I made fresh Pesto for the first time this summer and WOW, I am in love. There is no comparison to the bland jarred sauce I have tasted before. I knew this would be a dish enjoyed by the adults of our house, but I was not too sure how the kiddos would take a green sauce that smelled like garlic. I forged ahead with the meal anyway and gave it a fun name in hopes that the kids might at least try it: Sparkle Pasta! (said with a flourish and waving fingers to make it sound amazing and magical to kids)
I needn't have worried, after they got over the initial shock of green pasta (Look at the sparkles, kids! Can you see the sparkles?!) they loved it, and now beg for sparkle pasta for dinner all the time.
The initial recipe came from the Pioneer Woman website, but it has evolved somewhat as I have made this dish over and over and over for my family and friends. I use the original recipe as more of a guideline than a hard and fast rule of how much of each ingredient to add. With pesto, garlic, cheese and olive oil, it is hard to go wrong. The pesto itself is amazing, so fresh and wonderful tasting, but the addition of cream (or half and half, which tastes better to me for some reason) takes this dish to the level of food perfection. Make way more than you think you'll need, it is really, really good.
Pesto Cream Sauce
(source: www.thepioneerwoman.com)
Ingredients
• 3/4 cups Fresh Basil Leaves (I use about 2 cups)
• 1/2 cup Grated Parmesan Cheese
• 3 Tablespoons Pine Nuts
• 2 cloves Garlic, Peeled
• Salt And Pepper, to taste
• 1/3 cup Extra Virgin Olive Oil
• 1/2 cup Heavy Cream (I prefer half and half)
• 2 Tablespoons Butter
• 1/4 cup Grated Parmesan (additional)
• 12 ounces, weight Pasta (we use bow tie, or homemade pasta)
• 2 whole Tomatoes, Diced
Preparation Instructions
Cook pasta until al dente.
Add basil leaves, 1/2 cup Parmesan, pine nuts, and salt and pepper to a food processor or blender. Turn machine on, then drizzle in olive oil while it mixes. Continue blending until combined, adding additional olive oil if needed. Set aside.
Heat cream and butter in a small saucepan over medium-low heat. Add pesto and stir.
Drain pasta and place in a serving bowl. Pour pesto cream over the top. Toss to combine. Add diced tomatoes and toss quickly. Serve immediately.
Showing posts with label how to. Show all posts
Showing posts with label how to. Show all posts
Tuesday, October 11, 2011
Growing, Harvesting and Using Sweet Basil
Growing: This is the first year that sweet basil ( Ocimum basilicum ) has really taken off in my garden. It is located in the border outside the main garden. This spot gets sun most of the day, with a bit of shade in the late afternoon from the arbor just to the NW of the plants. The soil is heavy clay, with some compost added each year. The plants survived the drought conditions here in Texas very well with only minimal watering. Toward the end of the summer, the leaves were small, about the size of my thumb, but still tasted great. In September, we began to water this patch heavily and the plants quickly responded by putting on a new flush of large (almost palm sized) leaves.
Harvesting: The leaf is the edible part of the basil plant. To harvest for meals (usually pesto cream sauce, mmmm) we simply plucked leaves from the plant as needed.
Near the end of the summer, the plants bolted and began to flower and set seed. Since this has become a favorite cooking herb of my family, I decided to harvest and save some of the seeds for next years basil crop (if it does not self seed for next year, which I hope it will).
After it flowered, I allowed the blooms to dry on the plant (this was more of a happy accident and the result of garden neglect more than any actual planning or foresight on my part). We collected the dried flowers put them in a colander, which was then placed over another bowl.
Using pre-school labor, we crushed the dried flowers and seed pods to release the tiny black seeds. Shaking the colander gently to allow the seeds to fall through to the bowl below.
Once most of the seed heads had been crushed, we gently blew the chaff away from the seeds, leaving about 1/4 cup of dark black basil seeds.
Uses: Our favorite use is to make Pesto and Pesto Cream sauce (recipe to follow). I also add leaves to spaghetti sauce, stir fry and salad dressings.
Another fun Basil use is to prepare seed packets for friends. In this case, I wanted to share seeds with the attendees of my bread baking class (we made pesto with dinner) so we prepared several seed packets.
