Just before Christmas we received a great gift. A pint of light yellow honey. It is one of 24 pints that were harvested from the bee colony that survived the summer on our farm. We were landlords, and it was a tough year for the two hives. To read more, click here.
One hive failed almost right away, and even the second didn’t exactly thrive. After the harvest, our beekeepers decided to end the hive and start over next spring with two new, stronger bees from a different source. The likelihood of this weak group making it through the winter was slim.
As I cook the stored produce, I’m realizing what a difference the weather makes to the food we grow. I only harvested five butternut squash this fall. They were much smaller than they’ve been in the past, more compact, though perfectly shaped and with rich color. The inside, in fact, is a deep orange. Two weeks ago I made my favorite butternut squash dish, the Thai curry soup. We both agreed there was something off about it– it tasted too much like butternut squash! Even though I’d gone heavy on the curry paste, and then to even it out had gone a bit heavy on the coconut milk, the soup had a sweet taste that was undeniably squash. It was still good, but just not what I expected, and it did make me realize I use those spices to hide the fact that it’s squash, not enhance it!
This is also the case, of course, with honey. I bought some honey about a month ago at the farmer’s market. It is significantly more golden than the honey made on our farm this summer. It is also more clear. Our honey appears to have a lot of pollen suspended in it.
For Christmas, I received Michael Pollan’s Cooked. In the introduction, he quoted an OpEd piece in The Wall Street Journal by the couple who publish the Zagat restaurant guides. “Rather than coming one after work to cook, the Zagats suggested, ‘people would be better off staying an extra hour in the office doing what they do well, and letting bargain restaurants do what they do best.'”
This hit me, as did much of the rest of his discussion of the experience and activity of cooking. In 2014, I resolve, inasmuch as I ever resolve, to continue to pursuethe path of a life of activities that keep me in touch with the best things about being a human living on earth.
I spend too much time in front of a screen. I want to be much more deliberate about that time. I also need to move around more– outside and inside, cooking and cleaning and walking and taking care of things, not just a burst of exercise every day. I have been thinking a lot about how much of my social life takes place in virtual spaces. This has been a great blessing and in the past two weeks I’ve had two surprising “virtual” interactions that have been intense and rewarding. I also had a lovely visit with a friend who lives in Bolivia and whom I know almost entirely through Skype.
I know this is a call primarily for balance– that elusive state of bliss! But it is also a way of affirming the path I am already on, where I have traveled these years with the blog, the garden, my marriage, writing… This was a very good year. Here’s to another!