Urban Beekeeping on WAMU's The Animal House

Toni Burnham, a Washington, DC urban beekeeper, and Aron Weber, pastry chef at the Fairmont Hotel were interviewed on The Animal House program on Washington's NPR station. The Fairmont Hotel is the DC hotel that has three hives on its roof and hosted a spinning party for local beekeepers last summer.

It's a great interview. Give it a listen. Urban Beekeeping

Kindergarten Snack Week Part 2

Day 4: Snow Day!

Day 5: Blueberry Muffins with Struesel Topping

Kindergarten Snack Week

Day One: Chocolate Chip Bread

Day Three: Oatmeal Raisin Cookies

What was Day Two? Goldfish crackers and apple juice. Even I can't bake every day.

Bulk Flour

My baking has hit another level of craziness -- I bought a 25 pound bag of flour last Friday.

January Bees

It's been really cold for the past few weeks so we haven't seen any bees lately. Last week, Karl tapped on the hive and got a lot of buzzing in response so we took that as a good sign. Then yesterday, the afternoon temperature got up to 53 degrees. When I went out at lunchtime, there were several bees flying around in front of the hive. While I stood watching them for a couple minutes, a few of them zoomed away, but mostly they stayed close to home. A few dead bees were pushed out and were on the ground in front of the hive opening, but not many. Hopefully these are all good signs that our hive is going to make it through the winter.

Orange Marmalade

9 oranges, 3 lemons, a box of pectin and 9.5 cups of sugar. 9 and a half cups of sugar is only a half cup shy of an entire five pound bag!

Making orange marmalade seemed to take all day. Slicing the oranges and lemons took nearly an hour (I think it's cool how you use the entire orange, peel and all), then they had to simmer in water for over an hour. Bringing the orange and pectin mixture to a boil was another 10 minutes or so and then adding the sugar and boiling and stirring that took at least another 20 minutes. I usually just fill hot, sterilized jars with hot jam, put lids on them and turn them upside down for a several minutes. You then flip them over and as they cool, the lids pop and they're fine. Today, however, after I filled the hot jars I processed them the proper way -- 10 minutes in the boiling water bath.

The jam tasted delicious -- with all that sugar how could it not -- but marmalade supposedly can take up to two weeks to fully set so we'll just have to see how it works out.

Karl's Birthday -- the Day After

Karl's birthday was Monday. It's always a pretty low-key celebration because it's right after New Year's Day and everyone (ok, maybe just me) is tired, but I did manage to bake a cake. The recipe was was a variation of a classic 1-2-3-4 cake from Baking Illustrated, and it was a hit -- this is what was left of it the next day.