I used tiny zipper top bags (like the kind that come with the extra button when you buy a new shirt) and portioned off about 1/2 tsp of seeds per bag. We cut a sheet of plain white paper into small rectangles, folded them in half, and then stapled them onto the bag. My son drew a picture of a basil leaf and I labeled each packet Sweet Basil.
Harvesting: The leaf is the edible part of the basil plant. To harvest for meals (usually pesto cream sauce, mmmm) we simply plucked leaves from the plant as needed.
Near the end of the summer, the plants bolted and began to flower and set seed. Since this has become a favorite cooking herb of my family, I decided to harvest and save some of the seeds for next years basil crop (if it does not self seed for next year, which I hope it will).
After it flowered, I allowed the blooms to dry on the plant (this was more of a happy accident and the result of garden neglect more than any actual planning or foresight on my part). We collected the dried flowers put them in a colander, which was then placed over another bowl.
Using pre-school labor, we crushed the dried flowers and seed pods to release the tiny black seeds. Shaking the colander gently to allow the seeds to fall through to the bowl below.
Once most of the seed heads had been crushed, we gently blew the chaff away from the seeds, leaving about 1/4 cup of dark black basil seeds.
Uses: Our favorite use is to make Pesto and Pesto Cream sauce (recipe to follow). I also add leaves to spaghetti sauce, stir fry and salad dressings.
Another fun Basil use is to prepare seed packets for friends. In this case, I wanted to share seeds with the attendees of my bread baking class (we made pesto with dinner) so we prepared several seed packets.
I used tiny zipper top bags (like the kind that come with the extra button when you buy a new shirt) and portioned off about 1/2 tsp of seeds per bag. We cut a sheet of plain white paper into small rectangles, folded them in half, and then stapled them onto the bag. My son drew a picture of a basil leaf and I labeled each packet Sweet Basil.
Monday, April 11, 2011
Making Wine... the process
Like everything else we do, we took a bunch of photos last year (2010) of our wine making process. I never blogged on it, because we fully expected it to be a flop. Now that we have a successful batch, I am really excited to look back over our process so we can be sure and repeat it for 2011.
So back in May of 2010 (May 9th to be exact) we had extra mulberries
The raw weight was seven pounds ten ounces (I must have skimmed some off the top for eating, because in my notes, I see we only used six pounds of berries for the wine batch).
We dumped the berries into a clean, food grade bucket and mashed them with a potato masher (notice the hand written recipe and calculations in the background?).
mash mash mash until it was mostly liquidy
We then poured in a gallon of boiling water
then lidded the mash and set it aside for a few days in a cool dark place (our master bathroom)
A few days later, we strained out the pulp leaving a cloudy purple liquid. (May 15, 2010)
The pulp was composted.
We then added lots of sugar and left in the bucket for four more days.
On May 19th we decanted it into a 3 gallon carboy and put an airlock on it. We wrapped the bottle in a black trash sack, being careful not to seal it too tight, it needed air, but it also needed darkness. This contraption has sat in the corner of my master bathroom for 11 months. We would peek at it occasionally, for a while it bubbled, then it got cloudy, then it got clear and finally, we tasted it--11 months later.
Success! First tasted April 5, 2011.
A few notes:
1) I have the actual recipe and proportions we used in my notebook
2) We did not use commercial yeast, we intend to, but never got around to it. This was a huge chance to take and we assumed it was probably not good. By not adding commercial yeast, you are gambling that the right kind of yeast exists in the fruit or air and will make good wine. By buying yeast, you make sure you get the right kind of yeast for wine. It was really lucky that we got drinkable wine.
3) We have no idea the alcohol content of this batch, we have the tools, but we should have made a measurement when we started the process and again at the end. The comparison is what tells you the alcohol content. We do know that it has a nice kick to it, I only drank one glass and had a nice gentle buzz. Hubby drank two glasses and said he'd had plenty (man speak for a buzz?). Neither of us woke up with any bad side effects the next day (some cheap wine and I feel awful after just a glass). My understanding is that wine kind of self regulates, over a certain alcohol content the yeast will die, so it is impossible to end up with 100 proof... no plans for us to start any distilled liquors, yet. Is that even legal?
