Not Just Honey

Our gravity draining system seemed to work exceedingly well!

We ended up with 2 and a half gallons of honey.

That's 31.6 lbs. of golden sweetness

Then we took the wax/honey mash leftover stuff and put it in an 8x11 glass pan and cooked it at 170F for a LONG time. But what we ended up with was about a pint and a half of now pasteurized honey, and a nice cake of beeswax.

Which I had to break up to get out of the pan

One of my sister in laws is going to take some and make some lip balm and stuff out of it. So I shredded her a pack.

Tastes nothing like mozzarella

Yet another little gem from the hive - we got a little bag of a substance called propolis after we processed the wax/honey mash.

Tastes nothing like beeswax

Propolis is made by bees when they collect sap from conifers and birch trees, mix it with some wax from their wax secreting glands, a little pollen, and- of course- a touch of honey. They use it like glue, to seal holes, connect things in the hive, even create tunnels and pathways. Propolis apparently has anti-EVERYTHING properties. Antibiotic, anti-fungal, anti-viral, anti-inflammatory. It can be made into a mouthwash that can help toothaches and inflamed gums. It can be swallowed in a pill form to help with sore joints, GI problems, allergies, and other stuff. So, we're going to process it by freezing it and grinding it into powder, then mixing with various liquids (water is ok, but there are apparently not many water soluble parts to it) Some people soak it in vodka and use it as a tincture. Whatever we end up doing with it, it should be interesting!

I also whipped up a little honey butter... because...

HONEY BUTTER!

Who knew that bees produced so many good things just doing what they do!

Pumpkin Stuffed with Everything Good

A few days ago, while pondering just what to make with fifteen pumpkins from my garden, I happened to turn the radio on and on NPR was a food program where they were talking about this stuffed pumpkin recipe.  They did a quick listing of ingredients - bread, cheese, bacon, herbs and such - and everything they were stuffing in there sounded pretty tasty!  So I decided to give it a shot.

I picked out the nicest looking pumpkin in the bunch and laid it out with the other ingredients.

The panda of course, was not included in the mix.  Next up was to gut the squash as if preparing to carve a Jack-o-Lantern.  Except I was a LOT more thorough getting all the little stringies out.

I'm saving the seeds for this pumpkin to plant next year.  It was a pretty decent taste, size, shape, etc. etc. etc.

Now mix up the bread, bacon, cheese and spices.  In our case we used a loaf of asiago cheese bread, cojack cheese and crispy bacon leftover from our pumpkin pancake and bacon breakfast.  (Our arteries really took a beating today)  Salt and pepper coated the inside of the pumpkin, then it was time to stuff.

This was the Boyo's favorite part.  Although we had extra stuffing, he did his best to get it all in there.  Once it was pretty well packed in, and I had assured the Boyo that we would cook up the rest of the stuffing so it would not go to waste, we added the heavy cream.  The recipe called for 1/3 cup, but I think we put in a full half cup.  

Lid back in place and onto a pizza tray, then in the oven at 350 degrees for two hours.

And out came our finished stuffed pumpkin!  I took the lid off at about 90 minutes to brown the stuffing a bit.  That's also when I put in the dish of extra stuffing.

 I think that it could have been in there for another half hour or so without trouble.  Although it was pretty tender, and I could poke a fork in the side with ease as the directions said.  It still could have been a little more done.  But the directions also said I could just mix the whole thing together, which I did!

This makes it into sort of a casserole, and is still very tasty!  The kiddos ate it and seemed to like it.

So there you go!    I think it would be really fun to do a turkey and have this as a side dish.  It would be very unique at the table!

More Later