!

Tue, 21 Jun 2011 04:59:16 GMT

Hive #1 has been getting pretty full up with honey, so my mom and I went in and took out a few frames this weekend.

This is what the hive looks like on the inside.

Each box is full of frames where the bees build honeycomb, and then either they fill the comb with honey (or pollen, sometimes), or the queen bee lays eggs inside the comb and then there are new baby bees!

Here are some of the tools we use when we take the frames from the hive.

You use this to grab the frame out of the hive:

Now, bees are actually quite friendly. They land on me all the time and I’ve never been stung. But they do get a little bit annoyed when you take out honey or otherwise disrupt the hive, and the best way to get them to calm down is to put a little smoke in the hive.

With this!

It always reminds me a little of the Tin Man.

Anyway, here’s what a full frame of honey looks like:

When bees are done putting honey into comb, they cap it up, like this is, and that’s how you know it’s full.

So then the first thing you need to do is cut the caps off:

Then, you put all the frames in a honey extractor:

An extractor is basically a big metal tub, sort of like an old fashioned ice cream maker, and it has a crank which you use to spin the frames really really really fast:

And by the power of centripetal force, the honey all spins out!

The extractor has a spigot on the bottom, which you use to collect the honey into a bucket:

Or what you will. Theoretically you could collect it into a hat, or straight into your mouth.

Now, the cool thing is, you can give the empty frames right back to the bees, and they will just go fill them right back up!

Meanwhile, the honey has little bits of max and bee dirt in it, so it gets strained:

That’s the honey being poured through the strainer. We pour it through three different meshes before it’s ready.

You can tell it’s ready when it’s clarified, and when your hands are completely sticky:

We only took out four frames out of forty in our hive, and we got six POUNDS of honey. Eeee, so exciting. It’s really cool, because this honey tastes completely different from the honey we collected last fall. That honey is really rich and dark and mostly goldenrod. This honey is really light and clear and tastes like chamomile and strawberries. They’re both amazing, but in different ways.

Mirrored from Antagonia.net.

comments

Chickens, Bees, Nachos and Two Cocktails

Wed, 01 Jun 2011 05:39:32 GMT

In order:

By Monday, the chickens were much fluffier and were developing more adult feathers!

Also, our new hive was really seeing some activity. Hive #1 has so much honey we are going to be harvesting next weekend, hooray! It’s crazy, you can smell the honey in the air from like ten feet away. Our new hive is a hive of blonde bees, and they are very pretty and redder in color than our other bees. It’s neat because you can tell them apart by sight.

Yesterday, my mom made the most awesome nachos and salsa ever. I can take zero credit for any part of this meal except that I dumped some of my pickled hot peppers on the nachos, so good. Oh, and I picked the asparagus, but I’m going to post another post, probably tomorrow, about cultivating asparagus in your garden!

The nachos have steak, cheese, black olives and peppers on them, and the salsa is black beans, grilled corn and grilled onions, tomatoes, avocado, garlic, cilantro, lime juice, and a little cumin. Yum!

Anyway, here is the cocktail I made to go with the nachos and salsa:

Happy Accident

Ingredients
2.5 oz Depaz rum
.5 oz Elisir MP Roux
.25 oz cognac
about 6 sprigs of oregano
about 4 sprigs of chamomile, plus three chamomile blossoms for garnish

Instructions
Put rum, oregano, chamomile,in a shaker with ice and muddle well
Add MP Roux and shake
Coat chilled cocktail glass with cognac
Pour drink into glass, add blossoms

And here is the drink I made today. This is my first drink using Boyd & Blair, which is the vodka I’ve been waxing poetic about to everyone I speak to. And you can consider this my first entry into the “drinks that absolutely require the flavor of vodka” category :-P

Drink Me

Ingredients
2.5 oz Boyd & Blair Potato Vodka
1.5 Tbs chopped wood ear mushrooms, reconstituted if dry
1 tsp whole black peppercorns
.5 oz black pepper-wood ear syrup (basic simple syrup with 2 tbs wood ear mushrooms, 2 tsps black pepper added)
.25 oz Dolin Blanco vermouth
6 drops white truffle oil

Instructions
Crush peppercorns slightly
Leave vodka to sit with mushrooms and peppercorns steeping in it for about 5-10 minutes
Strain vodka into a shaker with ice, add syrup and shake
Coat glass with vermouth, add contents of shaker
Add of few of the vodka-soaked mushroom pieces back to the glass
Add truffle oil in little drizzles

The best thing about this drink is that not only is the drink yummy, but you end up with vodka-soaked mushrooms that are freaking amazing. I’m actually going to save them to use in other stuff.

Mirrored from Antagonia.net.

comments

The birds and the bees and pisco and things

Mon, 30 May 2011 06:34:15 GMT

So, some of you may have noticed the name of the last drink I posted. It was one of those days when what was going on in my life had something to do with how I was feeling about naming things, so I guess I should tell you the exciting thing that happened today in addition to getting chicks on Friday.

Actually, let me just show you.

Do you notice anything special about that picture? Like, say, the presence of two hives instead of one?

Well, that is because my parents got up at the crack of dawn to ACQUIRE A NEW QUEEN. And now we have two hives! So exciting.