4) Did I mention it was SWEET? My dad would never drink this--he likes a dry wine, but I'm guessing my sister will love it. Hubby likes it, and he tends to like a drier wine than me. How sweet? My favorite wine is port, and this is similar to that level of sweetness. For any 'real' wine drinkers out there, don't laugh at my unsophisticated palate.
So back in May of 2010 (May 9th to be exact) we had extra mulberries
The raw weight was seven pounds ten ounces (I must have skimmed some off the top for eating, because in my notes, I see we only used six pounds of berries for the wine batch).
We dumped the berries into a clean, food grade bucket and mashed them with a potato masher (notice the hand written recipe and calculations in the background?).
mash mash mash until it was mostly liquidy
We then poured in a gallon of boiling water
then lidded the mash and set it aside for a few days in a cool dark place (our master bathroom)
A few days later, we strained out the pulp leaving a cloudy purple liquid. (May 15, 2010)
The pulp was composted.
We then added lots of sugar and left in the bucket for four more days.
On May 19th we decanted it into a 3 gallon carboy and put an airlock on it. We wrapped the bottle in a black trash sack, being careful not to seal it too tight, it needed air, but it also needed darkness. This contraption has sat in the corner of my master bathroom for 11 months. We would peek at it occasionally, for a while it bubbled, then it got cloudy, then it got clear and finally, we tasted it--11 months later.
Success! First tasted April 5, 2011.
A few notes:
1) I have the actual recipe and proportions we used in my notebook
2) We did not use commercial yeast, we intend to, but never got around to it. This was a huge chance to take and we assumed it was probably not good. By not adding commercial yeast, you are gambling that the right kind of yeast exists in the fruit or air and will make good wine. By buying yeast, you make sure you get the right kind of yeast for wine. It was really lucky that we got drinkable wine.
3) We have no idea the alcohol content of this batch, we have the tools, but we should have made a measurement when we started the process and again at the end. The comparison is what tells you the alcohol content. We do know that it has a nice kick to it, I only drank one glass and had a nice gentle buzz. Hubby drank two glasses and said he'd had plenty (man speak for a buzz?). Neither of us woke up with any bad side effects the next day (some cheap wine and I feel awful after just a glass). My understanding is that wine kind of self regulates, over a certain alcohol content the yeast will die, so it is impossible to end up with 100 proof... no plans for us to start any distilled liquors, yet. Is that even legal?
4) Did I mention it was SWEET? My dad would never drink this--he likes a dry wine, but I'm guessing my sister will love it. Hubby likes it, and he tends to like a drier wine than me. How sweet? My favorite wine is port, and this is similar to that level of sweetness. For any 'real' wine drinkers out there, don't laugh at my unsophisticated palate.
Thursday, December 30, 2010
Super Hero Capes
Last year, I made two superhero masks for my kids for Christmas. Handmade Holidays Part III -Superhero Masks
A full year later, both of the masks I made were still around the house, and often near the top of the toy box (meaning they are used frequently) so I decided to make the kids capes to go along with their masks.
I used the same felt material (60 inch wide EcoFelt from Joanne's, regularly it is $4.99 per yard, but goes on sale for 50% off all the time. Add in the coupon that Joann's puts in my mailbox nearly weekly and it was a very cheap project)
I used black felt and free-handed a cape shape. I cut out the cape and then hand sewed a contrasting felt letter onto the cape.
A tiny piece of self adhesive Velcro at the neckline and it was a wearable cape.
Honestly, I was a bit shocked at just how quickly and easily this project came together so I decided to make another... and another... and another, by December 19th I had made 12 cape - and - mask combos for all of the kids in our lives.
I never got a photo of all of the capes together since they were gifted as quickly as I could finish them.
Here is what the gift looked like, one simple mask and a monogrammed cape--pink for the girls, black for the boys and everyone got a black mask.
This project was a lot of fun, and very easy to churn these puppies out assembly line style. From start to finish a cape took less than 1 hour each to complete. By far, the hand stitching was the slowest part (the letter M was a particular pain), but it was also very easy to do while watching TV.
Most of the capes were for local friends from our church, but one cape was hand carried all the way up to Connecticut for my second cousin (is that what you call the child of a cousin? oh well)
Notes:
1) I free handed the first few letters then decided to just print out a set of 6 inch high letters from the computer-- much easier to use a template to get the letter just right.
2) I used embroidery floss in a contrasting color to applique each of the letters to the capes. At first I was kind of disappointed with my uneven stitching, but then decided it looked folksy (sure, why not)
3) The rough outline for the cape came from here: http://pukingpastilles.com/?p=57 but I did not go through all of the effort of lining the cape, mine were super easy, no sewing machine needed.
4) With careful placement, I could get three toddler-sized capes from one 20 inch cut of the fabric. Fabric is 60" wide and the capes are each ~20 inches wide and 20 inches tall.
A full year later, both of the masks I made were still around the house, and often near the top of the toy box (meaning they are used frequently) so I decided to make the kids capes to go along with their masks.
I used the same felt material (60 inch wide EcoFelt from Joanne's, regularly it is $4.99 per yard, but goes on sale for 50% off all the time. Add in the coupon that Joann's puts in my mailbox nearly weekly and it was a very cheap project)
I used black felt and free-handed a cape shape. I cut out the cape and then hand sewed a contrasting felt letter onto the cape.
A tiny piece of self adhesive Velcro at the neckline and it was a wearable cape.
Honestly, I was a bit shocked at just how quickly and easily this project came together so I decided to make another... and another... and another, by December 19th I had made 12 cape - and - mask combos for all of the kids in our lives.
I never got a photo of all of the capes together since they were gifted as quickly as I could finish them.
Here is what the gift looked like, one simple mask and a monogrammed cape--pink for the girls, black for the boys and everyone got a black mask.
This project was a lot of fun, and very easy to churn these puppies out assembly line style. From start to finish a cape took less than 1 hour each to complete. By far, the hand stitching was the slowest part (the letter M was a particular pain), but it was also very easy to do while watching TV.
Most of the capes were for local friends from our church, but one cape was hand carried all the way up to Connecticut for my second cousin (is that what you call the child of a cousin? oh well)
Notes:
1) I free handed the first few letters then decided to just print out a set of 6 inch high letters from the computer-- much easier to use a template to get the letter just right.
2) I used embroidery floss in a contrasting color to applique each of the letters to the capes. At first I was kind of disappointed with my uneven stitching, but then decided it looked folksy (sure, why not)
3) The rough outline for the cape came from here: http://pukingpastilles.com/?p=57 but I did not go through all of the effort of lining the cape, mine were super easy, no sewing machine needed.
4) With careful placement, I could get three toddler-sized capes from one 20 inch cut of the fabric. Fabric is 60" wide and the capes are each ~20 inches wide and 20 inches tall.
Homemade Yogurt
This year (okay so next year, 2011... in like 2 days) we have decided we want to learn how to make more dairy products. Apart from making homemade butter (which is as simple as putting heavy cream in a lidded jar and shaking), yogurt was the next easiest dairy product to make at home.
I started my online search looking for a 'yogurt machine' for hubby for Christmas, but quickly saw that actually buying a machine was overkill for just how simple the process seemed. Basically it is as simple as this: heat milk, add a cup of starter yogurt, keep warm for a few hours, and... yogurt.
Back when I was a kid, my paternal grandparents used to make yogurt on the back of their stove top at night (I guess the pilot light kept it warm enough). I don't remember eating it, but everything I ate at their house was delicious.
We heated 1/2 gallon of whole milk on the stove (the milk was from Sprouts, not sure all the details, rTBH free?).
We cooked it until it was at 180F. (I think this is to kill any bacteria in the milk)
We then cooled it quickly to 120F by putting the pot into a sinkful of cold water. (this brings the milk back to a hospitable temperature for the good bacteria we are about to add)
We then stirred in 1/2 cup of the starter yogurt into the 120F milk. In this case, I used Stoneyfield plain cream top (this stuff is SOOO good).
Meanwhile, I also sterilized a random collection of canning jars to put the finished yogurt into. (not sure if this step is necessary. I figured we were intentionally creating the perfect environment for bacteria to grow, I wanted to make sure it was the 'right' kind of bacteria and not some random bad bacteria from my jar storage box)
We ladled half of the new yogurt into jars as is (just hot milk and yogurt).
We put the filled, lidded jars into a cooler filled with about 3 inches of hot water (target temp 120F).
This water and cooler will help to keep the new yogurt at a warm constant temperature for several hours to allow the bacteria to grow.