The bees are producing crazy honey. Like, we put in some empty spare frames with some comb they made last year but never got around to filling, and it was full within about eight hours. Crazy! I’m excited to see what this honey tastes like compared to the goldenrod honey they made last autumn.

Bees are the most awesome. Check them out!

Love them! That last one was a bee on my leg. They kept landing on me today. At first it was because I was wearing crazy madras shorts which make them think I am a beautiful flower, so I changed into whites and I think then it just meant that they love me. D’aww.

Anyway! I got a ton of work done in the garden today. We went to three garden centers and picked up a bunch of stuff, including a golden raspberry bush and Vietnamese coriander, which is one of my favorite drink-worthy herbs, but we couldn’t find it last year.

Here’s some of my gardening work for today:

That is my mom’s bed of eight basil plants in seven varieties. We bought SEVEN varieties of basil. Who does that?! So now, we have an entire bed of basil. Excellent?

That one is carduni, which is another thing I love (fried!), but that is pretty hard to find. We couldn’t get it last year. Then it’s collards, cauliflower, and brussels sprouts. I was a little disappointed that we didn’t have another vegetable that began with the letter “C” to go in that bed, but it’s cool because I do love brussels sprouts.

Yesterday, Jess came up, and we got invited to a barbecue at the neighbors’ at the last minute. It was fun, but I got massive horrible asthma pretty much the whole time I was there, and ended up sitting on their sofa in their living room the whole time. I felt really badly about it, but there wasn’t much I could do.

Then, this morning, we got up and went to see the new Pirates of the Caribbean movie. It’s sort of crazy, because the last two I went to opening night in costume, and this one, I was only vaguely aware that it had opened. It says something about how my life has changed, and something about how disappointing the last two movies were. This one was cute. It wasn’t as good as the first one, but it was much easier to follow and not as overwrought as the second and third ones. It didn’t actually ever feel like it was a long movie, which is good when something is over two hours.

Then was gardening and beekeeping, hooray! I wore the bee hat today and everything, which I usually don’t do.

Jess was in Chile for a while, and she brought me back a bottle of really good pisco.

Jess tends to like sweeter, fruitier drinks than my mom or I do, and we have a ton of berries in the fridge right now, so I made this for her and then added the pickling liquid for me and my mom.

Ingredients
2.5 oz pisco
1 large strawberry or 2 small
10 blueberries
1 tsp basil jelly
Juice of 1/4 lime
1 tsp pickling liquid from a jar of pickled hot peppers
1 slice lime

Instructions
Cut strawberry into chunks
Add strawberry, blueberries, and pisco to shaker with ice and muddle until fruit is well crushed.
Add jelly, lime juice, and pickling liquid and shake
Pour into chilled cocktail glass and add lime slice

We also dumped the leftover fruit from this into our wine tonight :-P Yum.

Last but not least, I leave you with pictures of the chicks, who are fluffier and cuter than they were last time two days ago!

And our scallop appetizer (with bacon, brown butter, and scallions)

And the second batch of salt & pepper ice cream (made with more brown sugar and less white sugar), served with a 12-year balsamic

Are there ice cream flavors anyone would like to suggest I try? As long as it is a flavor that appeals to me and for which there are ingredients available, I will consider pretty much anything.

Mirrored from Antagonia.net.

comments

Welcome Friends!

Fri, 25 Jun 2010 03:16:46 GMT

So, man, it’s been almost a week and I haven’t told you all about the new addition to my family!

The bees are so friendly and happy! I love having them in the garden! They buzz around all day working hard and then they sleep at night and when you open the hive, the honey smells like cinnamon!

We will have honey in September! In the meantime, we still have honey from the people who gave us the bees!

I used the honey to make three cocktails this weekend! Here they are!

1) Ginger Bee

Ingredients for Two Cocktails
6 oz Pyrat XO Reserve Rum
1/2 oz honey
1 oz Cointreau
Ten leaves Cinnamon Basil plus two sprigs of flowers for garnish
1-2 oz candied ginger chunks plus two chunks for garnish

Instructions
Add honey, ginger and basil to shaker with ice and muddle well
Add rum and cointreau, shake
Pour into two chilled cocktail glasses, add basil sprigs and ginger

2) Bee Leg Fizz

(This is a variation on a Bootleg Fizz, but with bees! And de-highballed!)

Ingredients for Two Cocktails

6 oz Greylock Gin
Juice from one Meyer Lemon
1/4 cup chopped lavender plus two sprigs lavender for garnish
1/2 oz honey
1/2 oz lavender syrup
1/4 cup stiffly whipped egg whites

Instructions
Add honey, syrup, lemon juice, and lavender to shaker with ice, muddle
Add gin and egg white, shake like crazy
Pour into two chilled cocktail glasses, garnish with lavender sprigs.

3) Spicy Bee

Ingredients for 2 drinks
6 oz Dogfish Head Jin
1/4 cup fresh chopped mint, plus two sprigs for garnish
1/2 oz honey
1/2 oz dry vermouth
6 rings oil-packed deep fried hot peppers, plus 2 for garnish

Instructions
Add mint, honey, and peppers to shaker with ice and muddle
Add gin and vermouth, shake
Pour into chilled cocktail glasses, add mint and pepper garnish

Mirrored from Antagonia.net.

comments