(I don't have a lot of kitchen gadgets, but I really love my digital thermometer.)
As an experiment, we added honey and vanilla to the second half of the batch.
These were lidded too and placed into the cooler to begin the yogurt incubation period. The recipes I found online all called for warm incubation periods of between 3 hours and overnight. Since we finished the cooking and mixing portion of this experiment at 9pm... and we are big babies who go to bed at about 9pm... we opted to allow it to incubate overnight. I read that the longer the incubation period, the tangier the yogurt would taste.
The next morning...
Viola! Yogurt!
Side Note: In all honesty, I only tipped the jar like this because I saw a picture of someone else doing this online to show how lovely and thick their yogurt was. I did it and was so thrilled that ours was that thick too. I snapped a quick picture then in the two seconds it took me to turn back around to put the camera down, the thick creamy top on the yogurt had given way and the sort-of-thick yogurt had poured out and pooled all over my counter. Oops.
Once stirred, the consistency was like a thin smoothie, not terribly thick, but no where near as runny as milk.
We ended up with about a half gallon of homemade yogurt and it was yummy. It was a tiny bit tart, and we all preferred the sweetened version to the straight plain yogurt we made.
By far, the best way we have found to eat this is to mix in a giant glob of my runny homemade peach preserves. Mmmm.
I was a little bit worried that the kids would not care for the tanginess of it, but they really loved it. Since it was so runny, I served it to them in cups with a straw and they slurped it right up. It is basically the consistency of the smoothies we make.
Considering the fact that the Stoneyfield yogurt we all like so much costs between $3.99 (on sale) and $5.00 (ouch) per quart this is a huge cost savings. In Dallas right now, a grocery store price war with the new Aldi store has milk going for around $0.99 per gallon! Even at the usual price of $1.99 per gallon (and with four quarts to a gallon) making our own saves a lot of money.
Basic Recipe:
1 gallon of milk
1/2 cup of live culture yogurt
seasoning:
1 tsp vanilla
1/2 cup sweetener (honey or sugar)
1) heat milk to 180F
2) cool milk to 120F
3) stir in starter yogurt
4) sweeten if desired
5) ladle into sterilized jars
6) place in warm spot for 3-8 hours to incubate
7) refrigerate after incubation period is complete
I started my online search looking for a 'yogurt machine' for hubby for Christmas, but quickly saw that actually buying a machine was overkill for just how simple the process seemed. Basically it is as simple as this: heat milk, add a cup of starter yogurt, keep warm for a few hours, and... yogurt.
Back when I was a kid, my paternal grandparents used to make yogurt on the back of their stove top at night (I guess the pilot light kept it warm enough). I don't remember eating it, but everything I ate at their house was delicious.
We heated 1/2 gallon of whole milk on the stove (the milk was from Sprouts, not sure all the details, rTBH free?).
We cooked it until it was at 180F. (I think this is to kill any bacteria in the milk)
We then cooled it quickly to 120F by putting the pot into a sinkful of cold water. (this brings the milk back to a hospitable temperature for the good bacteria we are about to add)
We then stirred in 1/2 cup of the starter yogurt into the 120F milk. In this case, I used Stoneyfield plain cream top (this stuff is SOOO good).
Meanwhile, I also sterilized a random collection of canning jars to put the finished yogurt into. (not sure if this step is necessary. I figured we were intentionally creating the perfect environment for bacteria to grow, I wanted to make sure it was the 'right' kind of bacteria and not some random bad bacteria from my jar storage box)
We ladled half of the new yogurt into jars as is (just hot milk and yogurt).
We put the filled, lidded jars into a cooler filled with about 3 inches of hot water (target temp 120F).
This water and cooler will help to keep the new yogurt at a warm constant temperature for several hours to allow the bacteria to grow.
(I don't have a lot of kitchen gadgets, but I really love my digital thermometer.)
As an experiment, we added honey and vanilla to the second half of the batch.
These were lidded too and placed into the cooler to begin the yogurt incubation period. The recipes I found online all called for warm incubation periods of between 3 hours and overnight. Since we finished the cooking and mixing portion of this experiment at 9pm... and we are big babies who go to bed at about 9pm... we opted to allow it to incubate overnight. I read that the longer the incubation period, the tangier the yogurt would taste.
The next morning...
Viola! Yogurt!
Side Note: In all honesty, I only tipped the jar like this because I saw a picture of someone else doing this online to show how lovely and thick their yogurt was. I did it and was so thrilled that ours was that thick too. I snapped a quick picture then in the two seconds it took me to turn back around to put the camera down, the thick creamy top on the yogurt had given way and the sort-of-thick yogurt had poured out and pooled all over my counter. Oops.
Once stirred, the consistency was like a thin smoothie, not terribly thick, but no where near as runny as milk.
We ended up with about a half gallon of homemade yogurt and it was yummy. It was a tiny bit tart, and we all preferred the sweetened version to the straight plain yogurt we made.
By far, the best way we have found to eat this is to mix in a giant glob of my runny homemade peach preserves. Mmmm.
I was a little bit worried that the kids would not care for the tanginess of it, but they really loved it. Since it was so runny, I served it to them in cups with a straw and they slurped it right up. It is basically the consistency of the smoothies we make.
Considering the fact that the Stoneyfield yogurt we all like so much costs between $3.99 (on sale) and $5.00 (ouch) per quart this is a huge cost savings. In Dallas right now, a grocery store price war with the new Aldi store has milk going for around $0.99 per gallon! Even at the usual price of $1.99 per gallon (and with four quarts to a gallon) making our own saves a lot of money.
Basic Recipe:
1 gallon of milk
1/2 cup of live culture yogurt
seasoning:
1 tsp vanilla
1/2 cup sweetener (honey or sugar)
1) heat milk to 180F
2) cool milk to 120F
3) stir in starter yogurt
4) sweeten if desired
5) ladle into sterilized jars
6) place in warm spot for 3-8 hours to incubate
7) refrigerate after incubation period is complete
Tuesday, August 31, 2010
Honey Extraction 2010
We extracted our honey the last Saturday of July, 2010. We were able to borrow extraction equipment from a friend at church (in exchange for extracting his honey too), and we also got together with another bee keeping buddy to all extract together.
First step, steal the honey. This does not make the bees very happy. Hubby was able to travel up to Bells late on Friday night to get the frames with honey from our four hives up there. On Saturday morning he removed the frames with honey from our five hives at home.
I tried to prepare the kitchen for easy clean up. Tried. I taped a plastic table cloth down on our kitchen table, tucked the curtains up out of the way and moved all the chairs and other stuff out of the kitchen.
Here is the finished set up. We tried to keep a logical flow to the order of things to minimize having to move drippy frames of honey too far. You can see just outside the kitchen window is a stack of medium supers, these came from three different families (and four different bee yards).
Just inside the door we set up a place to stack the supers we were working on.
This is what the surface of one of the frames of capped comb looks like.
Next was the decapping station. Where we used a hot electric knife to cut the wax caps off of the comb to expose the honey.
If done right, the wax comes off in a pretty curl.
The uncapped frames were then loaded into the centrifuge (is this this right name? maybe called and extractor?). This held three frames of honey and had an electric motor to spin the frames and force the honey out of the comb and onto the bottom of the vessel.
This picture is looking down into the cylinder of the extractor as it spins and the honey is flung out.
After several sets of frames were spun, we opened the valve at the bottom of the centrifuge and the beautiful golden honey poured out.
The honey was strained through a series of filters to remove wax and bee parts, then it was held in a 5 gallon bucket with a tap at the bottom.
Repeat. Over and over and over until all of the honey was extracted.
Poor hubby got the job of going outside to retrieve the next super full of frames. The bees very quickly learned where their honey had gone and were frantically trying to steal it back.
Hubby was careful to open and close the door to the kitchen quickly to avoid getting too many bees in the house.
After a few hours, the bees outside the door were overwhelming and hubby had to make a quick dash around the yard holding the frames to try and keep the bees from following him into the house.
This is a cluster of bees drinking the honey that is leaking out of one of the supers on the outside table.
Finished product! We ended up extracting about 12 gallons of honey for the three families.
Here are the bees cleaning off the outside table after we were done extracting.
Within an hour they had lapped up the giant puddle of honey.
The house was fairly easy to clean up, not as easy as just letting the bees do it, but not too bad. I'm still picking bits of wax off of my floors, and my floors were sticky even after two moppings.
In review, this year was just so-so for honey. As first year beekeepers, we are thrilled to get any, but still, we were hoping for more.
Comments and Lessons Learned:
1) We made a mistake and did not use queen excluders on our hives. This meant that the queens in nearly all of our 9 hives moved up into the supers and started laying eggs. Commercial beekeepers typically do not use queen excluders, so we hoped to get away with it to. Nope. Because of the eggs and brood present in the supers, we had to be extra careful to only pull frames that were just honey. Ideally, the whole super would have been filled with honey, no eggs. While this is a mistake in terms of how much honey we got, it is also a happy accident as it will mean our hives should be much stronger next year since they were able to raise so many more babies.
2) The honey was DARK this year. In general, a lighter honey is more desirable, but the comments from the Collin County Hobby Beekeepers association was that all the honey seemed dark this year. It still tastes great to us.
3) We needed more buckets and containers cleaned and ready to go before we started. We ended up having to pour honey bucket to bucket a few times unnecessarily.
First step, steal the honey. This does not make the bees very happy. Hubby was able to travel up to Bells late on Friday night to get the frames with honey from our four hives up there. On Saturday morning he removed the frames with honey from our five hives at home.
I tried to prepare the kitchen for easy clean up. Tried. I taped a plastic table cloth down on our kitchen table, tucked the curtains up out of the way and moved all the chairs and other stuff out of the kitchen.
Here is the finished set up. We tried to keep a logical flow to the order of things to minimize having to move drippy frames of honey too far. You can see just outside the kitchen window is a stack of medium supers, these came from three different families (and four different bee yards).
Just inside the door we set up a place to stack the supers we were working on.
This is what the surface of one of the frames of capped comb looks like.
Next was the decapping station. Where we used a hot electric knife to cut the wax caps off of the comb to expose the honey.
If done right, the wax comes off in a pretty curl.
The uncapped frames were then loaded into the centrifuge (is this this right name? maybe called and extractor?). This held three frames of honey and had an electric motor to spin the frames and force the honey out of the comb and onto the bottom of the vessel.
This picture is looking down into the cylinder of the extractor as it spins and the honey is flung out.
After several sets of frames were spun, we opened the valve at the bottom of the centrifuge and the beautiful golden honey poured out.
The honey was strained through a series of filters to remove wax and bee parts, then it was held in a 5 gallon bucket with a tap at the bottom.
Repeat. Over and over and over until all of the honey was extracted.
Poor hubby got the job of going outside to retrieve the next super full of frames. The bees very quickly learned where their honey had gone and were frantically trying to steal it back.
Hubby was careful to open and close the door to the kitchen quickly to avoid getting too many bees in the house.
After a few hours, the bees outside the door were overwhelming and hubby had to make a quick dash around the yard holding the frames to try and keep the bees from following him into the house.
This is a cluster of bees drinking the honey that is leaking out of one of the supers on the outside table.
Finished product! We ended up extracting about 12 gallons of honey for the three families.
Here are the bees cleaning off the outside table after we were done extracting.
Within an hour they had lapped up the giant puddle of honey.
The house was fairly easy to clean up, not as easy as just letting the bees do it, but not too bad. I'm still picking bits of wax off of my floors, and my floors were sticky even after two moppings.
In review, this year was just so-so for honey. As first year beekeepers, we are thrilled to get any, but still, we were hoping for more.
Comments and Lessons Learned:
1) We made a mistake and did not use queen excluders on our hives. This meant that the queens in nearly all of our 9 hives moved up into the supers and started laying eggs. Commercial beekeepers typically do not use queen excluders, so we hoped to get away with it to. Nope. Because of the eggs and brood present in the supers, we had to be extra careful to only pull frames that were just honey. Ideally, the whole super would have been filled with honey, no eggs. While this is a mistake in terms of how much honey we got, it is also a happy accident as it will mean our hives should be much stronger next year since they were able to raise so many more babies.
2) The honey was DARK this year. In general, a lighter honey is more desirable, but the comments from the Collin County Hobby Beekeepers association was that all the honey seemed dark this year. It still tastes great to us.
3) We needed more buckets and containers cleaned and ready to go before we started. We ended up having to pour honey bucket to bucket a few times unnecessarily.
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